DebianGNU/Linux is one of the most popular and influential computer operating system
Operating system
An operating system is an interface between hardware and applications; it is responsible for the management and coordination of activities and the sharing of the limited resources of the computer.... s composed of free
Free software
Free Software or software libre is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with minimal restrictions only to ensure that further recipients can also do these things and to prevent consumer-facing hardware... and open source software. Debian is known for strict adherence to the Unix
Unix philosophy
The Unix philosophy is a set of cultural norms and philosophical approaches to developing computer software based on the experience of leading developers of the Unix operating system.... and free software
Free software
Free Software or software libre is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with minimal restrictions only to ensure that further recipients can also do these things and to prevent consumer-facing hardware... philosophies as well as using collaborative software development and testing processes. Debian can be used as a desktop
Desktop computer
A desktop computer is a personal computer in a form intended for regular use at a single location, as opposed to a mobile laptop or portable computer.... as well as server
Server (computing)
A server is a computer program that provides services to other computer programs , in the same or other computer. The physical computer that runs a server program is also often referred to as server.... operating system.
The Debian Project is governed by the Debian Constitution and the Social Contract which set out the governance structure of the project as well as explicitly stating that the goal of the project is the development of a free operating system.
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Encyclopedia
DebianGNU/Linux is one of the most popular and influential computer operating system
Operating system
An operating system is an interface between hardware and applications; it is responsible for the management and coordination of activities and the sharing of the limited resources of the computer.... s composed of free
Free software
Free Software or software libre is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with minimal restrictions only to ensure that further recipients can also do these things and to prevent consumer-facing hardware... and open source software. Debian is known for strict adherence to the Unix
Unix philosophy
The Unix philosophy is a set of cultural norms and philosophical approaches to developing computer software based on the experience of leading developers of the Unix operating system.... and free software
Free software
Free Software or software libre is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with minimal restrictions only to ensure that further recipients can also do these things and to prevent consumer-facing hardware... philosophies as well as using collaborative software development and testing processes. Debian can be used as a desktop
Desktop computer
A desktop computer is a personal computer in a form intended for regular use at a single location, as opposed to a mobile laptop or portable computer.... as well as server
Server (computing)
A server is a computer program that provides services to other computer programs , in the same or other computer. The physical computer that runs a server program is also often referred to as server.... operating system.
The Debian Project is governed by the Debian Constitution and the Social Contract which set out the governance structure of the project as well as explicitly stating that the goal of the project is the development of a free operating system. Debian is developed by over one thousand volunteers from around the world and supported by donations through SPI
Software in the Public Interest
Software in the Public Interest, Inc. is a non-profit organization formed to help other organizations create and distribute free software/open-source software and open source hardware.... , a non-profit
Non-profit organization
A nonprofit organization is any organization that does not aim to make a profit, and which is not a public body.... umbrella organization
Umbrella organization
An umbrella organization is an association of institutions, who work together formally to coordinate activities or pool resources. In business, political, or other environments, one group, the umbrella organization, provides resources and often an identity to the smaller organizations.... for various free software projects.
Thus, the Debian Project is an independent decentralized organization; it is not backed by a company like other Linux distributions such as Ubuntu, openSUSE
OpenSUSE
openSUSE, , is a general purpose operating system developed by the openSUSE Project. After acquiring SUSE Linux in January 2004, Novell decided to release the SUSE Linux Professional product as a 100% open source project, involving the community in the development process.... , Fedora
Fedora (operating system)
Fedora is an RPM Package Manager-based, general purpose operating system built on top of the Linux kernel, developed by the community-supported Fedora Project and sponsored by Red Hat.... , and Mandriva
Mandriva Linux
Mandriva Linux is an operating system created by Mandriva . It uses the RPM Package Manager. The product lifetime of Mandriva Linux releases is 18 months for base updates and 12 months for desktop updates .... . The cost of developing Debian 4.0 etch, assuming paid programmers from a single organization and based on source lines of code
Source lines of code
Source lines of code is a software metric used to measure the size of a Computer software by counting the number of lines in the text of the program's source code.... , has been estimated to be close to US$
United States dollar
The United States dollar is the unit of currency of the United States and was defined by the Coinage Act of 1792 to be between 371 and 416 grains of silver .... 13,000,000,000.
Many distributions are based on Debian, including Ubuntu, MEPIS
MEPIS
MEPIS is a GNU/Linux distribution, distributed as Live CDs that can be installed onto a hard disk drive. The most popular MEPIS distribution is SimplyMEPIS.... , Dreamlinux
Dreamlinux
Dreamlinux is a Brazilian computer operating system based on Debian GNU/Linux.It can boot as a live CD, from USB flash drive, or can be installed on a hard drive.... , Damn Small Linux
Damn Small Linux
Damn Small Linux or DSL is a computer operating system for the x86 architecture family of personal computers. It is Free software under the terms of its main license the GNU GPL.... , Xandros
Xandros
Xandros is both the name of a line of operating systems and Xandros Corporation, the company which creates them. Xandros Desktop is a GNU/Linux distribution.... , Knoppix
Knoppix
Knoppix, or KNOPPIX , is an operating system based on Debian designed to be run directly from a Compact Disc / DVD, one of the first of its kind for any operating system.... , Linspire
Linspire
Linspire, previously known as LindowsOS, was a commercial operating system based on Debian and later Ubuntu. Linspire was published by Linspire, Inc.... , sidux
Sidux
sidux is a desktop-oriented operating system based on the "unstable" branch of Debian, which uses the codename Sid. The distribution consists of a Live CD for i686 or x86-64 architecture and can be installed to a hard drive through a graphical installer.... , Kanotix
Kanotix
Kanotix, also referred to as KANOTIX, is an operating system Live CD based on Debian, with advanced hardware detection. It can run from an optical disc drive without using a hard disk drive.... , Parsix
Parsix
Parsix GNU/Linux is a computer operating system available as a live CD that can also be installed on a hard disk. It is a Linux distribution based on Kanotix, which is based on Debian testing.... and LinEx
GnuLinEx
gnuLinEx, or LinEx, is a Debian-based GNU-Linux operating system that uses GNOME for its Desktop environment. An initiative of the regional government of Extremadura, Spain, gnuLinEx is intended to be used in all schools in Extremadura, as well as in official institutions.... , among others
List of Linux distributions
This page provides general information about notable Linux distributions in the form of a categorized list. Distributions are organized into sections by the major distribution they are based on, or the package management system they are based around.... .
