Debian GNU/Linux 12: Project publishes first details about the new design

The Debian project has published the first details on the new theme of the upcoming release of its free operating system Debian GNU/Linux 12 (“Bookworm”), which is expected to follow the current Debian GNU/Linux 11 (“Bullseye”) in summer 2023. The new design language is called “Emerald”.

New design language for the bookworm

The new theme, which includes the background image, the boot, login and lock screen, the Grand Unified Bootloader (GRUB) and the graphical installation routine Calamares, was once again conceived by the graphic designer and illustrator Juliette Taka, who has already worked for was responsible for the design and many parts of the UI/UX of Debian 11 and Debian 10.

The French artist, who has been on board since Debian 8 (“Jessie”), describes the concept for the new design of the upcoming operating system as follows:

• Elegantly polished and chiseled, or in their raw and natural state, gemstones can have an infinite number of shapes.
• With the Emerald theme, I wanted to bring light and mineral together in a new, clean, almost ethereal design.
• Find more information and updated wallpaper and graphics in Julia’s GitHub repository.

Debian GNU/Linux 12 (“Bookworm”) is currently still listed as Debian (“Testing”) and is expected to be available next summer on the basis of Linux 6.1 LTS and with various new features, such as automatic detection for dual-boot systems with Windows 11, appear. According to reports, Gnome 43 will be used as the desktop. Optimizations are aimed in particular at the Arm64 and RISC-V architectures and the Wayland display server.

Further information is provided by the official Debian Wiki and the artist’s profile, which is to be constantly updated during the development phase and weekly newly created system images from Debian Testing (ISO) enable a current preview of the release of Debian 12 (“Bookworm”).