Debian nuo 0.01 iki versijos 0.90 (1993 m. rugpjūtis-gruodis).

Debian 0.91 (1994 m. sausis): Ši laida turėjo paprastą paketų sistemą, kuri leido įdiegti ir pašalinti paketus. Tuo metu projektas išaugo iki kelių tuzinų žmonių.

Debian 0.93R5 (1995 m. kovas): Tuo metu atsakomybė už kiekvieną paketą buvo aiškiai priskirta konkrečiam vykdytojui (developer), o po to, kai bazinė sistema būdavo įdiegta, paketų įdiegimui buvo naudojama paketų tvarkyklė (dpkg).

Debian 0.93R6 (1995 m. lapkritis): Atsirado dselect. Tai buvo paskutinioji Debian'o laida, naudojanti a.out binarinį formatą; tuomet buvo apie 60 kūrėjų (developers). Kartu su 0.93R6 laida, Bdale Garbee paleido veikti pirmą master.debian.org serverį, kuris glaudėsi pas HP. Atviro ir aiškaus pagrindinio serverio panaudojimas, kuriame Debian'o kūrėjai konstruotų kiekvieną distributyvo laidą, tiesiogiai įtakojo Debian'o „veidrodžių“ tinklo formavimąsi, ir netiesiogiai daugelio taisyklių (policies) ir procedūrų sukūrimą, naudojamų projekto tvarkymui šiandien.

Debian 1.0 was never released: InfoMagic, a CD vendor, accidentally shipped a development release of Debian and entitled it 1.0. On December 11th 1995, Debian and InfoMagic jointly announced that this release was screwed. Bruce Perens explains that the data placed on the "InfoMagic Linux Developer's Resource 5-CD Set November 1995" as "Debian 1.0" is not the Debian 1.0 release, but an early development version which is only partially in the ELF format, will probably not boot or run correctly, and does not represent the quality of a released Debian system. To prevent confusion between the premature CD version and the actual Debian release, the Debian Project has renamed its next release to "Debian 1.1". The premature Debian 1.0 on CD is deprecated and should not be used.

The hosting of master.debian.org moved from HP to i-Connect.Net around the end of 1995. Michael Neuffer and Shimon Shapiro, founders of i-Connect.Net, hosted master on their own hardware for a little more than a year. During this time, they provided many services to Debian, including running what was essentially the New Maintainer process of the day, and significantly aiding the growth of the early Debian mirror network.

Debian 1.1 Buzz (June 17th, 1996): This was the first Debian release with a code name. It was taken, like all others so far, from a character in one of the Toy Story movies... in this case, Buzz Lightyear. By this time, Bruce Perens had taken over leadership of the Project from Ian Murdock, and Bruce was working at Pixar, the company that produced the movies. This release was fully ELF, used Linux kernel 2.0, and contained 474 packages.

Debian 1.2 Rex (December 12th, 1996): Named for the plastic dinosaur in the Toy Story movies. This release consisted of 848 packages maintained by 120 developers

Debian 1.3 Bo (1997 m. birželio 5 d.): Pavadinta piemenaitės Bo Peep vardu. Ši laida sudaryta iš 974 paketų, prižiūrimų 200 kūrėjų.

Debian 2.0 Hamm (July 24th, 1998): Named for the piggy-bank in the Toy Story movies. This was the first multi-architecture release of Debian, adding support for the Motorola 68000 series architectures. With Ian Jackson as Project Leader, this release made the transition to libc6, and consisted of over 1500 packages maintained by over 400 developers.

Debian 2.1 Slink (1999 m. kovo 9 d.): Pavadinta lieso šuns iš animacinio filmo vardu. Pridėtos dvi papildomos architektūros, Alpha ir SPARC. Projekto vadovas buvo Wichert Akkerman. šią laida apėmė apie 2250 paketų, ir oficialiam rinkiniui reikėjo 2-jų CD. Esminė techninė naujovė buvo naujos paketų tvarkymo sąsajos apt įvedimas. Apt ėmėsi spręsti problemas kylančias iš Debian'o besitęsiančio augimo, ir nustatė naują paketų įsigijimo ir įdiegimo atviro kodo operacinėse sistemose paradigmą.

Debian 2.2 Potato (15 August 2000): Named for "Mr Potato Head" in the Toy Story movies. This release added support for the PowerPC and ARM architectures. With Wichert still serving as Project Leader, this release consisted of more than 3900 binary packages derived from over 2600 source packages maintained by more than 450 Debian developers.

Debian 3.0 Woody (19 July 2002): Named for the main character the Toy Story movies: "Woody" the cowboy. Even more architectures were added in this release: IA-64, HP PA-RISC, MIPS (big endian), MIPS (little endian) and S/390. This is also the first release to include cryptographic software due to the restrictions for exportation being lightened in the US, and also the first one to include KDE, now that the license issues with QT were resolved. With Bdale Garbee recently appointed Project Leader, and more than 900 Debian developers, this release contained around 8,500 binary packages and 7 binary CDs in the official set.