Debian is also known for an abundance of options. The current stable release includes over twenty five thousand software package
Software package (installation)
A software package refers to computer software packaged in an archive format to be installed by a package management system or a self-sufficient Installation .... s for twelve computer architecture
Computer architecture
Computer architecture in computer engineering is the conceptual design and fundamental operational structure of a computer system. It is a blueprint and functional description of requirements and design implementations for the various parts of a computer, focusing largely on the way by which the central processing unit performs internally an... s. These architectures range from the Intel/AMD 32-bit
IA-32
IA-32 , often generically called x86 or x86-32, is the instruction set architecture of Intel's most commercially successful microprocessors.... /64-bit
X86-64
x86-64 is a superset of the x86. x86-64 Central processing units can run existing 32-bit or 16-bit x86 programs at full speed, but also support new programs written with a 64-bit address space and other additional capabilities.... architectures commonly found in personal computer
Personal computer
A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose original sales price, size, and capabilities make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end user, with no intervening computer operator.... s to the ARM architecture
ARM architecture
The ARM architecture is a 32-bit RISC central processing unit architecture developed by ARM Limited that is widely used in embedded system designs.... commonly found in embedded system
Embedded system
An embedded system is a special-purpose computer system designed to perform one or a few dedicated functions, often with real-time computing constraints.... s and the IBM eServer zSeries mainframe
Mainframe computer
Mainframes are computers used mainly by large organizations for critical applications, typically bulk data processing such as census, industry and consumer statistics, Enterprise Resource Planning, and financial transaction processing.... s. Prominent features of Debian are the APT
Advanced Packaging Tool
The Advanced Packaging Tool, or APT, is a Free software front-end that works with Software Library to handle the installation and removal of software on the Debian GNU/Linux computer operating system and its variants.... package management system
Package management system
A package management system is a collection of tools to automate the process of installing, upgrading, configuring, and removing Software package from a computer.... , repositories with large numbers of packages, strict policies regarding packages, and the high quality of releases. These practices allow easy upgrades between releases as well as automated installation and removal of packages.
The Debian standard install makes use of the GNOME
Gnome
A gnome is a mythical creature characterized by its extremely small size and wiktionary:subterranean lifestyle. The word gnome is derived from the New Latin gnomus.... desktop environment. It includes popular programs such as OpenOffice.org
OpenOffice.org
OpenOffice.org , commonly known simply as OpenOffice, is an office application suite available for a number of different computer operating systems.... , Iceweasel (a rebranding
Rebranding
Rebranding is the process by which a product or Service developed with one brand, company or product line affiliation is marketed or distributed with a different identity.... of Firefox
Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla Firefox is a web browser descended from the Mozilla Application Suite and managed by Mozilla Corporation. Official versions are distributed under the terms of the proprietary EULA.... ), Evolution mail, CD/DVD writing programs, music and video players, image viewers and editors, and PDF
Portable Document Format
Portable Document Format is a file format created by Adobe Systems in 1993 for document exchange. PDF is used for representing two-dimensional documents in a manner independent of the application software, hardware, and operating system.... viewers. There are pre-built CD images for KDE
KDE
KDE is a free software project based around its flagship product, a desktop environment for Unix-like systems. The goal of the project is to provide basic desktop functions and applications for daily needs as well as tools and documentation for developers to write stand-alone applications for the system.... , Xfce
Xfce
Xfce is a free software desktop environment for Unix and other Unix-like platforms, such as Linux, Solaris and BSD. It aims to be fast and lightweight, while still being visually appealing and easy to use.... and LXDE
LXDE
LXDE is a FOSS desktop environment for Unix and other POSIX compliant platforms, such as Linux or BSD. The name LXDE stands for "Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment".... as well. The remaining discs, which span five DVDs or over thirty CDs, contain all packages currently available and are not necessary for a standard install. Another install method is via a net install CD which is much smaller than a normal install CD/DVD. It contains only the bare essentials needed to start the installer and downloads the packages selected during installation via APT
Advanced Packaging Tool
The Advanced Packaging Tool, or APT, is a Free software front-end that works with Software Library to handle the installation and removal of software on the Debian GNU/Linux computer operating system and its variants.... . These CD/DVD images can be freely obtained by web download, BitTorrent, jigdo
Jigdo
Jigdo is a download utility designed for the Debian distribution of GNU/Linux that downloads files from several mirrors in order to build an disk image.... or buying them from online retailers.
History
19932000
Debian was first announced on 16 August 1993 by Ian Murdock
Ian Murdock
Ian Murdock is the founder of the Debian distribution and Progeny Linux Systems, a commercial Linux company.He wrote the Debian Manifesto in 1993 while a student at Purdue University, where he earned his bachelor's degree in computer science in 1996.... . Murdock initially called the system "the Debian Linux Release". Prior to Debian's release, the Softlanding Linux System
Softlanding Linux System
Softlanding Linux System was an early Linux distribution, founded by Peter MacDonald in mid-1992.SLS was the first release to offer a comprehensive Linux distribution containing more than the Linux kernel and basic utilities, including TCP/IP and the X Window System.... (SLS) had been the first Linux distribution compiled from various software packages, and was a popular basis for other distributions in 1993-1994. The perceived poor maintenance and prevalence of bugs
Software bug
A software bug is an error, flaw, mistake, failure, or fault in a computer program that prevents it from behaving as intended . Most bugs arise from mistakes and errors made by people in either a program's source code or its software architecture, and a few are caused by compilers producing incorrect code.... in SLS motivated Murdock to launch a new distribution.
In 1993 Murdock also released the Debian Manifesto, outlining his view for the new operating system
Operating system
An operating system is an interface between hardware and applications; it is responsible for the management and coordination of activities and the sharing of the limited resources of the computer.... . In it he called for the creation of a distribution
Linux distribution
A Linux distribution is a member of the family of Unix-like software distributions built on top of the Linux kernel. Such distributions consist of a large collection of software applications such as word processors, spreadsheets, media players and database applications.... to be maintained in an open manner, in the spirit of Linux and GNU. He formed the name "Debian" as a combination of the first name of his then girlfriend Debra and his own first name.
