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Happy Birthday, Debian!
An anonymous reader writes with word that as of today, the Debian project — one of the first distros, and still going strong, not to mention parent or grandparent of many other distros — is 19 years old. "Quoting from the official project history: 'The Debian Project was officially founded by Ian Murdock on August 16th, 1993. At that time, the whole concept of a 'distribution' of Linux was new. Ian intended Debian to be a distribution which would be made openly, in the spirit of Linux and GNU.' Send an appreciation message: http://thanks.debian.net/."
That's some pretty good stuff.
I got my Raspbery Pi yesterday.
Salute Debian!
FP!
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
I suppose that it's long past time that I installed Debian. I've fought through Gentoo army of config files, gone through RPM hell with Red Hat and Mandrake, hacked at the jungle thicket of Fedora and swam in the cool waters of Arch. I've tried two Debian-based distributions, but never install Debian. Does it offer any real advantage over Arch?
There were others before it: RedHat, Slackware, etc. But I remember when I first tried to install some packages after initially installing it.
I had been used to RedHat, where you'd try to install a package, it would complain about dependencies, and then you'd have to surf the web for someone who had an RPM for that dependency... hopefully a suitable version. FTP it. Try to install that. Of course, that would fail because it, too, had unmet dependencies. So, you'd write down all the stuff that needed and start searching for those... and their dependencies.
When it was all over, you had blown about 3-4 hours and you had about 2 pages of scribbled notes of package names, indented by their order of dependence, crossed out as you installed them.
I think I heard angels singing when I first tried to install something with Debian. It found all of the dependencies (recursing through the entire dependency tree), told me that it was going to go download them all in one shot, and then *did* it. I have not (voluntarily) used anything other than Debian/Ubuntu since.
This kind of package management is taken for granted today, just like so many features in the first iPhone are considered standard on any smartphone. We forget how all of the stuff before it now looks like the stone age.
Debian, we all owe a huge debt to your parents for conceiving you.
but when I do, I prefer Ubuntu.
I switched to debian recently from xubuntu.
(Currently with 64bit squeeze)
The only issue I have is with the binary firmware festidiousness. I understand it is debian and that they are sticklers for RMH's version of "free", but would giving me the option to load closed firmware blobs for my wifi card from a USB stick during install be such a terrible thing?
It didn't stop me from loading the non-free packages I needed after install or anything, it was just a little irritating to have to use another PC to pull the required .deb files before I could get in contact with the repository servers.
All in all though, I am quite happy with it on my i7 so far.
RedHat wasn't released until November 1994, almost a year *after* Debian.
Wrong. Among all the linux distributions, only Slackware is older than Debian, just a couple of months.
less than two years after the (very buggy and poorly maintained) SLS is still *new*.
and it's still around. SLS soon was thrown on the scrap heap.
It would be nice if some of these distributions that are basically identical would merge together. Linux would likely be less confusing to Windows users if they didn't look and see 50 different versions of it.
Could http://xkcd.com/927/ apply to this as well?
kers at the wrong moment What happens when you catch stock tic
Why did you abandon Ubuntu?
For the archs that both support, I don't see any advantage Debian has over Ubuntu.
Yes, Debian stable is extremely stable. But it is only supported for three years or so, and the packages in it come already obsolete. For both of these reasons, you are forced to upgrade to a new Debian version within months after its release.
Ubuntu LTS, on the other hand, comes with updated packages and is supported for 5 years. For both these reasons, you can easily wait for the second point release (9 months after the LTS release) before you upgrade; it will be rock solid and be supported by 4 years and 3 months.
Read the title too
which is totally what she said
Or slightly more abstractly, http://xkcd.com/1095/
No sooner would two distros merge than reasons would be found to fork them back into two, or more.
It's a blessing and a curse.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Yet another one here.
Another problem is that these were the ages of under 1GB hard drives you always had to clean up. With RPM you ended up installing all libraries imaginable, just so you don't have to search for packages online. That cost a lot in hard drive space.
