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Debian: A Brief Retrospective
IanMurdock writes "This weekend, Debian turned 10. To mark the occasion, I've written a retrospective, published at LinuxPlanet. There's also a very nice piece, based in part on my early writings about Debian as well as the retrospective, at internetnews.com."
So, when do we throw a Debian party, have cake and ice cream, and play pin the tail on Bill Gates?
I love apt get. It's always so much easier than reading the article.
Getting through the installer, I realized that Emacs was taking up too much of my diskspace. So hey, Debian has a great package manager right? So I try to remove the emacs package and see that half of debian seemed to depend on emacs. It wasn't long after that I switched to Red Hat.
The more you know, the less you understand.
I have been trying for several days to download the ISO's on the MIPS version of Debian. My main irritaton with this is the fact that the FTP keeps timing out. I have an SGI Indy IP22 r4400 and am curious about what else I can do with this. What will run on it?? What kind of device drivers are available and will it run a cool desktop like Ximian? Any help here without obfuscation would be of a great service to me.
Stupid Humans.....
My hat is off to you, Ian Murdock.
20 mil and I will! Learn Esperanto with 20M others.
Pretty soon, Debian is going to want to drive, and of course, it'll want it's own car. Curfew? Good luck with that. And then, just when things seem to calm down, bam, you have to pay for college, or it knocks some girl up. It never ends.
What do I think Debian should do next? As the Linux world's leading non-commercial, community-driven distribution, Debian can lead the way in preserving the fragile Linux ecosystem, if it sets its mind to it.
.02
Debian is NOT going to preserve anything. If it continues on its current path (which is fine for me as I am a Debian user) it will find that it is cornered it its own niche.
The rest of the Linux community is moving FORWARD towards the mainstream. Debian remains locked in its "old fashioned ways" and will never be a leader in anything (as far as the MAJORITY will be concerned).
People want ease of use, ease of installation, and commercial applications to be included. They don't want to have to find them somewhere else, manually add a deb repository, and then install.
I have to say that I am nearly 100% pleased with Debian. That's not to say that is what is going to matter in the future. I like staying away from the current direction that Linux is moving but I don't believe that the rest of the community necessarily believes that's the best way to go.
That's my worthless
It kind of sucks to read about all the great ideas and ideals that Debian represents and then get a dose of the real Debian community in #debian.
I'm nowhere being a linux guru, and I'm sure there will be the usual Debian trolls, but after getting through the initial Debian installation as a new Linux user, it has been one of the most satisfying computing experiences I have had in a long time.
It still boggles my mind that my Thinkpad has been running the same initial installation for the last 2 years, without so much as a hiccup.
Everyday I appreciate all the hard (volunteer no less) that has gone into this hodgepodge of kernels and free software that I can use as I see fit.
My thanks to all the persons that make Debian what it is.
How about a robust, secure, directory service integrated into the distribution itself? Something that slaps NIS around and isn't vaporware like Ophion. That alone could be a huge killer app that would kelp those of us in corporate environments who want to move to debian as a workstation based solution.
The beacon of truth awaits you here
It's kind of surprising to me. About four years ago, I would have said that for the non-commercial distributions, Slackware reigned easily at the top. They had decent integration, fairly acceptable release timing, and their installer was beautifully easy to use. At that time, Debian still had dselect as the primary tool, which was just painful, a problem with reliably functional ISO images for download, but they had a decent package system in the works.
Today, I'm having a hard time justifying keeping my Slackware install in place on my workstation. It's running 8.0, and I've manually updated enough stuff because of the lag in Slackware's development that I doubt an upgrade of sorts would work properly, yet I want the goodies that gnome2 provides, which looks too daunting to build by hand, with all of its assorted libraries and tools. So, at this point, switching to Debian, which I know is going to see active development for quite some time, is a very attractive option.
Debian's usefulness in the last few years gained so much that the aforementioned workstation is only Slackware, or even non-Debian Linux Box in my control.
The end of dselect being a requirement is probably what prompted that, though I still haven't ever had a successful i386 ISO-based install with it, it's been the two-floppies method.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Slightly offtopic, but if you look at the groups here you can see the start of some very interesting technologies being discussed through newsgroups.
It's a shame they seem to tail off around 1995, it would be nice to see some serious newsgroup discussions that occurred during the past seven years... although this lack of serious discussion may coincide with AOL'ers getting newsgroups access.
... I guess
This weekend, Debian turned 10. To mark the occasion, I've written a retrospective, published at LinuxPlanet. There's also a very nice piece, based in part on my early writings about Debian as well as the retrospective, at internetnews.com."
Today I wrote a comment on Slashdot about the retrospective on Debian on LinuxPlanet.There's also a very nice comment, based in part on my early ideasfrom another slashdot story, it is, as well, retrospective.
All your base are belong to us!
This weekend I celebrated my birthday, and i had a white-frosted carrot cake with a red Debian Swirl on it.
39 candles.
29 for me, 10 for Debian.
w00h00!!
do() || do_not();
and is still only on version 3. Stable as all hell but always a step behind IMO.
It reminded me of many of the reasons I chose Debian as my first Linux distribution (I'm with Red Hat now but that's more a matter of convenience than philosophy)
Debian still stands out as the distro most reflective of the GNU philosophy. Its packaging system is possibly one of the best uses of the GNU development toolchain I've seen, and its division of software between 'free' and 'non-free' in dselect is yet another example that this is the GNU distro.
I must admit, the project seems to be languishing a bit right now in terms of usage; some of this I blame on the lack of availability of the latest unstable packages (Debian seems to be quite conservative as far as this goes, going so far as to use the 2.2 kernel as its default install option). I also wonder whether the success of more commercial distros has to do with the inclusion of non-free software (especially in the form of drivers) and tools that are contrary to the GNU philosphy, yet more in tune with the needs of business users.
Regardless of the fact that I am no longer using Debian, it will always hold a special place in my heart. Thanks for all your hard work.
All my Slash test boxes, including the laptop I'm typing on, run Debian.
Thanks to everyone involved who puts together and maintains the distro. Its package management is top-notch. Excellent work y'all.
Sure, if you want incredibly stable free software, Debian stable is the way to go.
But if you're an average Linux user, forget about trying to get Debian stable to work on any hardware put out in the past year and a half. And also forget about having the features you need for an adequate personal computer experience available in Debian's package management system.
Oh, and forget about getting any help from the Debian community. Especially if you're a Linux newbie, or just someone with a few gaps in their knowledge of Linux. The Debian community is notoriously snob-like, and hates the idea of newbies (aka regular people) using their distribution.
I used Debian for a year, but I just couldn't get it to work to my standards within the package management system.
So... I started using Gentoo. Great community, great package management, very easy to use (once you get past the installation process...), and I can get it to do everything I need with only a few commands... instead of doing vi voodoo on mysterious config files and downloading 3rd party packages just to watch a freakin' movie file.
Debian turned 10. I bet that's their percentage of user retention as well.
Score:-1, Dork ;P
my pet machine
Which of the above packages would have any meaningful use outside of Emacs? What functionality would you lose by not having any of the above? Given that it's an optional package with almost no reverse dependencies, I call your bluff.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Which part of "good job!" in an on-topic post could be considered trollish? Jackasses.
/joeyo
2^5
... is that they still do not manage to make installation take less than 5 hours.
If you know tomsrtbt, a rescue disk made (largely) by one person, one wonders why he alone can make PCMCIA support work out of the box while the 1000s of Debian developers are busy discussing if RFCs belong in main or non-free.
Not that there would be a better distribution than Debian, but tat does not mean there's no room for improvement.
Debian _is_ easy to use.
Just hard to install =)
The FSF doesn't recommend carrot cake, drinking beer, or ironing your underpants either. But it wouldn't be fair to reword that as suggesting they're recommending you don't eat carrot cake, drink beer, or iron your underpants.
In 10 years, couldn't they come up with a better installer? We're talking about a flipping decade here.
oooo
After ten years the installer still sucks.
Parent is a person working at slashdot. Failure to mod parent up will result in an imidiate IP ban. You have been warned. =P
Granted the install is a bit lengthy, but maintaining it is a breeze, and when I was using it it was rock-solid in every way. The only thing it didn't handle too well was when the CPU fan froze up...
There is a reason for everything. Sometimes that reason just sucks.
As per the FSF recommedations, I only use free software
Debians some of are seeming to be beaten by other distros such as redhat severn, gentoo and mandrake. Should debian take a new role in the community. For example its package mangement is being beaten by portage and urpmi, and as the free software community matures overall the edge on stability is going too.
I think debian should have new goals, such as ultra ease of use or superior hardware dectection. Its decendants are easy to use (Libranet, Lindows, Xandros), so why can't debian be?
As debian is concidered to be the official "gnu/linux" by some, I think it should make progress instead of being laughed at by some as the "last years" distro.
Debian still stands out as the distro most reflective of the GNU philosophy.
Actually, that's not true anymore. Things have changed and Debian is not the best example of free software or GNU. Check out GNU/Linex instead.
You'll not see a link to Debian from the FSF/GNU sites for this reason. Debian still distributes non-free software. Yes, you can install Debian without the optional non-free stuff, but they really do encourage installing non-free software on your system easily.
While RMS currently has a machine running Debian (without the non-free bits, I'm sure), he claims that it's because this new all-free distro (GNU/Linex) wasn't available at the time. See this recent RMS interview for more.
+5 Funny? I don't get it.
There a number of reasons why Debian still *is* the superior linux distribution. religion flame war? nope. Just facts.
Asid from Red Hat which is in the business of big honking big Iron servers,
1. Debian is the only other real distrubution that has real server admins relying on it.
2. Developers favor Debian. At first I just found it neat that so many develoers of my favorite apps tended to package for debian, but now it seems that debian is the defactor developer distro. It is stable for developers who want little change or very Unstable ") for those that want the most. I dont think anyother distro seems to based, except again for Red HAt(ie, apps developed only for redhat) Of course, if something is developed for debian only, dont think it can be the case that is is Debian only, I could be wrong but I would liekt o know
3. Community: It is the largest. Bar None. On IRC there might be anywheres of 500 prople logged in. You can count on at least 1-2 people there that will know what you are tallking about. This is a key feature for why I use debian
Sigs are dangerous coy things
It is, however, the tenth anniversary of Ian Murdock's long-winded Debian Manifesto, and promise to rule the world.
Congratutions, Ian! We all knew you'd continue to spin the hyperbole, and you haven't let us down.
2) Debian will contain the most up-to-date of everything.
My how things have changed.
6) Debian will make Linux easier for users who don't have access to the
Internet.
Debian's main strongpoint is apt-get, which would not be so useful for users with no internet access. The beauty of Debian is that you can install it once and update it forever. Seems Debian's original goals and their current strongpoints are quite different.
I like staying away from the current direction that Linux is moving but I don't believe that the rest of the community necessarily believes that's the best way to go.
When people talk about where Linux is going like it's a bus (or bandwagon) I get confused. Who says Debian should be the Linux platform for mainstream commercial apps when MS is overthrown? (If any of that happens; I'm not saying it will.)
Talking about "the Linux community" is like trying to talk about "the Slashdot community"...people try to assign consensus opinions to each group but obviously there is none.
Linux is a kernel, not a movement.
Seriously though...when I started reading Slashdot several years ago, all of the cool people were Debian users (including Taco, right?). I was just a straightforward Red Hat guy myself (still am).
But these days, the same voices which always talked about Debian seem to talk about Gentoo, and more to the point...very few people seem to talk about Debian. Apart from turning 10, what's the last major thing it accomplished? I'm sure many people still use it, but the driving force behind it seems to have died. Now it's main distinguishing feature is being the closest-to-official FSF/GNU distro, if you care about stuff like that.
I know apt is great, and Debian's installer, great, whatever, but really...is it still as big as it was?
Months back, I recall seeing a post that someone wanted to plan ahead and make this a big birthday party but so far the party seems a little lacking. Or is that what the blaster worm was all about?
Dada ended art.
Debian is hands down the most superuser-friendly OS on the market today. It doesn't have the shiny candy-like buttons on the installer (which is more bark than bite - it is intimidating but not difficult) - but when it comes to easy remote administration, knowing that the security patches will be there when you need them, and installing just about every open source app you'll need with near zero effort, Debian is without equal.
