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Happy 17th Birthday, Debian!

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the august-is-interesting dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Debian turns 17 today. Yes it has really come a long way from being Murdock's pet project back in 1993 to being the distribution on which the most popular Linux distribution, Ubuntu, is now based."

19 of 225 comments (clear)

  1. Thank you by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Thanks Murdock! This distro is still one of the easiest to maintain over a long period of time.

    1. Re:Thank you by Jurily · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Damn right it is. Debian is the distro you install on your mom's computer when you're moving 2000+ miles and don't want to fly home for tech support.

      Over the course of two years, I've had exactly one problem with that box, and all it needed was a phone call + ssh.

  2. I remember my first Debian... by e065c8515d206cb0e190 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I was coming from Slackware and apt-get seemed magical. Never left the boat since.
    Long life to Debian!

    1. Re:I remember my first Debian... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      True enough! Debian was the best idea around when they started introducing the concept of dependency resolution and meta data. It has been one of my faves ever since.

    2. Re:I remember my first Debian... by hcpxvi · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I was coming from Slackware and apt-get seemed magical.
      I was coming from being an ordinary user on Solaris systems. Installing Debian (from a stack of floppies!) and finding myself logged on as root was magical. I also have stuck with Debian ever since. It's just excellent. A huge cheer for the vast crowd of people who make it possible.

  3. Ubuntu this and Ubuntu that by kwabbles · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's actually kind of sad that most people identify Debian solely as being "that one that Ubuntu's based on".

    --
    Just disrupt the deflector shield with a tachyon burst.
    1. Re:Ubuntu this and Ubuntu that by druke · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Anyone who really feels this way doesn't understand open source.

    2. Re:Ubuntu this and Ubuntu that by e065c8515d206cb0e190 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Is it about understanding Open Source? Or giving credit where credit is due?

      I'm not saying the guys at Ubuntu just sit there and do nothing, but Debian deserves way more than being called "the distro Ubuntu is based on".

    3. Re:Ubuntu this and Ubuntu that by Kepesk · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's actually kind of sad that most people identify Debian solely as being "that one that Ubuntu's based on".

      Not really, I'd say that's a compliment to Debian. To create a basic system solid enough that the most popular Linux distribution is based on it? That rocks!

      --
      Help me fix my brother's injured butt!
    4. Re:Ubuntu this and Ubuntu that by StormReaver · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's actually kind of sad that most people identify Debian solely as being "that one that Ubuntu's based on".

      Why? Debian is incapable of appealing to a mass audience. Ubuntu is a necessary extension that fills that need. Debian is exactly where its developers put it.

    5. Re:Ubuntu this and Ubuntu that by Abcd1234 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Being a Debian user for 15 years I'm sad to see it relegated to being only identified in the mainstream as something that a dumbed-down desktop distro is based on.

      As opposed to what?

      Look, my path to Linux took me through Slackware 15 years ago (wow I don't miss installing Linux from dozens of floppies) through RedHat, and then Debian. And I was happy for a while. Sure, Debian packages are decidedly archaic, but you couldn't ask for a more stable Linux distribution. Everything just seemed to work.

      And then I tried Ubuntu. Suddenly things I just assumed wouldn't work out of the box (basic crap like wireless, USB printers and mass storage devices just working and integrating with the desktop, and god knows what else) just... did. I mean, sure, I could always get Debian there eventually, with enough tinkering. But dear god, Ubuntu did all the tinkering for me! And I got a more modern package set to boot. Not to mention PPAs, which make taking on non-standard repositories dead simple.

      So, because Ubuntu took the rather rough diamond that is Debian and polished it up, it's somehow "dumbed down"? Really?

      Frankly, it seems to me there is a choice: either you run a rough distro that forces the user to roll up their sleeves and get dirty, and then you can feel all smart and superior, or you can make something that actually works for your average user, and lets us power users just fucking get on with it already, and then get labeled "dumbed down". Which is, frankly, pretty fucking stupid, but such is the world of tech geeks who feel its cool to have to manually hack files in /etc in order to get their god damned printer to just print already.

