Debian Wins $25K Award From LinuxWorld

Phexro writes: "According to this story at newsalert, Debian has been awarded the $25,000 IDG/Linus Torvalds Community Award. It will be presented during the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo on Tuesday, Aug. 15. Go Debian!" Congratulations to the Debian crew for this. Non-Debian users benefit from the pressure that Debian puts on other distros -- just by existing -- to mind their P's and Q's when it comes to Free software, and for proving that elegant upgrade systems don't have to be glitzy or labyrinthine.

Comments

Why Debian is So Great...

[Outlyer]

There are so many things that make Debian the best. I was a Stampede developer a while back, and I made the move to Debian after frustration with the way Stampede was going. but I digress...

There are a couple of issues people have with Debian, first, they claim that it's always late. How is it late? Unlike some other distros that release 'betas' every once in awhile, Debian maintains a very stable stable, and a more risque devel version. I personally use the devel (woody) release, but when I'm building a server, or a workstation for work, I use the stable. Best of both worlds... you can have the most current versions of everything, or stick with the tried and true. Sounds like it's fair to me. The releases are immaterial for the most part, seeing as an apt-get upgrade -u keeps your packages current, or bugfixed.

Next people complain about the way Debian sticks to their Free Software Guidlines. It's important to stick to morals, which is important with all these gigantic Linux companies. Someone has to set the standard and do the Right Thing. I can't believe they don't get more respect considering how they've defined morals, and stuck to them, in spite of backlash over KDE et al, and everything else. It's truly admirable.

Fact is, I can convert an RPM package or install a third-party package if I want, so it's not like running Debian locks me out of proprietary software. I run Codewarrior, and ApplixOffice without any problems. I've even tried some betas of KDE2, all install and work perfectly. Another benefit of the extensive testing I mentioned earlier.

So, don't flame Debian. Even if you don't run it, you can respect their tenants. Doing the right thing, building a stable solid distro and ignoring commercial interests is what matters to them, and I have nothing but respect for them.

(Incidentally, I've bought a bunch of Debian merch, like a very nice T-shirt which has a slogan that I think applies very well to Debian "Code matters more than commercials" Seems like a laudable goal to me)

Re:Why Debian is So Great...

[Erbo]

A few months ago I made the switch from Mandrake 7 to Debian-potato, and in many respects it's been worthwhile. Let me outline some of the things I like about Debian...

1. The update system that can upgrade every package on the system with just two commands (apt-get update; apt-get upgrade). For busy people that don't have time to pore over every single update notice that comes in the mail or gets posted on the Web, that's worth a black-market price right there.
2. Related to this, the packaging system in general, and tools like gnome-apt that make it easy to select and download new software.
3. The ease of installation. I like how, if you've got an Ethernet connection to the Net, you can use just 5 floppies (boot, root, 3 drivers) to get the installation started, and download the rest over the Net. I've set up many systems (including a couple of notebooks) that way.
4. The general stability of the system. About the only thing in Debian that crashes on me is Netscape (and that's not Debian's fault). For those who complain about it, you know, it's good to see some people sticking to their guns and saying, "We will ship no code before its time."
5. The sheer variety of software directly available for Debian. (That's one of the reasons why I don't want them removing non-free. If they want to put it on a different server and make me add another line to /etc/apt/sources.list, fine with me, but removing it just for the sake of ideology strikes me as severely short-sighted.)

Yes, the fact that the main parts of the system are all 100% free is both good and important, but I also like the fact that you can enjoy the benefits of Debian without being forced to become an ideologue. Basically, it's good for it to be Free, but I use it because it's good.

Eric
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Debian Attention

[Ramsed]

Hopefully this will get Debian/GNU Linux (from now on referred to as Debian) some attention in the "non geek" media. Lately there are all kind of announcements by Linux Companies that they have some kind of aggreement to distribute some nifty software that would never be allowed in Debian non-free. This way, practically no potential Linux User has ever heard of Debian, and they turn to distributions like Red bugfull Hat (is not Linux !) and Suse (they really got lost, 6 CD's full of shareware).

Don't get me wrong, I've tried most Linux Distributions, and they certainly beet Micro$oft Winblows, but Debian is absolutely the best among them. Sure, the installation doesn't look that smooth, but if you just take the time and read the excellent manual, there should be no problems getting Debian running. And for are your other problems, there's a great community of Debian users and experts out there on the mailing-lists and IRC, who all where Newbies once and want to share their enthousiasm.

I could go on for ever with the advantages of Debian, so I just list some of them.

From the user's perspection: Easy upgrades, no problem looking for packages, clear filesystem-structure, nice extra tools like sendmailconfig,......

Further, the whole Linux community benefits from the efforts of Debian: The Bugtracking system, the promotion of Free (as in speech) Software and all those distributions based on Debian (Corel, Storm).

Let's hope for the benefit of the Linux Community, this will give Debian a big hop in popularity.

what does the money get used for?

[oingoboingo]

do any debian people here know what would (or could) be done with the $25,000? i noticed a few months back sun donated an ultra60...do they use this sort of money to buy extra hardware to help porting efforts? and if so, who's house does it get installed at? or in the true debian spirit, does it just stay in the box it was shipped in and everyone argues about where it will go on IRC for years and the thing never actually gets 'released'?