May Peace Prevail On Earth
Regular users don't see 50 versions of it, they only see Ubuntu. Mint, if they look closely.
May Peace Prevail On Earth
There was also Yggrasil Linux, started in 1992, but it is not alive any more.
Yggdrasil. Use the Norse Luke!
In 1998 my mother bought me a 'Linux' book with Red Hat 5.2 attached. Being a geek I installed it and loved it. I dabbled with upgrading it and using the Ximian beta Gnome 2. It always felt clunky though.
Then I discovered Debian. Not only did it have an AWESOME package manager, but it taught me about free software. It showed me that people can collaborate across the globe to make an integrated, high quality operating system for free. Around this time, I was finding my place in the world and I honestly think the spirit of Debian helped me discover Humanism and a concept of greater, moral good.
To this day I am in awe of this effort. Looking across its entire collection, the social structure and the individual elements (kernel, GNU toolchain, X, OpenSSH etc) I think free software is one of humanities greatest achievements. Whether you use it or not, take reflection in how awesome this completely free project is and how much it's brought us.
Thanks Debian!
Now there's one hoopy frood who really knows where his towel is!
I cannot explain it, just feels that way.
RPM hell
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
I see no problem with some corporation being associated with the project. If there are reasonable rules, and if the project has a reasonably open governance, corporate help is welcome.
not meaning this to be inflammatory but I once installed debian on a computer to give it away, I put a good looking lxde desktop and quite some software (gimp, inkscape, audacity etc.). it was fast and good (a pentium 3 tower with 512MB ram).
only, the guy who took it just couldn't use his usb wifi adapter to pick up a network. I had installed wicd and a generic firmware collection (a package found with apt-cache search, but with little description of what these firmware were). sadly I didn't have the wifi installer during installation. the fact is, with firmware policy the user is fucked when linux guru and concerned hardware aren't in the same place.
so, I'm stuck with ubuntu or mint if installing a computer that I don't manage. ubuntu has the same text mode installer, which allows a similar bare installation with no desktop and then apt-getting the desktop and software is the same (all package names identical). debian has in-place upgrade and the conservative choice of software in stable is not too bad. it would be perfect if we had "apt-get install notcrippledbecauseoffirmware"!
1993 is currently 19 years ago.
Goodnight from Old Guy News Tonight!
Ian, thank you for starting such an excellent distribution.
Sorry it didn't work out with Deb.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Surely this is the year of the linux desktop?
Happy to Share my birthday with my favorite distro. lenny on my dockstar. Mint on several other machines.
Hmm. I find the packaging system in Debian to be frustratingly parochial. It works fine as long as you allow packages to be installed in default locations. It tends to fail badly at package relocation, something that Sun, SGI, and others got right long ago, and which RPM generally does very well also.
The problem isn't that Debian is basically a PC operating system that you can hack on. That's a worthy thing to be. The problem is people who try to use Debian in the enterprise, or for research or software development or embedded systems where software has to be installed in a multiplicity of ways. And those are exactly the areas that I work in.
I'm becoming convinced that the Debian packaging system was written by squirrels. The inconsistency of configuration and the splendid variety of side effects reminds me of buried nuts. How else do you explain that there are half a dozen packaging frameworks that all try to make the native packager more usable?
Parity: What to do when the weekend comes.
Since it is open source, we can always fork it. And normally the fear of forks will stop the corporation from acting too badly - doing evil to open source software does not pay.
In the case of Canonical, we have an additional assurance: it is a private company, which does not have a fiduciary duty to maximize profits. It was founded by Mark Shuttleworth, who is a nice guy and was a Debian Developer.
In the case of Ubuntu, the "evil" was selecting Unity as default. However, Xfce, LXDE, KDE and others are still available, and they are working on GNOBuntu (with the full Gnome, including the Gnome Shell). Despite the hate you see on Slashdot, Ubuntu is still the number 1 distribution - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_(operating_system)#Installed_base.
