Debian Turns 20

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Posted by Soulskill on Friday August 16, 2013 @05:43AM from the and-many-more dept.

New submitter stderr_dk writes "According to Wikipedia, the initial release of Debian happened 16 August 1993. In other words, it's Debian's birthday and you're all invited. 'During the Debian Birthday, the Debian conference will open its doors to anyone interested in finding out more about Debian and Free Software, inviting enthusiasts, users, and developers to a half day of talks relating to Free Software, the Debian Project, and the Debian operating system.' Over the years, Debian has been forked a number of times. Some of the more well-known forks are Ubuntu and Knoppix. The latest release of Debian pure blend was Debian 7.1 'Wheezy' on June 15th 2013."

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THANKS!!! by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-16 05:47 · Score: 5, Insightful

Thanks to Debian devs, community, and everyone else involved.
1. Re:THANKS!!! by Zaiff+Urgulbunger · 2013-08-16 08:03 · Score: 1
  
  Hear, hear!
2. Re:THANKS!!! by unixisc · 2013-08-16 08:50 · Score: 5, Insightful
  Two things I'd like to really appreciate Debian doing:
  
  1.)Supporting as many hardware platforms as they could, and not yanking support simply b'cos it's going nowhere. I'm looking at you, Itanic!
  2.)Being platform agnostic as well - coming out with distros of FBSD and HURD
  I really hope that Debian's non-Linux platforms fully develop and mature. Also, I'd toast Debian for being prudent and offering unliberated software separately, in defiance of the FSF jihadis. While on that topic, Debian also should be commended for joining OSI and embracing Open Source as well as their own FSG.
3. Re:THANKS!!! by lvxferre · 2013-08-16 12:49 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  Also, I'd toast Debian for being prudent and offering unliberated software separately, in defiance of the FSF jihadis.
  
  Agreed. Debian plays as "the last sane man" [okay, distro] regarding that: they realize that open source is freer than closed source, but closed source is still freer than no program; installing by default only free but allowing the users [if they wish to do so] install non-free is the least restrictive thing they could do.
  Happy birthday, Debian!
  
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4. Re:THANKS!!! by JayRott · 2013-08-16 17:11 · Score: 1
  
  Oh, to have mod points! Honorary +1
5. Re:THANKS!!! by unixisc · 2013-08-16 18:56 · Score: 1
  
  I forgot to add - they should consider doing a Minix 3 port as well, and have it there on all ARMs, as well as x86s
6. Re:THANKS!!! by ajdlinux · 2013-08-17 02:01 · Score: 1
  
  While on that topic, Debian also should be commended for joining OSI and embracing Open Source as well as their own FSG.
  Well, the OSI's Open Source Definition was actually based off the DFSG, just with the Debian-specific references removed.
Happy Birthday Debian! by monzie · 2013-08-16 05:49 · Score: 5, Informative

.. and to all the contributors - Thank you for creating this awesome distribution!
My Usual Pick by MightyMartian · 2013-08-16 05:51 · Score: 1

I started out with Slackware, but package management proved a bit of a headache. Redhat was next, but I confess I never gave it much of a chance. I went to Ubuntu, but had some real problems, particularly with some Apache 2. At that point I said "f--- it" and went to Debian, around version 5. I tried out Centos, figuring I should give the Redhat ecosystem a try again, and while it's a pretty good, somehow I like Debian the best, and returned to Wheezy for my new KVM servers.

--
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
1. Re:My Usual Pick by Pop69 · 2013-08-16 08:38 · Score: 1
  
  They'd be correct !
Is it really? by geek · 2013-08-16 05:57 · Score: 3, Informative

I'm not so sure. The Debian group "formed" for lack of a better work on 8/16/93 but they didnt release anything til almost 1995. So the group might be 20 years old but the distro itself maybe not.
1. Re:Is it really? by some+old+guy · 2013-08-16 06:04 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Dude, it's a party...lose the buzzkill. :)
  
  --
  Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
2. Re:Is it really? by KiloByte · 2013-08-16 06:38 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Hmm... sounds like a good reason to party twice, then. And I'm at the DebConf at the moment...
  
