The change will be implemented with Debian "Stretch"

Jun 19, 2015 18:53 GMT  ·  By

The Debian project has undergone some major changes in the past couple of years, and it looks like more are on their way. Developers have announced that Libav will no longer ship as default on Debian, and it will be replaced with FFmpeg.

Libav is a collection of audio and video processing tools that can be used to stream and manipulate any kind of media files, audio or video. This is the same type of solution as the FFMpeg multimedia framework, and the two projects do pretty much the same thing. Now that Debian 8 "Jessie" is out the door (an 8.1 version was also released), the developers are considering changing one of the major components.

The Debian project went through a bit of a rough patch when the devs decided to replace the SysVinit init system with Systemd. There were quite a few discussions around it, and the same happened with the FFmpeg and Libav debate, but without all the drama.

Why the change?

The Debian devs who proposed this in the first place made a list of arguments in favor of this decision, but the security aspect seems to be prevalent. Long story short, Libav is patched too slowly compared to FFmpeg. The support for the latter is just that good. The project is at a point where all the major issues have been corrected, and it's really hard to say no to that, especially if we're talking about Debian, a stable Linux distribution.

FFmpeg will be implemented by default in Debian 9 "Stretch," and it looks like the community is already reacting pretty well to the news. It won't be a significant change for regular users, and it will be a while until it is felt. On the other hand, Libav will still be available in the repositories, so it's not like it's going anywhere.