The Debian Project grew slowly at first and released the first 0.9x versions in 1994 and 1995. The first ports to other, non-i386 architectures began in 1995, and the first 1.x version of Debian was released in 1996. In 1996, Bruce Perens
Bruce Perens
Bruce Perens is a computer programmer and advocate in the open source community. He created the Open Source Definition and published the first formal announcement and manifesto of open source.... replaced Ian Murdock as the project leader. In the same year, fellow developer Ean Schuessler
Ean Schuessler
Ean Schuessler is co-founder, with his brother Erik Schuessler, of Brainfood, Inc., a Dallas, Texas-based digital media consultancy. He is a long-time participant in the Debian project and collaborated in the creation of the Debian Social Contract which inspired the Open Source Definition.... suggested that Debian should establish a social contract
Social contract
Social contract describes a broad class of theories that try to explain the ways in which people form nations and maintain social order. The notion of the social contract implies that the people give up some rights to a government or other authority in order to receive or maintain social order.... with its users. He distilled the resulting discussion on Debian mailing lists into the Debian Social Contract
Debian Social Contract
The Debian Social Contract is a document which frames the moral agenda of the Debian project. The values outlined in the Social Contract provide the basic principles for the rules set forth in the Debian Free Software Guidelines.... and the Debian Free Software Guidelines
Debian Free Software Guidelines
The Debian Free Software Guidelines is a set of guidelines that the Debian Project uses to determine whether a software license is a free software license, which in turn is used to determine whether a piece of software can be included in Debian.... , defining fundamental commitments for the development of the distribution. He also initiated the creation of the legal umbrella organization
Umbrella organization
An umbrella organization is an association of institutions, who work together formally to coordinate activities or pool resources. In business, political, or other environments, one group, the umbrella organization, provides resources and often an identity to the smaller organizations.... , Software in the Public Interest
Software in the Public Interest
Software in the Public Interest, Inc. is a non-profit organization formed to help other organizations create and distribute free software/open-source software and open source hardware.... .
Perens left the project in 1998 before the release of the first glibc-based Debian, 2.0. The Project elected new leaders and made two more 2.x releases, each including more ports and packages. The Advanced Packaging Tool
Advanced Packaging Tool
The Advanced Packaging Tool, or APT, is a Free software front-end that works with Software Library to handle the installation and removal of software on the Debian GNU/Linux computer operating system and its variants.... was deployed during this time and the first port to a non-Linux kernel, Debian GNU/Hurd
Debian GNU/Hurd
Debian GNU/Hurd is the Debian Project's distribution of the GNU operating system .Debian GNU/Hurd has been in development for years, but still has not been officially released.... , was started. The first Linux distribution
Linux distribution
A Linux distribution is a member of the family of Unix-like software distributions built on top of the Linux kernel. Such distributions consist of a large collection of software applications such as word processors, spreadsheets, media players and database applications.... s based on Debian, namely Libranet
Libranet
In computing, Libranet is an operating system that is based on Debian Linux.The last version released is Libranet 3.0, which cost about $90 in US dollars for new users, or $65 for existing Libranet users.... , Corel Linux
Corel Linux
Corel Linux, also called Corel LinuxOS, was a Debian-based operating system made by Corel that was released in late 1999. Corel later discontinued the distribution, but did not remove the former Corel Open Source Development website until March 2002.... and Stormix
Stormix
Stormix was a company that debuted its Debian-based Linux distribution with "Storm Linux 2000" in late 1999. Headquartered in the Harbour Centre, Vancouver, British Columbia, Stormix was an off-shoot of NetNation Communications, at the time, one of the top-ten web hosting companies.... 's Storm Linux, were started in 1999.
2000present
In late 2000, the project made major changes to archive and release management, reorganizing software archive processes with new "package pools" and creating a testing distribution as an ongoing, relatively stable staging area for the next release. In the same year, developers began holding an annual conference called DebConf
Debconf
DebConf is the yearly conference where Debian developers meet to discuss issues around the further development of the system.Besides the formal conference with scheduled workshops and talks, Debian developers have always also taken this opportunity to Hack on the Debian system in a more informal setting.... with talks and workshops for developers and technical users.
In July 2002, the Project released version 3.0, codenamed woody, a stable release which would see relatively few updates until the following release, 3.1 sarge in June 2005.
There were many major changes in the sarge release, mostly due to the large time it took to freeze and release the distribution. Not only did this release update over 73% of the software shipped in the previous version, but it also included much more software than previous releases, almost doubling in size with 9,000 new packages. A new installer replaced the aging boot-floppies installer with a modular design. This allowed advanced installations (with RAID, XFS and LVM support) including hardware detection, making installations easier for novice users. In the sarge release Debian switched to advanced packaging tool
Advanced Packaging Tool
The Advanced Packaging Tool, or APT, is a Free software front-end that works with Software Library to handle the installation and removal of software on the Debian GNU/Linux computer operating system and its variants.... for package management. The installation system also boasted full internationalization support as the software was translated into almost forty languages. An installation manual and comprehensive release notes were released in ten and fifteen different languages respectively. This release included the efforts of the Debian-Edu/Skolelinux, Debian-Med
Debian-Med
The Debian-Med project is a Custom Debian Distribution with the aim to develop Debian into an operating system that is particularly well fit for the requirements for medical practice and medical research.... and Debian-Accessibility sub-projects which boosted the number of educational packages and those with a medical affiliation as well as packages designed especially for people with disabilities.
Debian 4.0 (etch) was released April 8th, 2007 for the same number of architectures as in sarge. It included the AMD64 port but dropped support for m68k. The m68k port was, however, still available in the unstable distribution. There were around 18,200 binary packages maintained by more than 1,030 Debian developers.
Debian 5.0 (lenny) was released February 14, 2009 after 22 months of development. It includes over 25,000 software packages. Support was added for Marvell's Orion
Orion (system)
Orion is a system-on-a-chip manufactured by Marvell Technology Group and used in network-attached storage. Based on the ARM architecture, it has on-chip support for Ethernet, Serial ATA and Universal Serial Bus, and is used in hardware made by Hewlett-Packard and D-Link among others.... platform and for netbooks such as the Asus Eee PC
ASUS Eee PC
The ASUS Eee PC is a subnotebook / netbook computer by ASUS and a part of ASUS Eee product family. At the time of its introduction in fall 2007, it was noted for its combination of a light weight, Linux operating system, solid-state drive and relatively low cost.... . The release was dedicated to Thiemo Seufer, an active developer and member of the community who died in a car accident on December 26th, 2008.
Mozilla Corporation software rebranded by the Debian project
Mozilla Firefox is a web browser descended from the Mozilla Application Suite and managed by Mozilla Corporation. Official versions are distributed under the terms of the proprietary EULA.... and Thunderbird
Mozilla Thunderbird
Mozilla Thunderbird is a Free software, open source, cross-platform e-mail client and news client developed by the Mozilla Foundation. The project strategy is modeled after Mozilla Firefox, a project aimed at creating a web browser.... were rebranded in 2006 to Iceweasel and Icedove, along with other Mozilla software. The Mozilla Corporation stated that Debian may not use the Firefox trademark if it distributes Firefox with modifications which have not been approved by the Mozilla Corporation. Two prominent reasons that Debian modifies the Firefox software are to change the artwork, and to provide security patches. Debian's free software guidelines
Debian Free Software Guidelines
The Debian Free Software Guidelines is a set of guidelines that the Debian Project uses to determine whether a software license is a free software license, which in turn is used to determine whether a piece of software can be included in Debian.... consider Mozilla's artwork non-free. Debian provides long term support for older versions of Firefox in the stable release, where Mozilla prefers that old versions are not supported. The software programs owned by the Mozilla Corporation were rebranded
Rebranding
Rebranding is the process by which a product or Service developed with one brand, company or product line affiliation is marketed or distributed with a different identity.... but the programs' source codes remained the same only with minor differences.
Development procedures
Software packages in development are either uploaded to the project distribution named unstable (also known as sid), or to the experimental repository. Software packages uploaded to unstable are normally versions stable enough to be released by the original upstream developer, but with the added Debian-specific packaging and other modifications introduced by Debian developers. These additions may be new and untested. Software not ready yet for the unstable distribution is typically placed in the experimental repository.
After a version of a software package has remained in unstable for a certain length of time (depending on the urgency of the software's changes), that package is automatically migrated to the testing distribution. The package's migration to testing occurs only if no serious (release-critical) bugs in the package are reported and if other software needed for package functionality qualifies for inclusion in testing.
Since updates to Debian software packages between official releases do not contain new features, some choose to use the testing and unstable distributions for their newer packages. However, these distributions are less tested than stable, and unstable does not receive timely security updates. In particular, incautious upgrades to working unstable packages can sometimes seriously break software functionality. Since September 9, 2005 the testing distributions security updates have been provided by the testing security team.
After the packages in testing have matured and the goals for the next release are met, the testing distribution becomes the next stable release. The latest stable release of Debian (lenny) is 5.0, released on February 14, 2009. The forthcoming release is version 6.0, codenamed "Squeeze".
Project organization
The Debian Project is a volunteer organization with three foundational documents:
The Debian Social Contract is a document which frames the moral agenda of the Debian project. The values outlined in the Social Contract provide the basic principles for the rules set forth in the Debian Free Software Guidelines.... defines a set of basic principles by which the project and its developers conduct affairs.
The Debian Free Software Guidelines is a set of guidelines that the Debian Project uses to determine whether a software license is a free software license, which in turn is used to determine whether a piece of software can be included in Debian.... define the criteria for "free software" and thus what software is permissible in the distribution, as referenced in the Social Contract. These guidelines have also been adopted as the basis of the Open Source Definition
Open Source Definition
The Open Source Definition is used by the Open Source Initiative to determine whether or not a computer software license can be considered Open-source software.... . Although it can be considered a separate document for all practical purposes, it formally is part of the Social Contract.
The Debian Constitution describes the organizational structure for formal decision-making within the Project, and enumerates the powers and responsibilities of the Debian Project Leader, the Debian Project Secretary, and the Debian Developers generally.
Currently, the project includes more than a thousand developers. Each of them sustains some niche in the project, be it package maintenance, software documentation
Software documentation
Software documentation or source code documentation is written text that accompanies computer software. It either explains how it operates or how to use it, and may mean different things to people in different roles.... , maintaining the project infrastructure, quality assurance
Quality Assurance
Quality assurance, or QA for short, refers to planned and systematic production processes that provide confidence in a product's suitability for its intended purpose.... , or release coordination. Package maintainers have jurisdiction over their own packages, although packages are increasingly co-maintained. Other tasks are usually handled by the domain of smaller, more collaborative groups of developers.
A mailing list is a collection of names and addresses used by an individual or an organization to send material to multiple recipients. The term is often extended to include the people subscribed to such a list, so the group of subscribers is referred to as "the mailing list", or simply "the list".... s and conferences for communication and coordination between developers. For issues with single packages or domains, a public bug tracking system is used by developers and end-users. Informally, Internet Relay Chat
Internet Relay Chat
Internet Relay Chat is a form of real-time Internet text messaging or synchronous conferencing. It is mainly designed for Many-to-many in discussion forums, called #Channels, but also allows One-to-one via instant messaging, as well as chat and data transfers via Direct Client-to-Client.... channels (primarily on the OFTC and freenode
Freenode
freenode, formerly known as Open Projects Network, is a popular Internet Relay Chat computer network used to discuss peer-directed projects.... networks) are used for communication among developers and users as well.
Together, the Developers may make binding general decisions by way of a General Resolution or election. All voting is conducted by Cloneproof Schwartz Sequential Dropping
Schulze method
The Schulze method is a voting system developed in 1997 by Markus Schulze that selects a single-winner voting systems using votes that express preferential voting.... , a Condorcet method
Condorcet method
A Condorcet method is any single-winner voting system that meets the Condorcet criterion, that is, which always selects the Condorcet winner, the candidate who would beat each of the other candidates in a run-off election, if such a candidate exists.... of voting. A Project Leader is elected once per year by a vote of the Developers; in April 2008, Steve McIntyre
Steve McIntyre
Steve McIntyre is a software engineer and a long-time Debian developer. His best known contributions have been in the field of creating Debian CD/DVD images; he is the debian-cd team leader and is responsible for generating the official images.... was voted into this position, succeeding Sam Hocevar
Sam Hocevar
Samuel ?Sam? Hocevar is a France programmer. Hocevar was the Debian Project Leader from 17 April 2007 to 16 April 2008, at which time Steve McIntyre took over.... . The Debian Project Leader has several special powers, but this power is far from absolute and is rarely used. Under a General Resolution, the Developers may, among other things, recall the leader, reverse a decision by him or his delegates, and amend the constitution and other foundational documents.
