Debian 8 "Jessie" was released on 25 Apr. A link to the Debian release page shows the changes and you can follow the release in 'real-time' should you desire to do so.
This release will be supported for 5 years and includes "improvements" to the UEFI software (both 32- and 64-bit) introduced in the previous version, "Wheezy". It also is the first release to use systemd as default init system replacing the earlier sysvinit, which is still available in the repos should you wish to revert the change. What effects such a change might have on the remainder of the system is not clear. Improvements to the support of Debian software include the ability to browse and search all source code distributed in the latest release.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday April 30 2015, @01:03AM
The first thing you need to know about the Linux Mint 17.x branch is that it is using Ubuntu 14.04 LTS as a base. The Ubuntu developers are only introducing systemd to the 15.04 branch. It doesn't mean that the Mint developers can't implement it right now, but they are probably waiting the next LTS, which will arrive in April, 2016. We already know that the Ubuntu-based version won't be getting systemd, but neither will the Debian-based one.
From January of this year, so I guess it's pretty recent. I'm on 17.1 now.
Can somebody tell me a reliable way to tell whether I'm currently running systemd or it's just installed for compatibility?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"