Debian is known for its adherence to free software philosophies and for its abundance of options (its current version it includes more than 18 thousand software packages, for eleven computer architectures).
Debian GNU/Linux, is also the basis for other multiple Linux distributions such as Knoppix, Linspire, MEPIS, Xandros and the Ubuntu family.
Debian is also known for its package management system (especially APT), for its strict policies regarding its packages and the quality of its releases.These practices allow easy updates between releases, and an installation and simple removal of packages.
It also uses an open test development and process.It is developed by volunteers from all over the world, and supported by donations through the "Software in the Public Interest", an organization no end of l ucro for the support of free software projects.
History of Debian
Debian was announced on August 16, 1993 by Ian Murdock, then a student at Purdue University.Murdock initially called this system "Debian Linux Release." His idea was to create an open distribution, respecting the values of Linux and GNU.
The name "Debian" comes from the combination of the first name of his girlfriend (now his wife) Debra, with his own first name, Ian.
The Debian project grew little at first, and its first versions, 0.9x, were released in 1994 and 1995.
The first version of Debian 1.x was released in 1996.In that year, Ian Murdock was replaced by Bruce Perens as project leader.
That same year too, Ean Schuessler suggested that Debian establish a social contract between the project and its users.Perens distilled the results of the discussions of the e-mail lists about Debian, forming the Debian Social Contract (With Debian Social treatment) and the Debian Free Software Guidelines.
In this way, he defined the fundamental commitments for the development of this distribution.He was also the initiator of the creation of Software in the Public Interest.
Bruce Perens left the project in 1998, before the release of the first Debian based on glibc, version 2.0.New leaders were chosen and two more releases were made of the 2.x, each introduced more ports and more packages.Now the new leader would be Ian Jackson, who stayed from January 1998 to December 1998, and was succeeded by Wichert Akkerman (January 1999, March 2001).
APT (Advanced Packaging Tool) was deployed during this time.The first port to a non-Linux kernel, the Debian GNU/Hurd, was also started.
The first Debian-based Linux distributions : Libranet, Corel Linux and Storm Linux, were started in 1999.They were the first of many distr Debian-based contributions.
Entered the year 2000, the project made significant changes in its stability and in its launch management.In addition, the annual DebConf conference began this year, with talks and workshops for developers and technical users.
Ben Collins would now be the leader of the Debian project from April 2001 to April 2002, succeeded by Bdale Garbee who was in charge one year as well.Then Martin Michlmayr from March 2003 to March from 2005.Branden Robinson from April 2005 to April 2006, followed by Anthony Towns leader from April 2006 to April 2007.Currently the leader is Sam Hocevar.
On April 8, 2007, the Debian project announced the official launch of Debian GNU/Linux version 4.0.
Main versions of Debian
Version number, code name, release date and approximate number of packages.
• 1.1-buzz-June 17, 1996-474 • 1.2-rex-December 12, 1996-848 • 1.3-bo-June 5, 19 97-974 • 2.0-hamm-July 24, 1998-1500 • 2.1-slink-March 9, 1999-2250 • 2.2-potato-August 15, 2000-3900 • 3.0-woody-July 19, 2002-8500 • 3.1-sarge-June 6, 2005-15400 • 4.0-etch-April 8, 2007-18000
Ports
Official architectures supported: * i386-IA-32.* alpha-DEC Alpha.* sparc-Sun SPARC.* arm-ARM.* powerpc-PowerPC.* hppa-HP PA-RISC.* ia64-Itanium (IA-64).* mips, mipsel-MIPS.* s390-IBM ESA/390.* amd64-AMD64 (x86-64).
Unstable architectures or in process: * m68k-Motorola 68k architecture in Amiga, Atari, Macintosh and various VME systems.* Hitachi SuperH * M32R architectures * big-endian ARM port (armeb) * 64-bit-only PowerPC port (ppc64).
Debian advantages and disadvantages
One of Debian's great advantages is that it has thousands of stable precompiled packages.
Instead, Debian's most important criticism is the long time between releases of stable versions, for example, almost three years passed between the release of Debian 3.0 and Debian 3.1.
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