The Leader sometimes delegates authority to other developers in order for them to perform specialized tasks. Generally this means that a leader delegates someone to start a new group for a new task, and gradually a team gets formed that carries on doing the work and regularly expands or reduces their ranks as they think is best and as the circumstances allow.
A role in Debian with a similar importance to the Project Leader's is that of a Release Manager. Release Managers set goals for the next release, supervise the processes, and make the final decision as to when to release.
Ian Murdock is the founder of the Debian distribution and Progeny Linux Systems, a commercial Linux company.He wrote the Debian Manifesto in 1993 while a student at Purdue University, where he earned his bachelor's degree in computer science in 1996.... (August 1993 March 1996), founder of the Debian Project
Bruce Perens is a computer programmer and advocate in the open source community. He created the Open Source Definition and published the first formal announcement and manifesto of open source.... (April 1996 December 1997)
Ian W. Jackson is a long time free software author and Debian developer. Jackson wrote dpkg, Software Against Unsolicited Commercial Email, userv and debbugs.... (January 1998 December 1998)
Wichert Akkerman is a Netherlands computer programmer, best known for his contributions to Debian, dpkg, Plone and strace.He was elected for two terms as the Debian Project Leader and served from January 1999 to March 2001.... (January 1999 March 2001)
Bdale Garbee is a computer specialist who works with Linux, particularly Debian GNU/Linux. He is currently the Linux chief technical officer at Hewlett-Packard and the current President of Software in the Public Interest.... (April 2002 April 2003)
G. Branden Robinson is a Debian developer, known for his contributions to the packaging of the X Window System, and his tenure as the Debian Project Leader from April 2005 to April 2006.... (April 2005 April 2006)
Anthony Towns is a computer programmer who was a long-time Debian release manager, ftpmaster team member and later the Debian Project Leader .... (April 2006 April 2007)
Samuel ?Sam? Hocevar is a France programmer. Hocevar was the Debian Project Leader from 17 April 2007 to 16 April 2008, at which time Steve McIntyre took over.... (April 2007 April 2008)
Steve McIntyre is a software engineer and a long-time Debian developer. His best known contributions have been in the field of creating Debian CD/DVD images; he is the debian-cd team leader and is responsible for generating the official images.... (April 2008 Present)
A supplemental position, Debian Second in Charge (2IC), was created by Anthony Towns. Steve McIntyre
Steve McIntyre
Steve McIntyre is a software engineer and a long-time Debian developer. His best known contributions have been in the field of creating Debian CD/DVD images; he is the debian-cd team leader and is responsible for generating the official images.... held the position between April 2006 and April 2007.
Anthony Towns is a computer programmer who was a long-time Debian release manager, ftpmaster team member and later the Debian Project Leader .... (2000-2004)
Steve Langasek, Andreas Barth and Colin Watson (2004-2007)
Andreas Barth and Luk Claes (2007-2008)
Luk Claes and Marc Brockschmidt (2008-2009)
Luk Claes and Adeodato Simσ (2009-present)
Note that this list includes the active release managers; it does not include the release assistants (first introduced in 2003) and the retiring managers ("release wizards").
Developer recruitment, motivation, and resignation
The Debian project has a steady influx of applicants wishing to become developers. These applicants must undergo an elaborate vetting process which establishes their identity, motivation, understanding of the project's goals (embodied in the Social Contract
Debian Social Contract
The Debian Social Contract is a document which frames the moral agenda of the Debian project. The values outlined in the Social Contract provide the basic principles for the rules set forth in the Debian Free Software Guidelines.... ), and technical competence.
Debian Developers join the Project for a number of reasons; some that have been cited in the past include:
The free software community is an informal term referring to the users and developers of free software as well as supporters of the free software movement.... (practically all applicants are users of Free Software
Free software
Free Software or software libre is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with minimal restrictions only to ensure that further recipients can also do these things and to prevent consumer-facing hardware... )
A desire to see some specific software task accomplished (some view the Debian user community as a valuable testing or proving ground for new software)
Proprietary software is a term coined by advocates of the free software movement to describe computer software which is the legal property of one party....
A desire to work closely with people that share some of their aptitudes, interests, and goals (there is a very strong sense of community
Community
In biological terms, a community is a group of interacting organisms sharing an environment .In human communities, intention, belief, Natural resource, preferences, Need assessment, risks, and a number of other conditions may be present and common, affecting the Identity of the participants and their degree of cohesiveness.... within the Debian project which some applicants do not experience in their paid jobs)
Software development is the set of activities that results in software products. Software development may include research, new development, modification, reuse, re-engineering, maintenance, or any other activities that result in software products.... and maintenance
Debian Developers may resign their positions at any time by orphaning the packages they were responsible for and sending a notice to the developers and the keyring
Public key infrastructure
The Public Key Infrastructure is a set of hardware, software, people, policies, and procedures needed to create, manage, store, distribute, and revoke digital certificates .... maintainer (so that their upload authorization can be revoked).
Package life cycle
Each Debian software package has a maintainer who keeps track of releases by the "upstream" authors of the software and ensures that the package is compliant with Debian Policy, coheres with the rest of the distribution, and meets the standards of quality of Debian. In relations with users and other developers, the maintainer uses the bug tracking system to follow up on bug reports and fix bugs. Typically, there is only one maintainer for a single package, but increasingly small teams of developers "co-maintain" larger and more complex packages and groups of packages.
Periodically, a package maintainer makes a release of a package by uploading it to the "incoming" directory of the Debian package archive (or an "upload queue" which periodically batch-transmits packages to the incoming directory). Package uploads are automatically processed to ensure that they are well-formed (all the requisite files are in place) and that the package is digitally signed
Digital signature
A digital signature or digital signature scheme is a type of asymmetric key algorithm. For messages sent through an insecure channel, a properly implemented digital signature gives the receiver reason to believe the message was sent by the claimed sender.... by a Debian developer using OpenPGP-compatible software. All Debian developers have public keys. Packages are signed to be able to reject uploads from hostile outsiders to the project, and to permit accountability in the event that a package contains a serious bug, a violation of policy, or malicious code.
