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The Importance of Being Debian

Posted by michael on from the join-the-collective dept.

Orre writes "This is an interesting article on why we should be interested in this non-commercial linux distribution. Some of the points: No lies, Suit-Free Zone, Apt-get. And by the way, Hewlett-Packard has chosen Debian to be their standard linux distribution."

2 of 397 comments (clear)

  1. Re:A great distro by kigrwik · · Score: 5, Insightful

    My /etc/apt/sources.list (extracts):

    # Gnome 2:
    deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian ../project/experimental main contrib non-free

    # KDE 3:
    deb http://kde3.geniussystems.net/debian/ ./
    deb http://people.debian.org/~bab/kde3 ./

    # E17:
    deb http://people.debian.org/~ljlane/downloads e17/

    'nuff said.

    If you want the greatest and latest, you got it. Debian Developers are not necessarily using potato, they like features as much as anybody else. But Debian's "stable" stamp is something that has much more weight than that.

    Besides, Debian has that annoying habit of usually doing the right thing. That's what the article is about, really.

    --
    -- don't discount flying pigs until you have good air defense
  2. The importance of *commercial* distributions by chrysalis · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Non-commercial Linux distributions like Gentoo or Debian are impressive. They have more package than most commercial distros, they are actively maintainer, they have an amazing packaging system, they are free and everyone can put his finger in the pie.

    But *commercial* distros are really important. Why? Because companies like SuSE or RedHat have a marketing force. Without them, a lot of companies would never have heard about Linux. Just like a lot of other free operating systems, Linux would have been something designed by geeks, and for geeks. SuSE, RedHat, etc. give an important professional aspect to Linux. Thanks to them, some hardware vendors gave specs or developped Linux drivers. Thanks to them, web plugins like Flash are supported on Linux. Thanks to them and their money, Linux has been ported to Intel and AMD 64 bits architectures. Thanks to them, any dummy can buy a SuSE package with a comprehensive printed manual, everything on CD's and DVD's, and get technical support.

    Sure, once you are familar with Unix/Linux, you can easily use any distro, commercial or not, or even switch to BSD. But I guess a lot of people would never have installed Linux/Unix on their computer if the only thing they was given was http://www.debian.org/ or http://www.openbsd.org/ .

    So please stop bashing commercial Linux distributions. Linux would never have been what it is nowadays without them.

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