  --
  The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
3. Re:Is it really? by rubycodez · 2013-08-16 06:41 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  wrong, 0.01 was released August 1993 and was usable
  in fact, if you are referring to the 1.0 release in 1995 that had the bad CD with wrong stuff on it
4. Re:Is it really? by jones_supa · 2013-08-16 06:49 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Correct. Here's the full background story of the CD incident for anyone who's interested:
  Debian 1.0 was never released: InfoMagic, a CD vendor, accidentally shipped a development release of Debian and entitled it 1.0. On December 11th 1995, Debian and InfoMagic jointly announced that this release was screwed. Bruce Perens explains that the data placed on the "InfoMagic Linux Developer's Resource 5-CD Set November 1995" as "Debian 1.0" is not the Debian 1.0 release, but an early development version which is only partially in the ELF format, will probably not boot or run correctly, and does not represent the quality of a released Debian system. To prevent confusion between the premature CD version and the actual Debian release, the Debian Project has renamed its next release to "Debian 1.1". The premature Debian 1.0 on CD is deprecated and should not be used. [1]
5. Re:Is it really? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-16 07:40 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  Until they got their own distro working they had to use another one. They chose Gentoo, so it took a year to compile.
6. Re:Is it really? by K.+S.+Kyosuke · 2013-08-16 09:24 · Score: 1
  
  The Debian group "formed" for lack of a better work on 8/16/93 but they didnt release anything til almost 1995.
  Whereas you started acing the grade school homewerks the day you were born.
  
  --
  Ezekiel 23:20
7. Re:Is it really? by rubycodez · 2013-08-16 10:02 · Score: 2
  
  funny, at work the clamav has caught java jar vulnerabilities and malware our superior proprietary tools missed, and it isn't yet at 1.0
8. Re:Is it really? by rubycodez · 2013-08-16 10:03 · Score: 1
  
  (note: use of "superior" above is totally sarcastic)
9. Re:Is it really? by swillden · 2013-08-16 13:43 · Score: 1
  
  I thought 1.0 versions of anything were never released, firstly because they usually suck and secondly because it looks better form a marketing perspective to start around 3 or 4.
  In the open source world, historically the problem has been the opposite. Many packages have version 0.1, 0.5, 0.6, 0.8, 0.9, 0.91, 0.92... and so on. There's a reluctance to apply the "1.0" label because that means you have something that's really "done" in some sense.
  
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10. Re:Is it really? by Windowser · 2013-08-16 18:11 · Score: 1
  
  while moderating you as funny, hit overrated by mistake. this comment is undoing it.
  why is the only solution to this problem equals to cancelling every mods done in this discussion ?
  
  --
  Avoid the MS tax, always buy I.B.M. PC's (I Built-it Myself)
11. Re:Is it really? by znrt · 2013-08-16 19:42 · Score: 1
  
  Many packages have version 0.1, 0.5, 0.6, 0.8, 0.9, 0.91, 0.92... and so on. There's a reluctance to apply the "1.0" label because that means you have something that's really "done" in some sense.
  that's just because open source folks usually don't have the need to lie about that ... as opposed to marketeers.
  but how exactly are minor version numbers an "historical problem"? i understand somebody might see this reluctance as excessively conservative, but i always thought the real problem was with x.0 big fanfare versions where the meaning of "really done" is just bullshit, and people buying into it like crazy just for the nice new version number and the shiny package and stuff.
  then of course we also have the chronical beta disorder ...
12. Re:Is it really? by znrt · 2013-08-16 20:22 · Score: 1
  
  while moderating you as funny, hit overrated by mistake. this comment is undoing it.
  it's still funny even if it didn't get your mod points.
  
  why is the only solution to this problem equals to cancelling every mods done in this discussion ?
  moderation is highly overrated. one easy solution is to ignore it altogether and read at -1. works for me.
It was 20 years ago today... by TeknoHog · 2013-08-16 06:03 · Score: 1, Funny

Aww, fsck it, not this meme again...

--
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
One of the best by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-16 06:06 · Score: 5, Insightful

Debian is probably the most consistent among all Linux distributions. I love the community spirit and non-commercial nature of Debian. Rock solid and stable and of course truly free "as in freedom".
And with the goal of being the "universal operating system" which recently come true with becoming the official OS on the International Space Station, I look forward to the next 20 years of Debian awesomeness and galactic domination!
1. Re: One of the best by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-16 06:18 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  Not necessarily. You can always use Debian "Testing" or even the "Unstable" repositories for the latest-and-greatest software, and it's very stable too despite the name.
  However, I do hope that Debian stable gets a faster release cycle someday. A yearly release would rock! Until then, Testing and Unstable are your friends for a great Linux desktop.
2. Re:One of the best by rubycodez · 2013-08-16 06:42 · Score: 1
  
  stability and massive amounts of testing are valued on production servers. if you're running latest bleeding edge releases of either kernel or langauge or major server packages you *will* have problems
3. Re: One of the best by beefoot · 2013-08-16 07:00 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  It is called stable for a reason. For server environment, stable works really well. Hell no way I would want to upgrade my server every year. Every 3 years --- maybe. Ideally would be every 5 years. As you pointed out, if you want newer stuffs, go with testing or unstable. They are called testing / unstable for a reason. Ubuntu's release schedule drives me nuts.
4. Re: One of the best by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-16 07:11 · Score: 1
  