If the package in incoming is found to be validly signed and well-formed, it is installed into the archive into an area called the "pool" and distributed every day to hundreds of mirrors
Mirror (computing)
In computing, a mirror is an exact copy of a data set. On the Internet, a mirror site is an exact copy of another Internet site.Mirror sites are most commonly used to provide multiple sources of the same information, and are of particular value as a way of providing reliable access to large downloads.... worldwide. Initially, all package uploads accepted into the archive are only available in the "unstable" suite of packages, which contains the most up-to-date version of each package.
However, new code is also untried code, and those packages are only distributed with clear disclaimers. For packages to become candidates for the next "stable" release of the Debian distribution, they first need to be included in the "testing" suite. The requirements for a package to be included in "testing" is that it:
Must have been in unstable for the appropriate length of time (the exact duration depends on the "urgency" of the upload)
Must not have a greater number of "release-critical" bugs filed against it than the current version in testing. Release-critical bugs are those bugs which are considered serious enough that they make the package unsuitable for release.
Must be compiled for all release architectures the package claims to support (eg: the i386-specific package gmod can be included in "testing")
All of its dependencies must either be satisfiable by packages already in testing, or be satisfiable by the group of packages which are going to be installed at the same time.
The operation of installing the package into testing must not break any packages currently in testing.
Thus, a release-critical bug in a package on which many packages depend, such as a shared library, may prevent many packages from entering the "testing" area, because that library is considered deficient.
Periodically, the Release Manager publishes guidelines to the developers in order to ready the release, and in accordance with them eventually decides to make a release. This occurs when all important software is reasonably up-to-date in the release-candidate suite for all architectures for which a release is planned, and when any other goals set by the Release Manager have been met. At that time, all packages in the release-candidate suite ("testing") become part of the released suite ("stable").
It is possible for a package -- particularly an old, stable, and seldom-updated one -- to belong to more than one suite at the same time. The suites are simply collections of pointers into the package "pool" mentioned above.
Security information and policy
The Debian Project, being free software, handles security policy through public disclosure
Full disclosure
In computer security, full disclosure means to disclose all the details of a security problem which are known. It is a philosophy of security management completely opposed to the idea of security through obscurity.... rather than through security through obscurity
Security through obscurity
In cryptography and computer security, security through obscurity is a principle in security engineering, which attempts to use secrecy to provide security.... . Many advisories are coordinated with other free software vendors and are published the same day a vulnerability is made public. Debian has a security audit team that reviews the archive looking for new or unfixed security bugs. Debian also participates in security standardization efforts: the Debian security advisories are compatible with the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures
Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures
Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures, or CVE, is a dictionary of publicly-known information security vulnerability and exposures. This dictionary is maintained by MITRE Corporation, and is funded by the National Cyber Security Division of the United States Department of Homeland Security.... (CVE) dictionary, and Debian is represented in the Board of the Open Vulnerability and Assessment Language
Open Vulnerability and Assessment Language
Open Vulnerability and Assessment Language is an international, information security, community standard to promote open and publicly available security content, and to standardize the transfer of this information across the entire spectrum of security tools and services.... (OVAL) project.
The Debian Project offers extensive documentation and tools to harden
Hardening
In computing, hardening is usually the process of securing a system by reducing its surface of vulnerability. A system has a larger vulnerability surface the more that it does; in principle a single-function system is more secure than a multipurpose one.... a Debian installation both manually and automatically. SELinux
Security-Enhanced Linux
Security-Enhanced Linux is a Linux feature that provides a variety of security policies, including U.S. Department of Defense style mandatory access controls, through the use of Linux Security Modules in the Linux kernel.... (Security-Enhanced Linux) packages are installed by default thought not enabled.
Releases
As of February 2009, the latest stable release is version 5.0, code name lenny. When a new version is released, the previous stable is labeled oldstable; currently, this is version 4.0, code name etch.
In addition, a stable release gets minor updates (called point releases). The numbering scheme up for the point releases to Debian 4.0 was to include the letter r (for release) after the main version number (eg 4.0) and then the number of the point release; for example, the latest point release of version 4.0 (etch) as of 15 February 2009 is 4.0r7. From Debian 5.0 (lenny) and the numbering scheme of point releases has been changed and conforms to the GNU version numbering standard; so, for example, the first point release of Debian 5.0 is going to be 5.0.1 (instead of 5.0r1).
The Debian security team releases security updates for the latest stable major release, as well as for the previous stable release for one year. Version 4.0 etch was released on 8 April 2007, and the security team supported version 3.1 Sarge until March 31 2008. For most uses it is strongly recommended to run a system which receives security updates. The testing distribution also receives security updates, but not in as timely a manner as stable.
A code name or cryptonym is a word or name used clandestinely to refer to another name or word. Code names are often used for military purposes, or in espionage....
Computer architecture in computer engineering is the conceptual design and fundamental operational structure of a computer system. It is a blueprint and functional description of requirements and design implementations for the various parts of a computer, focusing largely on the way by which the central processing unit performs internally an...
In computing, the Executable and Linking Format is a common standard file format for executables, object code, shared libraries, and core dumps.... transition, Linux 2.0
The GNU C Library, commonly known as glibc, is the C standard library released by the GNU Project. Originally written by the Free Software Foundation for the GNU operating system, the library's development has been overseen by a committee since 2001, with Ulrich Drepper from Red Hat as the lead contributor and maintainer.... transition, new architecture: m68k
udev is the device manager for the Linux kernel 2.6 Kernel series. Primarily, it manages device nodes in Filesystem Hierarchy Standard.... transition, modular X.Org
X.Org Server
The X.Org Server is the X server in the official reference implementation of the X Window System. The current stable release is 1.6.0, which is part of X11R7.5, and was released on 25 February 2009.... transition, new architecture: amd64, dropped architecture: m68k. Latest update 4.0r7 was released 2009-02-10
SPARC is a Reduced Instruction Set Computer microprocessor instruction set Computer architecture originally designed in 1985 by Sun Microsystems.... architecture dropped. New architecture/binary ABI: armel. Almost complete UTF-8
UTF-8
UTF-8 is a Variable-width encoding character encoding for Unicode. It is able to represent any character in the Unicode standard, yet the initial encoding of byte codes and character assignments for UTF-8 is backward compatibility with ASCII.... support. Full Eee PC
ASUS Eee PC
The ASUS Eee PC is a subnotebook / netbook computer by ASUS and a part of ASUS Eee product family. At the time of its introduction in fall 2007, it was noted for its combination of a light weight, Linux operating system, solid-state drive and relatively low cost.... support.
