Happy 17th Birthday, Debian!

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."

Comments

Thank you

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Ubuntu this and Ubuntu that

[kwabbles]

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

Re:Ubuntu this and Ubuntu that

[Kepesk]

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!

Re:Ubuntu this and Ubuntu that

[Abcd1234]

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.

PS. Debian, seriously, you guys rock.

[Abcd1234]

'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...

Re:Don't knock Ubuntu

[Abcd1234]

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.