  Not to mention backports, which allow you to install on stable newer versions of packages from testing which have been specially prepared and tested for stable (ie which handle any differences in behaviour between stable and testing).
5. Re:One of the best by Chris+Mattern · 2013-08-16 08:24 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Yeah, consistently out of date.
  Because God knows, you don't want to miss Ubuntu's next exciting innovation.
6. Re:One of the best by rubycodez · 2013-08-16 10:00 · Score: 2
  
  said the anonymous coward. Meanwhile, I really do admin over 400 production servers of various distros (and a little Unix and windows too), some run by groups with Ubuntu server and I have indeed seen the folly of using that bleeding edge distro
7. Re:One of the best by UltraZelda64 · 2013-08-16 10:39 · Score: 1
  
  Which one, Mir? Or its new package management system?
8. Re: One of the best by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-16 12:32 · Score: 1
  
  Unfortunately Ubuntu appears to have been pushing Debian towards faster releases. The frequency of release has increased and the number of bugs in stable has increased.
9. Re: One of the best by Raenex · 2013-08-16 16:52 · Score: 1
  
  Hell no way I would want to upgrade my server every year. Every 3 years --- maybe. Ideally would be every 5 years.
  This attitude is why tech companies ossify.
10. Re:One of the best by rubycodez · 2013-08-19 03:16 · Score: 1
  
  your sample size is of systems too simple, is all. you are not dealing with large complex systems
  Of course there are monsterous java ee issues going from 1.5 to .6 to .7 on any large scale enterprise project, I deal with TC Server and Websphere at work. most of the time one cannot simply change JVM. Java is not backward compatible, and the list of issues is of course readily available online.
  Your Rails as example is very funny to me, being an avid Rubyist (see handle). Of course Ruby 1.8, 1.9 and 2.0 have huge differences, only extremely simple code would run unchanged.
  serious systems can't follow the bleeding edge, things break. This is why, for example, the latest Websphere 8.5 still runs java 1.6 with option to run 1.7 with certain caveats.
11. Re:One of the best by rubycodez · 2013-08-19 09:27 · Score: 1
  
  no, stable versions of good distros have regular bug fixes for their packages
A true Debian fan here by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-16 06:06 · Score: 2

I use a lot of Debian's work for everyday use from Linux Mint on my laptop, to Debian on an x86 server, to Raspbian on a RPI. It's really nice stuff, simple, classic, yet amazingly powerful. Congrats Debian!
-- stoops
Re:Have they fixed their "Firefox" problem yet? by geek · 2013-08-16 06:12 · Score: 2, Insightful

For Debian, ideology trumps usability. It's why Ubuntu exists.
Why so serious? by intermodal · 2013-08-16 06:18 · Score: 2

It's a time to celebrate, not to have what sounds like a fairly businessy and serious event. This is like celebrating the Fourth of July by bombing Britain.

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1. Re:Why so serious? by Eunuchswear · 2013-08-16 06:34 · Score: 2
  
  It's a time to celebrate, not to have what sounds like a fairly businessy and serious event. This is like celebrating the Fourth of July by bombing Britain.
  Soundls like a plan to me.
  Go for it!
  
  --
  Watch this Heartland Institute video
2. Re:Why so serious? by Hognoxious · 2013-08-16 08:14 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Go ahead, lardy-boy. Given your awesome talent for geography you'd probably hit Bahrain, Bhutan or Belgium anyway.
  Hang on, I'm in Be . .. .Â£$@* & no carrier
  
  --
  Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
most memorable and significant fork by CAIMLAS · 2013-08-16 06:25 · Score: 3, Informative

One of the most memorable forks of Debian was Stormix (not mentioned on WP): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stormix
For those who don't remember, or weren't there: it was a very nicely cleaned up Debian installer with additional driver support and simplified configuration. It ran very well on a wide range of systems and was way, way ahead of pretty much everything else with respect to software installation and system configuration.
The Stormix company, when it failed, became Progeny, if I recall correctly. Progeny was a greatly used add-on repository for Debian which eventually had a lot of the functionality added into the core of Debian.
Without Stormix, later efforts like Knoppix and Ubuntu would not have been possible.