I've run servers on 3 or 4 Windowses, half a dozen Linux distros, two BSDs, and two Unices. Debian is far and away the shortest path to productivity.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
20 mil and I will! Learn Esperanto with 20M others.
I recommend that you *not* post on slashdot.
:)
Yeah, let's countertroll
And in honor of the event will be making available their 3rd release. ;)
the only thing keeping debian from being another faceless OS out there is its packaging system and stability record. however, the cost of stability comes at lack of updated software. so you end up downloading the non-stable software anyways, so, what's the point of that? only thing that makes it truly great is the apt-get system. its packaging system is much nicer than RPM.. personally I dislike rpm. it's stingy and sometimes more complicated than it should be.. with debian's system it's like, when you select source, you get the damn source code, you dont get a package that you edit files in then rebuild and then install. personally, if opensource wants to free people from microsoft matrix, they gotta appeal to these users, for some people in opnsource, this is a daunting task becuase they cant go below their level of experience, so what you gotta do is test various systems with certain points that offer the greatest ease.. apt-get would be perfect as the dominant packaging system in most linux distros. an installer much like slackware's would make the almost perfect install (blue linux has a nice easy to understand installer as well) things like that are what are going to make the next revolutionary distro. debian is antiquated in many ways. most people I know get it for either 2 things: to be "elite and cool" or for the packaging system. debian would be nothing without it. seeing an apt-get system replace other packaging systems within major linxu distributions would be a nice change. Also, may I point out that really, in the end, linux is linux, each distribution is just a different profile of packages wrapped around a kernel.
I remember using debian to cut my teeth on linux. I had a pc(win95) that was hooked up to the internet, which I needed to ask questions and download stuff with. My gf's grandmother gave me a 386-33 with 8 megs of ram and a 130 meg hdd. All isa slots, AT keyboard, NO cdrom drive(no ide adapter, some proprietary cable or something), only a 1.44 floppy. So, I had my choice of debian, using a floppy install, or .... well, just debian. I forget what debian version it was, but it was the 2.0.36 or so kernel(97-98 timeframe), and I only had like 3 floppies, so I had to keep shuffling disks from the win95 machine to the 386 to install debian using floppies. I finally got the basic install done, and then went to configure isa ne2000 nics using linux, being a complete newbie. There was this dude on yahoo chats who helped out. But, going from newbie to getting a system such as above running, adding ipfwadm to make the box a router, added samba to make it a pdc, played with everything possible(given the constraints). I was even smb-mounting my win95 disk over the network to get more space(of course the box crashed and I had stale mount points, yech- windows). I have to say that after an experience with that, using the hardest possible configuration possible to get debian up and running, all command line on a 386 when my first pc had 8 gig hdd(like I said, this was 97-98) teaches you more than you can imagine. Hell, I ran this box for something like 13 months before I knew what X or kde(1.0 days). I was like 'Woa! Linux can do this?' I figured it was just command line, no gui at all. I recommend this method to learn linux. It'll put you on the track to knowing more than your instructor at RHCE classes(guilty, #808002685906747).
Do you see the sig? Do you have it in your sights? Why yes, Miss Moneypenny...
If everybody's switching to commercial, polished, ,uniformized versions of Linux, you can BET Debian's not going to thread that road.
Indeed, innovation has been going a bit slow over the last half of the decade, but I put that on the extreme need for Linux to prove itself in high-demand production environments.
Once we're all really accustomed to a really stable development model around Linux and the Debian community (esp. around "core" packages), I really expect someone to come up with some really funky idea, a new approach for Debian to progress beyond its boundaries.
Remember: if someone's going to come up with something really innovative, I'm betting he'll be in the largest group, and Debian's bigger (in many ways) than the largest of private corporations...