Re:what does the money get used for?

[Bruce Perens]

Tee hee.

To give a serious answer to a not-so-serious question, yes. They do get a good lot in donations every year, and as far as I can tell they are spending it wisely. If I were them, I'd keep this award in an interest-bearing account for some future emergency. For example, we have some legal challenges for free software in the future that could effect Debian and the rest of the free software movement.

Having been there, I can tell you that if people on Debian argue, it's because they care deeply about it.

What stable release? I've run "unstable" for over a year now, and it's been more stable than other released distributions I could name, and just as up-to-date. Debian is addressing the release frequency, however.

Thanks

Bruce

Re:what does the money get used for?

[Cerb]

It pays for CDs if we must buy them for shows. It pay for appearances at shows. Sometimes it pays for bandwidth and hardware upgrades to our poor bloated FTP arhivers. :) Note, most CDs are donated to us. That ultra 60 is being used to further porting efforts. The sparcs that have actually been recieved by developers have gone to the most active sparc porters from what I've seen. There are 3 sparc boxes that we don't physically have. They are maintained by kachina and run an autobuilder to recompile all of the i386 debs that are uploaded. Any more questions?

Re:Free?

[danpat]

It seems that there are a few people still in the dark about how Debian's distribution fits together.

We have 2 archives, and each has 3 sections. There is 1 official section in each archive. The two archives are the "regular/low fat/most of the stuff" archive, and the "non-US/don't mind me/watch out for the helicopters" archive. Software that breaks the US export control laws goes into the non-US archive.

Inside each archive are 3 sections, called "main", "contrib" and "non-free". The only part of the archive that we "officially" support is the "main" section. Every piece of software in the "main" section is compliant with the Debian Free Software Guidelines. This software is all GPL, MPL, BSD, [insert favourite free licence here] stuff. The "contrib" section stuff *would* be in the "main" section, except that it for some reason relies on something from the "non-free" section. "non-free" stuff is stuff that we are allowed to distribute, but does not fall under our Free Software Guidelines.

The official Debian cd images that come out with each distribution contain the regular/main, regular/contrib, non-US/main and non-US/contrib stuff, along with all the source. Of course, often to use much of the contrib stuff, you need to grab non-free stuff (many packages however only partly rely on non-free stuff, such as driver modules, this still gets them into contrib, but you can use them without non-free).

Re:And??

[joey]

There are, I would guesstimate, 5 or possibly 10 people working full time on Debian. I'm one of them since VA has hired me and a couple of other people to work on Debian.

But the money won't go to hiring someone to work on Debian. We'll probably use it to build up our infrastructure -- we can always use more disk space.

But, I just sort of have to look at that number and wonder how they manage to keep the all volnteer effort competitive with all the commercial Linux distributions

That's really quite simple. It's the same way the linux community as a whole manages to be competative with big compainies like Microsoft. We have a lot of people, and their odd hours here and there add up. And the people who work on it really care, are often at the top of their fields, and do things right.
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"official" is just a word after all

[Saltheart]

The fact that you consider potato to be "late" reflects a general misunderstanding of the distribution. On this campus we use debian for probably 90% of all our mission critical production linux boxes (www, mail, samba, routers, firewalls, you-name-it) some of which have been running potato since october of last year, and running it well. Just because the debian guys refuse to put their "official" stamp on a release until it has passed rigorous testing doesn't mean you can't use it before its "official".

Your reasons for not using debian are quite flimsy. You can have just as much cutting edge stuff with debian that you can in any other distro. (I do realize that there are some applications where the authors do not support debian so it takes a week or two for a package manager to make .deb available) It runs beautifully on my Compaq laptop with the latest eye candy available, and we even have some debian woody boxes that are running the latest 2.4-test kernel. Furthermore, I would rather have quality control than cutting edge on my mission critical servers any day. And the package management system is excellent. Maintenance and upgrades on these boxes is a breeze!

And with strong desktop distro's like corel and storm (which is better by far) your arguments become impotent. Personally, I would rather fight than switch.

Is being late considered as "elegance" ?

[Taco Cowboy]

You said:

"Congratulations to the Debian crew for this.
Non-Debian users benefit from the pressure
that Debian puts on other distros -- just by
existing -- to mind their P's and Q's when
it comes to Free software, and for proving
that elegant upgrade systems don't have to
be glitzy or labyrnthine."

I am not here to flame up a distro-based religious war, but I really wonder how being late all the time can be considered as an "elegant" trait ?

I mean, Debian is famous (notorious) for its lateness. Its "official" version almost always lag behind, compare with others.

True, being fast doesn't mean sharp, but Debian's lateness is something else altogether.

I mean, look at the "potato" release - or should I say, has yet to be released - other distros are carrying newer version of the utilities and kernel code already, in their RELEASE, OFFICIAL versions.

True, Debian does put a lot of effort into its Ps and Qs, but Ps and Qs alone is not _everything_. Sometimes a user needs some advance feature offered by a newer version of a certain utilities, and because of Debian's insistence on getting EVERYTHING in line, most of the time the utilities in Debian distros are of older version, and the user who needs the new feature ain't gonna get it.

That is why sometimes I am forced to use distros other than Debian.

But anyway, congratulation to Debian, the Debian folks have worked hard to earn the prize, despite the too often lateness for Debian releases.