Debian 3.1 Sarge (6 June 2005): named for the sergeant of the Green Plastic Army Men. No new architectures were added to the release, although an unofficial AMD64 port was published at the same time and distributed through the new Alioth project hosting site. This release features a new installer: debian-installer, a modular piece of software that feature automatic hardware detection, unattended installation features and was released fully translated to over thirty languages. It was also the first release to include a full office suite: OpenOffice.org. Branden Robinson had just been appointed as Project Leader. This release was made by more than nine hundred Debian developers, and contained around 15,400 binary packages and 14 binary CDs in the official set.

Debian 4.0 Etch (2007 m. balandžio 8 d.): Pavadinta žaislo eskizo iš animacinio filmo vardu. Viena architektūra papildyta šioje laidoje: AMD64, ir oficialiai m68k palaikymas nutrauktas. Ši laida tęsė įdiegiklio debian-installer naudojimą, bet pasižyminčio šioje laidoje jau ir grafiniu įdiegikliu, kriptografine atsisiunčiamų paketų verifikacija, daug lankstesne disko dalinimo sistema (su šifruotų disko skirsnių palaikymu), supaprastintu e-pašto konfigūravimu, daug lankstesniu darbastalio pasirinkimu, supaprastinta bet pagerinta lokalizacija ir naujais režimais, įskaitant ir, išgelbėjimo (a rescue mode) režimą. Naujas įdiegimas nebereikalavo sistemos perkrovimo, nes ankstesnės dvi įdiegimo fazės dabar buvo integruotos į vieną. Šis naujas įdiegiklis tiekė palaikymą rašmenims su komponuotais simboliais ir sudėtingoms kalboms savo grafinėje versijoje, padidindamas galimų vertimų skaičių iki penkiasdešimties. Sam Hocevar buvo išrinktas projekto lyderiu tą pačią dieną, ir projektas turėjo daugiau kaip tūkstantį trisdešimt Debian'o kūrėjų. Laidos oficialų rinkinį sudarė virš 20 CD diskų (3 DVD diskai), kuriuose buvo apie 18.000 binarinių paketų. Čia taip pat buvo du binariniai CD diskai skirti įdiegti sistemą su kitomis, nei pagal nutylėjimą numatytosios, darbastalio aplinkomis.

Debian Lenny 5,0 (2009 m. vasaris): Pavadinta prisukamų žiūronų iš animacinio filmo vardu. Vienas papildoma architektūra buvo įtraukta į šią laidą: ARM EABI (arba armel), teikiant palaikymą naujiems ARM procesoriams ir nebepalaikant seno ARM pritaikymo (arm). m68k pritaikymas nebuvo įtrauktas į šią laidą, tačiau ji vis dar paliktas unstable distributyve. Ši laida dar neturėjo FreeBSD pritaikymo, nors buvo atliktas didelis darbas jį ruošiant, bet jis neatitiko kokybės reikalavimų šia laidai. Ši laida papildyta Marvell Orion platformos palaikymu, kuri naudojama daugelyje informacijos kaupiklių. Ir taip pat pateiktas palaikymas keleto nešiojamiejujų kompiuteriu, ypač Eee PC Asus. Lenny, taip pat talpino Emdebian kūrimo įrankius, kurie leido iš Debian'o išeities tekstu paketų kurti binarinius paketus kitose platformose (cross-built) ir palengvinti poreikius ARM sistemoms. Tai taip pat buvo pirmoji laida tiekianti laisvą Sun Java technologijos versiją, suteikianti galimybę Java programas talpinti pagrindinėje main saugykloje.

Support of small factor devices in this release was increased by the added support for Marvell's Orion platform which was used in many storage devices and also provided supported several Netbooks. Some new build tools were added which allowed Debian packages to be cross-built and shrunk for embedded ARM systems. Also, netbooks of varied vendors were now supported and the distribution provided software more suitable for computers with relatively low performance.

It was also the first release to provide free versions of Sun's Java technology, making it possible to provide Java applications in the main section.

Debian 6.0 Squeeze (February 2011): named for the green three-eyed aliens.

The release was frozen on August 6, 2010, with many of the Debian developers gathered at the 10th DebConf at New York City.

While two architectures (alpha and hppa) were dropped, two architectures of the new FreeBSD port (kfreebsd-i386 and kfreebsd-amd64) were made available as technology preview, including the kernel and userland tools as well as common server software (though not advanced desktop features yet). This was the first time a Linux distribution has been extended to also allow use of a non-Linux kernel.

The new release introduced a dependency based boot sequence, which allowed for parallel init script processing, speeding system startup.

Debian 6 was the first release that benefited from Long Term Support (LTS), a project to extend the lifetime of all Debian stable releases to (at least) 5 years. Debian LTS was not handled by the Debian Security team, but by a separate group of volunteers and companies interested in making it a success. Debian 6 was supported until the end of February 2016, and limited to i386 and amd64 architectures.

Debian 7.0 Wheezy (May 2013): named for the rubber toy penguin with a red bow tie.

The release was frozen on June 30, 2012, very close to the Debian developers gathering in the 12th DebConf at Managua, Nicaragua.