Lex
1)
Hell, it's 5 o'clock. It's 5 o'clock somewhere.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
I have been using RedHat for the last 3 years, and am currently using 7.3. This is quite nice for me, and I don't want to upgrade to 9.0 (and every year thereafter) when RH end-of-life's 7.3 at the end of this year. I don't like any company forcing me to upgrade... I think a lot of other people feel the same way. I have looked at Debian (and have it installed on one of my partitions now) but to be honest I am a little disturbed by the lack of good Debian books. There just don't seem to be any really good ones out there, let alone recent editions. The most recent is the Debian/GNU Linux Bible, which is 2001, and gets tepid reviews on Amazon. There are, however, tons of Red Hat books, and I am wondering if this says anything about the longevity of Debian going forward? Surely if the publishers thought there was a market out there, then they would be commissioning new and better books on the subject?
I know all the documentation is "out there" but I've "been there, done that" with regard to rooting out all the distributed sources of documentation which exist on the various topics, and to be honest I don't relish the idea of making my life be "about Debian" for the same amount of time that it took to find out all the little tricks that I now know about my RedHat installation... Switching distributions will never be trivial if you have large pre-existing software packages running. Does anyone have any suggestions for moving away from RedHat, and any reasons why there aren't any good up-to-date books on Debian? I just like having at least one reference on hand - we have good books on Perl, MySQL, Apache, Sendmail - why not Debian as a whole?
Sorry if this seems negative - it's not really, I will in all likelihood be switching come November when my RH Network subscription expires. I can't get over how Red Hat is turning its back on the small users like me who can't afford at the moment to buy Advanced Server licenses, don't want or need support, but just need the errata updates! I mean, I am trying to develop a business here, and if/when I switch to another distro, I won't be coming back. It's just too much hassle (the small details and differences are the ones that kill you, as I'm sure everyone here will agree)... very short sighted on RedHat's part.
Red Hat's attitude reminds me of Netscape's just prior to Microsoft destroying them - Netscape seemed to lose interest in the very people that had made them successful, i.e. the small users out there who used their browser. Netscape thought they could instead focus on the corporate server market, and we all know what happened. I tried calling Red Hat about their policy of "end-of-life" for 7.3 and even 8.0, and all the woman I spoke to would say was that I could always buy the Advance Server edition. I explained that I am in that curious middle-ground position of running serious, production servers and yet not being big enough to be able to afford that, and she basically hung up on me. Unbelievable. If that's their attitude, then to be honest I really do hope that they go out of business.
Suggestions welcomed, and sorry for the rant.
In interest of disclosure: I use RedHat at work and Gentoo at home.
I personally don't have Debian on any computer I am responsible for. That said, I want Debian to exist. I don't want it to "lead"; I want it to be a sort of reference distro for the rest of us. If I see a package in Debian's stable branch I'm pretty confident that it's a reliable version of that application. No other distro, not even RH Enterprise, gets that much trust from me (though RHE comes close).
Debian's slow package release cycle is a feature, not a bug.
All's true that is mistrusted
but ten year old software? sheesh.
*twitch*
ive installed debian, took a couple hours to go through and select everything i wanted and set stuff up right; which was annoying in the very least, and time consuming
god forbid people suggest all linux distros use a simple graphical installer...or one that doesnt suck anyway. bats outta hell those guys. personally, im sticking with mandrake for a while. the installer is simple, and so far everything else is working without a problem, or a reason to try another distro anytime soon.
ive got the debian install disc around for when i get some skills, so i can be l33t and bitch about how pretty and easy linux is getting to be because of "those damned windows users"
seems to me that if its easier to use, more people will use it, which will prompt more/better developement and support for Linux which is a damned good thing, im almost ready to rid my box of windows (and heavily considered doing so when i built it a few months ago)
the sole reason i paid for Windows XP was not the looks; linux can look just as good, and be just as easy to use and just as productive(finally!) i wanted games, and linux cant QUITE offer enough of them up for me, when it can, anandtechs forums will see a For Sale: Windows XP thread started by me :)
By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth. -- George Carlin
"It's the only machine I have with a CDRW on it".