6.0
squeeze
TBA
TBA
TBA
TBA
alpha, arm and hppa will be dropped.
Due to an incident involving a CD vendor who made an unofficial and broken release labeled 1.0, an official 1.0 release was never made.
This is a list of characters from the animated films Toy Story,Toy Story 2 and the yet-to-come Toy Story 3.ToysAndy's house... from the film Toy Story
Toy Story
Toy Story is a 1995 in film Cinema of the United States computer animation family film, directed by John Lasseter and starring Tom Hanks and Tim Allen.... . The unstable, development distribution is permanently nicknamed sid, after the emotionally unstable next-door neighbor boy who regularly destroyed toys.
Linux is a generic term referring to Unix-like computer operating systems based on the Linux kernel. Their development is one of the most prominent examples of free and open source software collaboration; typically all the underlying source code can be used, freely modified, and redistributed by anyone under the terms of the GNU GPL license... kernel
Latest Linux kernel version just before the Debian release
1.1 buzz on 17 June 1996
2.0
2.0.14 on 6 June 1996
1.2 rex on 12 December 1996
2.0.27
2.0.27 on 1 December 1996
1.3 bo on 5 June 1997
?
2.1.42 on 29 May 1997
2.0 hamm on 24 July 1998
?
2.1.110 on 21 July 1998
2.1 slink on 9 March 1999
2.0.35-3, 2.0.36-3, 2.1.125-1, 2.2.1-1
2.2.3 on 9 March 1999
2.2 potato on 15 August 2000
2.2.16
2.2.16 on 7 June 2000 and 2.3.99-pre9 on 23 May 2000
3.0 woody on 19 July 2002
2.2, 2.4
2.2.21 on 20 May 2002, 2.4.18 on 25 February 2002, and 2.5.26 on 16 July 2002
3.1 sarge on 6 June 2005
2.4.27 and 2.6.8
2.4.30 on 4 April 2005, and 2.6.11.11 on 27 May 2005
A software repository is a storage location from which Software package may be retrieved and installed on a computer. Many software publishers and other organisations maintain servers on the Internet for this purpose, either free of charge or for a subscription fee.... of more than twenty five thousand installable packages. Any of the repositories can be added or modified by directly editing the /etc/apt/sources.list file or modifying the settings in APT front-ends. This is an example of the contents of this file:
deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian lenny main contrib non-free
Distributions
The Debian Project offers 3 distributions to choose from, each with different characteristics. The distributions include packages which comply with the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG)
Debian Free Software Guidelines
The Debian Free Software Guidelines is a set of guidelines that the Debian Project uses to determine whether a software license is a free software license, which in turn is used to determine whether a piece of software can be included in Debian.... ; which are included inside the main repositories.
stable, presently aliased lenny, is the current release that has stable and well tested software. Stable is made by freezing testing for a few months where bugs are fixed in order to make the distribution as stable as possible; then the resulting system is released as stable. It is updated only if major security or usability fixes are incorporated. There are stable releases about every 18 months. Stable's CDs and DVDs can be found in the Debian web site.
testing, presently aliased squeeze, is what the next major release will be and is currently being tested. The packages included in this distribution have had some testing in unstable but they may not be completely fit for release yet. It contains more modern packages than stable but older than unstable. This distribution is updated continuously until it enters the "frozen" state. Security updates for testing distribution are provided by Debian testing security team. Testing's CDs and DVDs can be found on the Debian web site.
unstable, permanently aliased sid, repository contains packages currently under development; it is updated continuously. This repository is designed for Debian developers who participate in a project and need the latest libraries available, therefore it will not be as stable as the other distributions. There are no CDs/DVDs because it is rapidly changing but the other two distributions can be upgraded to unstable.
The Debian Free Software Guidelines is a set of guidelines that the Debian Project uses to determine whether a software license is a free software license, which in turn is used to determine whether a piece of software can be included in Debian.... adhere to a strict interpretation of FOSS
Free and open source software
Free and open source software, also F/OSS, FOSS, or FLOSS is software which is liberally software licence to grant the right of users to study, change, and improve its design through the availability of its source code.... . This is why a relatively small number of packages are excluded from the distributions' main repositories and included inside the non-free and contrib repositories. These two repositories are not officially part of Debian GNU/Linux.
non-free: repositories include packages which do not comply with the DFSG
Debian Free Software Guidelines
The Debian Free Software Guidelines is a set of guidelines that the Debian Project uses to determine whether a software license is a free software license, which in turn is used to determine whether a piece of software can be included in Debian.... .
contrib: repositories include packages which do comply with the DFSG
Debian Free Software Guidelines
The Debian Free Software Guidelines is a set of guidelines that the Debian Project uses to determine whether a software license is a free software license, which in turn is used to determine whether a piece of software can be included in Debian.... , but may fail other requirements. For instance, they may depend on packages which are in non-free.
These are other repositories available in Debian:
experimental: is not actually a full (self-contained) development distribution, it is meant to be a temporary staging area for highly experimental software. Dependencies missing are most likely found in unstable. Debian warns that these packages are likely unstable or buggy and are to be used at the user's own risk.
volatile project: repository contains updates to the stable and oldstable release for programs whose functionality requires frequent updates. Some packages aim at fast moving targets, such as spam filtering and virus scanning, and even when using updated data patterns, they do not really work for the full time of a stable release. The main goal of volatile is allowing system administrators to update their systems in a nice, consistent way, without getting the drawbacks of using unstable, even without getting the drawbacks for the selected packages. So debian-volatile will only contain updates to programs that are necessary to keep them functional.
oldstable, presently aliased etch, is the previous stable release. It is supported until 1 year after a new stable is released. Debian recommends to update to the new stable once it has been released.
