Weeks (or months) before a new version of Debian is released, the Release Manager picks the codename for the next version. Now that Debian version 6.0 is out, the developers are already busy working on the next version, codenamed Wheezy…

There's no official list of planned changes, and Debian never makes promises relating to technical goals of the coming versions. However, a few development trends can already be noted, and there are many reasons to believe they will turn into concrete results in the new version.

The package management system will be able to install packages for several different architectures on the same system (this is known as “multi-arch support”). This will allow installing 32 bit applications on a 64 bit system, and vice-versa. Another project worth mentioning is Constantly Usable Testing, which aims at labeling Testing as an officially supported distribution that can be recommended to the general public. The default “init” process (sysvinit) may also be replaced by more modern systems such as upstart or systemd.

Of course, all the main software suites will have had a major release. For instance, Wheezy will include a 3.x version of GNOME, which brings a deep and promising change in the usual graphical desktop paradigm.