And, personally, I use Unity and like it just fine.
Even though I appreciate the effort that Debian has put forth and I'm a large Debian fan, for some reason their marketing machine (or their ads) requested the location of my device which I refuse for any random website.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
I'm seriously considering switching from Fedora to Debian because after all these years yum is still so absolutely embarassingly slow. Yes, I've installed presto and fastest-mirror, I've even manually specified mirrors. Short of building your own local repo and rsync'ing it regularly, you will never get a good yum experience, whereas apt is screaming fast right out of the box. And with Fedora continuing to stuff things like systemd and NetworkManager down my throat, I'm at my wits end.
Someone talk me down or push me off the ledge I'm ok either way.
Many happy returns, Debian!
The great thing about them is their willingness to port to all architectures - they are the sole surviving distro still supporting Itanium. The other great thing about them is that unlike the FSF, they are not fanatics - on one hand, they have a kFreeBSD project on, and on the other, a HURD project.
I do hope they get to a point soon where they offer their users a choice of Linux/kFreeBSD/Hurd, and in the long term, that they can mix and match GCC OR LLVM/Clang w/ any of these platforms. On HURD, they should consider forking Minux 3.0 and using that (instead of GNU Mach 3.0) as the preferred microkernel. My other wish list item from them is getting Wayland working w/ all 3 of these. And also, like KDE, having a project that starts all sorts of apps that they maintain.
Oh, and also optionally incorporate some of the Ubuntu improvements back into the Debian mainline, so that people can't say that Ubuntu is a lot more usable than Debian.
Are you being humours with the "con" (ironical? ;-)) or can't you spell canonical?
:-P Apparently it's that I can't spell Canonical.
Do you know what the word means? If not, it's particularly ironic given the content of your post.
"Canonical is the adjective for canon, literally a 'rule', and has come to mean also 'standard', 'typical', or 'unique distinguished exemplar'." - Wikipedia
Haha! Nice -- thanks for pointing out that irony. Sort of fitting. :-P
What are you talking about? Half a dozen packaging frameworks?
Here's how it works: there is the low-level package manger dpkg, which handles the installation of a package. Automatic dependency resolution is provided by libapt-pkg. That's it. That's the packaging system and framework.
Perhaps what confused you was the number of front-end tools built against libapt-pkg. Those are not frameworks; those are applications, and merely give you a choice of your favourite front-end.
Mart
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
It would be nice if there were some choice among distributions, some larger ones should split apart. Linux would likely be better for all users if distros like Ubuntu let you toss the annoying parts of it -- oh, wait.
If they'd all just use Debian, and drop the rest there wouldn't be an issue.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
Yay, same here! I was thinking back to it (fondly?) just the other day, in fact. Remembering getting X up and running, awwwwwwwww..... the memories! Debian has been my work horse since, except for a bit of Red Hat (5.0 -> 5.2 I think). Gotta love the swirl, Debian that is!
Well, let's see. There's dpkg-buildpackage. There's debuild. There's the debhelper suite. There's pbuilder. A couple of weeks ago, I ran across a fairly sophisticated Debian packager based on autoconf, but it was a huge hassle to set up.
These things all have partially-overlapping capabilities. They all pass configurations around in strange and inconsistent ways. Some use command args. Some use environment variables. Some check for the presence of certain files that may, or not, exist as a side effect of something else. Some rely on makefiles. Some invoke each other. Some only partially invoke each other but bypass certain steps.
Parity: What to do when the weekend comes.
Actually, no. They'll see a whole bunch of them - Red Hat/Fedora, SUSE, and a few others. And depending on where they are looking - like if they buy a book or magazine on Linux, chances are they'll get a CD or DVD that has any of the other random distros - PCLinuxOS, Mageia, Zorin, Vector, Tiny Core, Mandriva, et al. If someone gives it to them, who knows what else they'll get.