One architecture was included in this release (armhf) and this release introduced multi-arch support, which allowed users to install packages from multiple architectures on the same machine. Improvements in the installation process allowed visually impaired people to install the system using software speech for the first time.

This was also the first release that supported the installation and booting in devices using UEFI firmware.

Debian 7 had Long Term Support (LTS) for i386, amd64, armel and armh architectures until the end of May 2018.

Debian 8 Jessie (April 2015): named for the cow girl doll who first appeared in Toy Story 2.

This release introduced for the first time the systemd init system as default. Two new architectures were introduced: arm64 and ppc64el and three architectures were dropped: s390 (replaced by s390x), ia64 and sparc. The Sparc architecture had been present in Debian for 16 years, but lacked developer support to make it maintainable in the distribution.

The release included many security improvements such as a new kernel that nullified a whole set of security vulnerabilities (symlink attacks), a new way to detect packages which were under security support, more packages built with hardened compiler flags and a new mechanism (needrestart) to detect sub-systems which had to be restarted in order to propagate security updates after an upgrade.

Debian 8 had Long Term Support (LTS) for i386, amd64, armel and armh architectures until the end of June 2020.

Debian 9 Stretch (June 2017): named for the toy rubber octopus with suckers on her eight long arms that appeared in Toy Story 3.

The release was frozen on February 7th, 2017.

Debian 9 was dedicated to the project's founder Ian Murdock, who passed away on 28 December 2015.

Support for the powerpc architecture was dropped in this release, whileas the mips64el architecture was introduced. This release introduced debug packages with a new repository in the archive, packages from this repository provided debug symbols automatically for packages. Firefox and Thunderbird returned to Debian, replacing their debranded versions Iceweasel and Icedove, which were present in the archive for more than 10 years. Thanks to the Reproducible Builds project, over 90% of the source packages included in Debian 9 were able to build bit-for-bit identical binary packages.

Debian 9 had Long Term Support (LTS) for i386, amd64, armel and armh architectures until the end of June 2022.

Debian 10 Buster (July 2019): named for Andy's pet dog, received as Christmas present in the end of Toy Story.

With this release Debian for the first time included a mandatory access control framework enabled per default (AppArmor). It was also the first Debian release to ship with Rust based programs such as Firefox, ripgrep, fd, exa, etc. and a significant number of Rust based libraries (more than 450). In Debian 10 GNOME defaults to using the Wayland display server instead of Xorg, providing a simpler and more modern design and advantages for security. The UEFI ("Unified Extensible Firmware Interface") support first introduced in Debian 7 continued to be greatly improved in Debian 10, being included for amd64, i386 and arm64 architectures and working out of the box on most Secure Boot-enabled machines.

Debian 10 has Long Term Support (LTS) for i386, amd64, armel and armh architectures until the end of June 2024.

Debian 11 Bullseye (August 14th, 2021): named for Woody's wooden toyhorse that appeared in Toy Story 2.

This release contained over 11,294 new packages for a total count of 59,551 packages, along with a significant reduction of over 9,519 packages which were marked as "obsolete" and removed. 42,821 packages were updated and 5,434 packages remained unchanged.

Debian 11 allowed driverless printing and scanning without the need for vendor specific (often non-free) drivers, and shipped a Linux kernel with support for the exFAT filesystem. The mips architecture support was dropped, keeping support for mipsel (little-endian) architectures for 32-bit hardware and mips64el architecture for 64-bit little-endian hardware.

The Debian Med team took part in the fight against COVID-19 by packaging software for researching the virus on the sequence level and for fighting the pandemic with the tools used in epidemiology; this work continued with focus on machine learning tools for both fields.

Debian 12 Bookworm (June 10th, 2023): named for a green toy worm with a built-in flashlight that appeared in Toy Story 3.

This release contained over 11,089 new packages for a total count of 64,419 packages, while over 6,296 packages have been removed as "obsolete". 43,254 packages were updated in this release. The overall disk usage for bookworm is 365,016,420 kB (365 GB), and is made up of 1,341,564,204 lines of code.

Following the 2022 General Resolution about non-free firmware, the Debian Social Contract got adjusted and a new archive area called non-free-firmware got introduced, making it possible to separate non-free firmware from the other non-free packages. Most non-free firmware packages have been moved from non-free to non-free-firmware. This separation makes it possible to build a variety of official installation images. And it makes installing Debian on popular hardware using the official Debian installer much easier.

A total of nine architectures are officially supported for bookworm.

The Debian Cloud team publishes bookworm for three popular cloud computing services.

Between releases, in Bug#978636 (Feb 2021), the Technical Committee resolved that Debian bookworm would support only the merged-usr^[1] root filesystem layout, dropping support for the non-merged-usr layout. For systems installed as buster or bullseye there would be no changes to the filesystem; however, systems using the older layout would be converted during the upgrade.

Thanks to the combined work of the Debian Security team and the Debian Long Term Support team, bookworm will be supported on four architectures untill June 2028 (5 years after release).

Debian 13 Trixie (as of August 2024 the testing distribution): Trixie is a blue toy Triceratops that appeared in Toy Story 3.