Debian 12 ‘Bookworm’ has just received its first sizeable update.

Packing a plethora of security patches and bug fixes, Debian 12.1 is an essential update that all users of this Linux distribution should install as soon as they’re able to.

Debian plan to make new install images for Debian 12.1 available “soon” but say existing install media shouldn’t be considered redundant. After all, this is just a series of package updates that existing (and new) users can install with a single command or a couple of GUI clicks.

As for the specific fixes and updates that make up Debian 12.1 – there is a sizeable set.

Notable highlights include new upstream bug fix releases of GNOME Shell, GNOME Software, GNOME Control Center, Mutter and systemd; new stable releases of NVIDIA graphics drivers; and a new upstream stable release of samba.

Memory leaks have been plugged in openvpn and a handful of MATE desktop components; while minor security tweaks address issues in dbus, cups, and guestfs-tools. Security advisories cover Chromium, Thunderbird, Firefox ESR, Wireshark, and OpenJDK-7, among others.

As Debian 12.1 is a collection of package updates they can be installed on existing Debian 12 installations using apt or a GUI software update tool (the exact one will vary based on the desktop environment being used/what’s been installed).

Once updates have been downloaded and installed it’s advised to restart the computer to enable them to take effect.