Problem is that for many of those for whom this may be the first user experience, they may not like it when they install that distro on a PC, and run into problems w/ something or the other not working - be it the Wi Fi, the sound or anything else. Those who are more adventurous may try some more distros they can get their hands on, but most people, after a couple of unsuccessful attempts, would give up. Which is why there ought to be some sort of consolidation of distros - 1 is too few, but 100 is too many. Maybe the base distros, like Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, Arch, Gentoo, Slackware, TinyCore and a few others. Beyond that, anything would strictly fall under those umbrellas.
The situation is somewhat better w/ BSD - FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD. Any of the others, like DragonFly, PC-BSD, Bitrig, GhostBSD, et al more often than not fall under one of these (although DragonFly admittedly has become quite independent over time).
But yeah, a bit more organization into the way these distros are classified and managed would go a long way into alleviating the confusion.
It can be used on servers, desktops and small systems like the Raspberry Pi.
It can be bleeding edge with its unstable and experimental repositories.
It can be rock solid with the stable repository.
It comes with a non-free repository just in case you need proprietary firmware or drivers.
But wait, Debian is also a good choice if you're like RMS and want to fully embrace freedom:
It doesn't install anything non-free unless you explicitely allow it (since version 6.0).
Debian is one of the most versatile operating systems.
Ah, you meant frameworks for creating packages.
Unclear communication does not help your point.
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
Condescension doesn't help yours.
Strange as it may seem to you, we're not all idiot consumers here on Slashdot. A reasonable operating assumption, and a courteous one, is that in our postings about software systems we're not offering a narrow viewpoint about one narrow aspect of the system but looking at it as a whole, from the perspective of a producer. That your own viewpoint may not reach to this level is no reason to project the same onto others.
Just try to be nice. Looking at your other postings, I gather that you're not very good at that, but there's no reason that you can't be. It just takes practice.
Parity: What to do when the weekend comes.
Actually, no. They'll see a whole bunch of them - Red Hat/Fedora, SUSE, and a few others. And depending on where they are looking - like if they buy a book or magazine on Linux, chances are they'll get a CD or DVD that has any of the other random distros - PCLinuxOS, Mageia, Zorin, Vector, Tiny Core, Mandriva, et al. If someone gives it to them, who knows what else they'll get.
I know a lot of people who use Linux -- friends, colleagues, -- and I don't see a zoo of distros you are describing. The regular users (users-users), use Ubuntu, the more programming oriented people use Debian. I use Mint (only because I got tired of Unity crap), but I had to go an extra mile to learn about it.
I mean, I consider myself to be a Linux Enthusiast and I haven't heard of the half of the distros you listed there.
The situation is somewhat better w/ BSD - FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD. Any of the others, like DragonFly, PC-BSD, Bitrig, GhostBSD, et al more often than not fall under one of these (although DragonFly admittedly has become quite independent over time).
Did this help FreeBSD gain popularity?
Competition is a good thing, even for free products. Damn, especially for free products, because a) you can only compete on quality b) you don't have to be afraid to try something new.
May Peace Prevail On Earth
Happy Birthday!
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
What is the problem with Canonical?
Slashdotters did not like Unity, but Ubuntu still has XFCE, LXDE, KDE and other options. They are now working on GNOBuntu, a full Gnome (with the Gnome Shell and everything) flavor of Gnome.
And I like Unity just fine. Ubuntu is still the number 1 distribution*, which suggests that the Ubuntu-hatred is a Slashdot thing.
* See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_(operating_system)#Installed_base
the only thing I think is missing is a simple graphical installer
Arch is supposed to be like slackware (vanilla packages, KISS principle) but with rolling updates. The installation just isn't that big of a deal, because the target user already has a plan and knows how to get there. A graphical installer would be a solution looking for a problem. Like slackware and gentoo, arch is intended for people who prefer to be "on their own".
Imagine how ridiculous it would be to complete a fancy, inspiring, totally graphical installation only to be dumped at the command prompt on your first boot. D'oh!
Generally the distributions with graphical installers also set up X and your choice of desktop environment, and this was what I had in mind when I made the comment. [Gentoo is a notable exception here: the Gentoo LiveCD has a graphical installer, which after using leaves you with a text-console-only installation. :-P] In terms of Slackware, today I'd likely choose Vector Linux (which is based on Slackware) rather than Slackware, for the graphical installer and more importantly due to the package manager that includes an online repository, which Slackware lacks by default. It was Slackware's lack of abillity to keep the distribution up-to-date via package managment that forced me to give it up sometime between 1999 and 2000, whereby I went to Debian. [And other than Debian's internal politics, I've been happy since. ;-)]
A graphical installer (and setting up Xorg and a desktop envioronment) makes a distribution more accessible -- it greatly reduces the time it takes to get a distribution up and running. It seems Arch had some kind of automated installer at one time, but that seems to have been abandoned since. I don't think a lack of a graphical installer is as much of a design choice rather than something avoided due to the situations the graphical installer might not be able to handle at first.
As for gentoo, of course it has "insane long compiles" -- that is the main design feature. It is supposed to be a meta-distribution where you essentially create your own custom distro yourself. This is a totally different paradigm from any other distro.
I agree.
In conclusion, arch, slack, and gentoo are not typical consumer-oriented distros. Sure you can turn any one of them into a slick desktop, but they make no assumption about that. They just give you the tools, and you build the house yourself. If you like the idea of a clean, simple distro without the "bullshit", I would suggest debian.
Heh. Yes, although you're preeching to the choir -- I've been running Debian for both desktop and servers for 13 years. ;-) This is one one of the reasons I did the "free software survey", because it's been too long since I've run anything but Debian.
It has to have been somewhere closer to fifteen years, giving my kids age, I was sitting at my porch, swearing and wishing this "Linux-thing" all the... actually everything I could come up with. Why couldn't it be as "intuitive" as 98SE? Man, was I clueless. But it sure was an uphill struggle. There was a time when I actually considered "installing Debian" as my hobby. Seriously, about two or three times a week, for months, just to get the basics absolutely right. Sigh...
I had a p133 laptop and used the floppy-install. Over and over. Nuff said. The thing is, it worked... eventually.
I still have the old laptop around somewhere, not powered up for years though, but I reckon it could... never mind it could work as reliable and safe as a Win-box, that's not relevant... just knowing it could boot up and give me access to those files from the last century is enough.
The reason I started writing this was, I saw the article while I was about to update my system and a lot of stuff popped up. From all those updates that just generally broke stuff to my special dread... the NVIDIA-updates. It is possible that it was just a couple of months in the late nineties, or possibly a little later, but it still sends shivers down my spine. Having installed Debian on the desktop computer, yeah, my wife and kids only way of getting on line, with all my speeches about how much better, secure and all around... right... Linux and GNU was, Just out of Windows, it was really though being sent out to a shell with no GUI whatsoever. None. I really appreciated the guy in Scotland trying to make the driver work, although, had anyone asked me when another update just had screwed up "everything", I would probably not expressed it that way in the moment, though. :-) Now, some ten-, fifteen years later, even a kernel update is just... nothing major. Just click and confirm, without the nagging feeling that something might break.
I'm using a derivative, Lubuntu, on my netbook right now, but as always, since before the millennium, keeping Debian on my server .
Thanks for a throughly solid distro.
I really mean it.
Thanks.
(Second language, spell check by Abi-word.)
Then practice what you preach, and graciously admit you weren't clear.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
Why should I be nice to someone who starts out as a condescending prick?
I've given you enough credit as it is. I do have little time for idiots, but as you may notice, both my previous posts in this thread were anything but antagonistic. One was based on a misunderstanding, one was a simple statement of perceived fact.
So stop whining and be a sodding adult, will you?
Mart
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?