Implies you have other machines. Download using one of them (if they work better), and then transfer it over to the XP box.
what kind of elitest crap is this? so anyone who isn't a debian fanboy can't be a real server admin? you have to run debian or redhat to be counted by this guy, otherwise you don't matter. forget about people (and businesses) running SuSE, Mandrake, Slack, Gentoo or anything else... they're not real distributions. who modded this up?
well then looks like debian it is for you then.=)
download theknoppix iso and burn it to a cd.
insert cd
boot computer
at prompt trpe "knx-hdinstall"
less than 30 min from start to finish on decent hardware.
(might take an hour on a 300MHz with a 4x cdrom and a shitty old hard drive.)
there ya go installing Debian and then trying to get X to run in 1/6 the time.
you should think of working smarter instead of harder methinks.
Collecting data is only the first step toward wisdom. But sharing data is the first step toward community
scroll up a few posts and you will see instructions easy enough for an untrained monkey to have a running debian system using a knoppix live cd.
also some pointers to libranet which i have not used but heard its pretty simple as well.
I know using the knoppix cd is easier than any install of windows short of a "restore cd"
and to be fair...
that is pretty much what the knoppix cd is with the advantage that it works on any (supported by kernel) hardware, not just the hardware that came with that last dell you bought.=)
Collecting data is only the first step toward wisdom. But sharing data is the first step toward community
Good to see it sticking to its original goals, then.
>Not that there would be a better distribution ?than Debian, but tat does not mean there's no room for improvement.
I think Knoppix is showing the way : a live cd distribution based on Debian, easy to install.
A Idea is to create meta packages, which are installing pre-configured set of packages. Then, you can start with a minimal working system and add big amount of packages in one command.
u R teh f4L3y0Re!!!
bee-yotch!!!
10 years is how far behind is Debian compared to other distros.
# apt-get -s remove emacs
Reading Package Lists...
Building Dependency Tree...
Package emacs is not installed, so not removed
0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
# dpkg -l | grep -c ii
551
# apropos troll
fdrawcmd (1) - send raw commands to the floppy disk controller TQ
i82365 (4) - Intel i82365sl PCMCIA controller driver
probe (8) - PCMCIA controller probe
tcic (4) - Databook TCIC-2 PCMCIA controller driver
tty (4) - controlling terminal
#
If opportunity came disguised as temptation, one knock would be enough.
3^2 * 67^1 * 977^1
You can tell by the bloatware jokes.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
I've been running a Debian system which I installed from the knoppix. I don't see how you could get any simpler than the knoppix-install from Fabian Franz in the latest versions. It's true that you can't choose which packages to install. It decompresses 3.2 gigs of os/apps from the one CD. The Knoppix hardware detection is second to none and I had to configure vitually nothing.
I recently did a HDD install of Knoppix and I've also played around with Gentoo and Slackware. Text-based installations aren't a really big deal anymore to me.
I plan on using Debian as my main distro as soon as they release their next version. The latest one doesn't even have GNOME2. Feh.
apt-get is a wonderful utility and is the main reason for my migration to Debian. Just curious however... how does it stack up to Gentoo/Slack/Mandrake in terms of stability?
At the end there, Ian was talking about the future of Debian. I think the creeping, but dramatic, changes in commodity RAM technology are making it possible to run much more powerful systems with less resources. And I believe this will be a huge benefit priomarily to Linux because corporate OS's don't want to work better and faster with fewer hardware resources. That screws up the whole business plan. This is especially true for Apple, but it's also true for Microsoft.
I may be wrong, but my reading of the Midori Linux being packaged with the Chinese made Dragon processor was that it would run the whole OS in RAMDisk. And this same thing is being done among enthusiasts using stripped down LiveCD distros according the Knoppix discussing boards. So, already this is one direction Debian based distros are heading.
With 1GB PC2700 333Mhz RAM already coming close to a hundred dollars and 2BG already below $500 we're looking at a market where RAM is . . . well, it's the new frontier much more so than the next 66Mhz bump up in CPU speed.
But this new frontier is largely being ignored by closed source OS's because it doesn't offer any marketing advantage. In fact, quite the contrary, it poses the possiblity of cheaper or older systems running much more efficiently and potentially eating into future sales.
I think this is a big opportunity for Debian distros because nobody else wants to touch it. And it's not going away any time soon, so there's no rush. It seems to be a real ace up the sleeve.
you iron your underpants ?