--
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
1. Re:most memorable and significant fork by Rinikusu · 2013-08-16 09:40 · Score: 2
  
  Stormix was one of the few boxed Linux sets I bothered to purchase, simply to help support the company and its efforts. I never used it (redhat & beos user at the time), but I liked where it was headed and definitely appreciated Knoppix when it came out. For similar reasons I picked up OpenBSD and FreeBSD CDs from walnut creek? because it's good to have options and it was an easy way for me to help "support" stuff like this.
  Linux Mint is my distro of choice at the moment. Long live debian!
  (and one day, I will have a slack machine)
  
  --
  If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
2. Re:most memorable and significant fork by swillden · 2013-08-16 13:49 · Score: 1
  
  But you mentioning Knoppix... Didn't they get the whole running a distro from a CD only into the big time?
  Yep, LiveCD operation was Knoppix' raison d'etre. It was an awesome system repair tool back in the day. System borked? Boot from your trusty Knoppix CD (later, USB stick), mount the drive and fix it. A few years later I switched to Damn Small Linux for that purpose instead, but still kept a Knoppix CD around.
  
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3. Re:most memorable and significant fork by unixisc · 2013-08-16 19:11 · Score: 1
  
  I tried Stormix. It was a neat distro, like Corel Linux. Like every other distro I tried at that time & gave up on - Caldera, TurboLinux, Mandrake, Corel, et al, it had a major problem - failed to recognize my NIC, which was embedded in the motherboard. And these were standard Realtek ones.
  Of course, that's different today, but after trying several of them, I gave up on Linux at the time.
4. Re:most memorable and significant fork by CAIMLAS · 2013-08-19 04:34 · Score: 1
  
  Um, 'standard Realtek ones'?
  The rtl8139 NIC has long been a 'standard' NIC for me - I'd buy 5 at $10 each. it's the same chipset put on motherboards since forever, I believe (and now they often have the rtl8169 or similar). They have always worked well for general Linux purposes. I don't remember having a problem with them back then, though I do remember using a lot of 3com 10/100 cards around that time, too so I may be mistaken.
  
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  ~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Re:Have they fixed their "Firefox" problem yet? by sqrt(2) · 2013-08-16 06:26 · Score: 4, Insightful

It's too bad Ubuntu went full retard back when they released Unity, and then just threw the oars out of the boat entirely with the Amazon spyware fiasco. Thankfully there's still sane derivative distros like Xubuntu and Mint that can leverage the useful work Canonical is doing.

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Re:Have they fixed their "Firefox" problem yet? by gl4ss · 2013-08-16 06:28 · Score: 5, Insightful

maybe complain to firefox about their branding/copyright/licensing?

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world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Re:Have they fixed their "Firefox" problem yet? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-16 06:32 · Score: 1

Iceweasel is Firefox... the difference is the branding because Mozilla insisted they not use the non-freely licensed images or name.
Re:Have they fixed their "Firefox" problem yet? by rubycodez · 2013-08-16 06:35 · Score: 4, Insightful

just download the latest tarball from mozilla and unpack it into a directory like /local or /opt, then run firefox/firefox on that path what's the big deal?
http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/
And in celebration... by Chris+Mattern · 2013-08-16 06:42 · Score: 5, Funny

...Debian will be available FREE all day today!
Yehaaa!!! by madcat_sun · 2013-08-16 06:47 · Score: 1

Well done Deb!!!!
Congrats Debian :) by codelectron · 2013-08-16 07:05 · Score: 1

I started using debian since 2000 its something that changed they way i use an OS. Consistency, cool .deb package manager. sticking with single UI. parenting so many distros. platform based repos portings. lot more . really great effort.
Re:Have they fixed their "Firefox" problem yet? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-16 07:08 · Score: 1

Then they shot a hole in the bottom of the boat by choosing to fork Wayland for their own incompatible graphics stack.
Thanks, from an embedded designer. by gmarsh · 2013-08-16 07:19 · Score: 2

I've used Debian extensively in the past for embedded Linux development - I've got equipment in the field running on the x86, armel, mips and powerpc ports, from biscuit PCs running full GUIs to $10 uP's doing network-attached-widget duties in the corner of a PCB.
Debian's "non-x86" ports work well, the distribution is simple, trims down small, easily modified for whatever purpose, and it just plain gets the job done. Couldn't be happier with it.
1. Re:Thanks, from an embedded designer. by gmarsh · 2013-08-16 11:34 · Score: 1
  
  In one case I selected an ARM chip, drew the schematic, made a set of rules for the PCB guy so the DRAM/flash interface would have good signal integrity, verified the layout and had it sent off for manufacture. Then brought the prototype board up, broke out the J-Link, verified the hardware, banged out and debugged an assembly code bootloader to initialize the ARM and pull the customized kernel out of NAND. Once I had Debian running stable on there, I handed it off to the software guys for them to do their part.
  But sigh, it runs an OS, so I guess I'm not an embedded designer. Got a better job title?
2. Re:Thanks, from an embedded designer. by vilanye · 2013-08-16 12:50 · Score: 1
  
  Assembly line worker?
  