  4. Happy birthday by drunkennewfiemidget · · Score: 4, Insightful

    To the distro I keep crawling back to. I always go off searching for the next great thing, and realise debian was the great thing all along.

    And ubuntu is second rate (at best) compared to debian. Ubuntu's got severe stability problems. debian almost never fails me.

    1. Re:Happy birthday by IrquiM · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Why are you always going off to search for the next great thing if Debian is so good?

      I've dual booted myself, but only to try out different distros (like debian, ubuntu, etc) - I've never been "off to search for the next great thing". If you're happy with what you've got - stick with it. New distros tend to be either specialised in one field, or tweaked beyond useful (read ubuntu). Stick with the good old ones, that you know work, and try to help them instead! :o)

      (Personally, I'm sticking with Slackware)

      --
      This is blinging
    2. Re:Happy birthday by interval1066 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      "Ubuntu's got severe stability problems."

      Such a bald-ass simple statement really requires back up. I've not had ANY stability problems, much less severe. And I've been running this distro since Feisty Fawn. The worst thing about Ubuntu that I've ever experienced is its ridiculous desktop color schemes, and they never seem to get any better, but that's easily changed.

      --
      Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
  5. Happy Birthday, Manifesto! by volkerdi · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Anyone who was actually using Linux in 1993 knows the manifesto came a couple of years before anything else.

  6. Re:apt-get install love by marsu_k · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I really, really wish people would stop comparing Apt and RPM, the actual comparison would be dpkg vs RPM. And just as pretty much nobody uses dpkg directly, the same applies to RPM. People use one of the various frontends (yum, urpmi, what have you). While at one time automatically resolving dependencies was godsend, it's nothing special now.

    (I'm quite impartial to the debate, pacman is where it's at. It would be nice to see an actual apples to apples comparison for a change though)

  7. PS. Debian, seriously, you guys rock. by Abcd1234 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    'course, I just realized my post makes it seem like I think Debian sucks.

    Frankly, Debian kicks ass. For a server, I'd consider nothing else. I've long believed that apt is, hands down, the best package management system ever invented. And Debian has done a truly marvelous job of ensuring that upgrades Just Work... unlike Ubuntu or Redhat, I have never feared doing a full distro update on Debian. Their package quality is simply through the roof (well, minus that pesky sshd bug they introduced ;).

    Heck, I should given Debian a try again. It's been a couple years since I made the leap to Ubuntu, and it may be that Debian unstable could now fill the roll that Ubuntu fills for me today (as a modern desktop distro)... particularly given how incredibly painful Ubuntu in-place upgrades can be. OTOH, I am spoiled by the fact that Ubuntu has the nVidia blob drivers incorporated into their software repo...

  8. Re:Don't knock Ubuntu by Abcd1234 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Simple: geeks like to justify their superiority complex.

    No, really. I started off in the bad old Slackware days, and you couldn't help but feel hardcore when you got your damned printer to work after fiddling with lpd and magic filters. But guess what happens as you get a little older? You stop giving a shit about that stuff. You just want to get on with it, already. Suddenly tweaking and fiddling with config files in /etc doesn't feel hardcore, it feels really fucking boring.

    So while the rest of us pick a distro that just works out of the box, and so is labeled "dumbed down" because we don't have to manually edit config files, the young geeks can go on showing off how awesome they are because they switched to Gentoo and get to fiddle with their compiler flags.

    As an aside, I still think Debian kicks ass. But no one would ever claim its a polished desktop Linux distribution (it can certainly become one with a bit of effort, but I've gotten past enjoying that kind of effort)... for a server, though, it's peerless, IMHO.

  9. Re: Incredibly painful Ubuntu upgrades by TaoPhoenix · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This.

    I just giggled at these comments, where everyone's saying "Ubuntu just works" ... except in upgrades. It's like a fancy haircut from a stylist that just works, except you can't duplicate it the following evening for your date.

    Just updating things like Open Office and Firefox caused dependency clashes - sorry, that's totally unacceptable. I met my share of the version upgrade bugs too.

    --
    My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine