Debian contains support for shadow passwords since release 1.3. In addition,
the Linux library of Pluggable Authentication Modules (a.k.a. libpam;) that
allows sysadmins to choose authorization modes on an application-specific basis
is available, and initially set to authenticate via shadow password.
Including full support for advanced authentication methods such as Kerberos, RSBAC and others is in progress.
Debian already has some support for non-English users, see How does Debian support non-English languages?, Section 4.8.
We hope to find people who will provide support for even more languages, and translate. Some programs already support internationalization, so we need message catalogs translators. Many programs still remaint to be properly internationalized.
The GNU Translation Project ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/ABOUT-NLS
works on internationalizing the GNU programs.
Currently a complete Debian release is available for the Intel x86 (i386), Motorola 680x0 (m68k), Alpha (alpha), SPARC (sparc), PowerPC (powerpc) and ARM (arm) architectures.
Complete Debian system on other architectures such as MIPS and SPARC64 is expected soon.
We expect the next release, currently codenamed woody, to include the latest version of Linux kernel 2.4.x.
Of course, it will still include packages for and contain support for Linux 2.0.x and 2.2.x.
We expect that the woody release will include GNU LibC library, version 2.2.x.