  I am not sure what the OP was getting at but that works. :)
3. Re:Thanks, from an embedded designer. by vilanye · 2013-08-16 12:54 · Score: 1
  
  Not the OP but felt like responding.
  
  There are cases where the embedded device can't run an OS, even a stripped down one.
  
  I don't work in the embedded space but a friend does and he often doesn't have the luxury of being able to put an OS on it, and has to handle all of the low-level details. Some of the devices he programs for only has 4-16MB of RAM for everything.
4. Re:Thanks, from an embedded designer. by swillden · 2013-08-16 14:02 · Score: 1
  
  Some of the devices he programs for only has 4-16MB of RAM for everything.
  LOL.
  My major embedded experience was on some control boards with 4 MiB RAM and 4 MiB Flash ROM. That was pretty beefy, though, and had a full-featured, pre-emptive multi-tasking OS (VxWorks). The really interesting work was on the five V25 microcontrollers which we used to run the many serial ports (actually, there were UARTs to actually run the serial ports, but the V25s were responsible for the care and feeding of the UARTs). Each V25 had 16 KiB of RAM, no ROM. There was no OS at all on them; it was bare metal programming.
  
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Celebration by jtotheh · 2013-08-16 08:08 · Score: 2

To celebrate, I enabled jessie(testing) in my sources.list, used aptitude to install a 3.10 kernel with RT (I was running 3.9) and rebooted - everything seems to be working great.This is on a Macbook Pro running wheezy(stable) with reFind boot manager. Thanks Debian!
Happy Birthday... in related news by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-16 08:16 · Score: 1

In related news, 20 Debian related IRC chat channels were the sites of furious arguments about how to celebrate Debian's birthday. On one channel a group of 20 developers decided to stick a fork in the cake and threatened to celebrate 'independently' of the main group because they were unhappy with the format of the celebratory proceedings. Similar events happened on other channels, and within each group. In the end, they decided to postpone development of any 'party' till all other issues were resolved, and a celebration (some argue it should be called a party) is pending, some time in the next 5 years.
Libranet as one of the most memorable forks by simplas · 2013-08-16 08:37 · Score: 1

Just wanted to mention Libranet: a very well crafted fork that I bought twice (2.7 and 2.8.1). Why not revive it? It was the best easy-to-use Debian ever.
Re:So what are they up to? by Chris+Mattern · 2013-08-16 08:47 · Score: 2

Ho ho ho. A riot, you are. Debian stable (7.1, "wheezy") uses the 3.2 kernel (and incorporates patches from as far upstream as 3.4.47) and GCC 4.7.2. Debian testing ("jessie") (which you shouldn't hesitate to use if you need the newer versions of stuff) has the 3.10 kernel, and GCC 4.8.1.
Debian has been forked. by whizbang77045 · 2013-08-16 08:56 · Score: 1

I can well believe Debian has been forked. No, wait, it's another word I had in mind.
The real party is next year. by matthew_t_west · 2013-08-16 10:04 · Score: 1

Everyone knows the 21st birthday is real year to party!
"Shlappy Burfday Debbie Anne!"

--
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Re:Have they fixed their "Firefox" problem yet? by nurb432 · 2013-08-16 10:19 · Score: 1

its not Debian's problem, its the Mozilla foundation's problem.
And iceweasel is the same code, with another ( silly ) logo.

--
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Re:Have they fixed their "Firefox" problem yet? by vilanye · 2013-08-16 12:48 · Score: 1

Mozilla wouldn't even let us apply security patches without prior consent from them. In addition the logo license is incompatible with the Debian Free Software Guidelines. Ubuntu on the other hand apparently doesn't care that much about that.
So you are not using Firefox for religious reasons?

Grats?

Treating product logos the same as open source code is foolish if you at all care about its value.
Re:I see Ian is still there by unixisc · 2013-08-16 19:13 · Score: 1

They divorced in 2007, but what's she been doing since? He works in ExactTarget, in IN