Third party repositories
These repositories are not part of the Debian Project, they are maintained by third party organizations. They contain packages that are either more modern than the ones found in stable or include packages that are not included in the Debian Project for a variety of reasons such as: e.g. alleged possible patent infringement, binary-only/no sources, or special too restrictive licenses. Their use requires precise configuration of the priority of the repositories to be merged; otherwise these packages may not integrate correctly into the system, and may cause problems upgrading or conflicts between packages from different sources. The Debian Project discourages the use of these repositories as they are not part of the project. Some well-known unofficial repositories include:
repository contains recompiled packages from testing (mostly) and unstable (in a few cases only, e.g. security updates), which will therefore run with few or no new libraries on stable and in some cases on oldstable. This repository's packages are listed along with the distributions and the additional repositories in debian.org but the packages are hosted at backports.org. It is considered a semi-official repository.
dpkg is the software at the base of the Debian package management system. dpkg is used to install, remove, and provide information about deb software package s.... is the base of the Debian package management system. dpkg
Dpkg
dpkg is the software at the base of the Debian package management system. dpkg is used to install, remove, and provide information about deb software package s.... is a command-line utility to install, remove, and provide information about local .deb packages. Gdebi
Gdebi
Gdebi is a tool that can install .deb packages. It is available with a graphical interface, but also has a command line option.It is included by default in Ubuntu.... is a tool that expands the functionality of dpkg
Dpkg
dpkg is the software at the base of the Debian package management system. dpkg is used to install, remove, and provide information about deb software package s.... by not only installing local .deb packages but also fetching and installing dependencies from online repositories. Gdebi
Gdebi
Gdebi is a tool that can install .deb packages. It is available with a graphical interface, but also has a command line option.It is included by default in Ubuntu.... can be used both in a graphical interface and by command-line.
The Advanced Packaging Tool, or APT, is a Free software front-end that works with Software Library to handle the installation and removal of software on the Debian GNU/Linux computer operating system and its variants.... expands the functionality of dpkg
Dpkg
dpkg is the software at the base of the Debian package management system. dpkg is used to install, remove, and provide information about deb software package s.... by searching, fetching and installing packages from online repositories along with their dependencies, either from binary files or by compiling source code. It can also upgrade packages and upgrade the whole distribution to a new release. APT itself cannot be used directly; front-ends are used to make use of APT. These front-ends can be either graphically based or command-line based:
A gnome is a mythical creature characterized by its extremely small size and wiktionary:subterranean lifestyle. The word gnome is derived from the New Latin gnomus.... program to install applications.
Synaptic is a computer program which is a GTK+ graphical user interface front-end to the Advanced Packaging Tool for the Debian package management system.... is GNOME
Gnome
A gnome is a mythical creature characterized by its extremely small size and wiktionary:subterranean lifestyle. The word gnome is derived from the New Latin gnomus.... 's front-end for APT
Advanced Packaging Tool
The Advanced Packaging Tool, or APT, is a Free software front-end that works with Software Library to handle the installation and removal of software on the Debian GNU/Linux computer operating system and its variants.... .
KPackage is KDE's package manager frontend.It supports BSD, deb , Gentoo Linux, RPM Package Manager and Slackware packages. It provides a GUI for the management and upgrade of existing packages and the installation and acquirement of new packages.... is KDE
KDE
KDE is a free software project based around its flagship product, a desktop environment for Unix-like systems. The goal of the project is to provide basic desktop functions and applications for daily needs as well as tools and documentation for developers to write stand-alone applications for the system.... 's front-end for APT
Advanced Packaging Tool
The Advanced Packaging Tool, or APT, is a Free software front-end that works with Software Library to handle the installation and removal of software on the Debian GNU/Linux computer operating system and its variants.... .
KDE is a free software project based around its flagship product, a desktop environment for Unix-like systems. The goal of the project is to provide basic desktop functions and applications for daily needs as well as tools and documentation for developers to write stand-alone applications for the system.... front-end for APT
Advanced Packaging Tool
The Advanced Packaging Tool, or APT, is a Free software front-end that works with Software Library to handle the installation and removal of software on the Debian GNU/Linux computer operating system and its variants.... .
aptitude is a front-end to the Advanced Packaging Tool . It displays a list of Software package and allows the user to interactively pick packages to install or remove.... is the preferred front-end for APT
Advanced Packaging Tool
The Advanced Packaging Tool, or APT, is a Free software front-end that works with Software Library to handle the installation and removal of software on the Debian GNU/Linux computer operating system and its variants.... .
The Advanced Packaging Tool, or APT, is a Free software front-end that works with Software Library to handle the installation and removal of software on the Debian GNU/Linux computer operating system and its variants.... with less features and worse dependency management than aptitude
Aptitude (program)
aptitude is a front-end to the Advanced Packaging Tool . It displays a list of Software package and allows the user to interactively pick packages to install or remove.... .
dselect is a computer program used to manage Software package in the Debian operating system.dselect is one of the oldest front-ends to dpkg, and the bulk of its development happened when it was originally written by Ian Jackson, who wrote it alongside dpkg.... is an old front-end for APT
Advanced Packaging Tool
The Advanced Packaging Tool, or APT, is a Free software front-end that works with Software Library to handle the installation and removal of software on the Debian GNU/Linux computer operating system and its variants.... , largely superseded by other front-ends.
Wajig is a simplified front end to Debian's Package management system including dpkg and Advanced Packaging Tool. Wajig provides the functionality of apt-get, dpkg, dpkg-deb, apt-cache, and other tools, by launching these tools as a Process .... is a simplified front end, providing the functionality of APT
Advanced Packaging Tool
The Advanced Packaging Tool, or APT, is a Free software front-end that works with Software Library to handle the installation and removal of software on the Debian GNU/Linux computer operating system and its variants.... , dpkg
Dpkg
dpkg is the software at the base of the Debian package management system. dpkg is used to install, remove, and provide information about deb software package s.... , dpkg-deb, apt-cache, and other tools.
Architectures
As of the current stable release, the official ports are:
IA-32 , often generically called x86 or x86-32, is the instruction set architecture of Intel's most commercially successful microprocessors.... architecture designed for Intel/AMD 32-bit PC
IBM PC compatible
IBM PC compatible computers are those generally similar to the original IBM Personal Computer, IBM Personal Computer XT, and IBM Personal Computer/AT.... s. Also compatible but not recommended on Intel/AMD 64-bit single/multi core PC
IBM PC compatible
IBM PC compatible computers are those generally similar to the original IBM Personal Computer, IBM Personal Computer XT, and IBM Personal Computer/AT.... s
x86-64 is a superset of the x86. x86-64 Central processing units can run existing 32-bit or 16-bit x86 programs at full speed, but also support new programs written with a 64-bit address space and other additional capabilities.... architecture designed for Intel/AMD 64-bit single/multi core PC
IBM PC compatible
IBM PC compatible computers are those generally similar to the original IBM Personal Computer, IBM Personal Computer XT, and IBM Personal Computer/AT.... s
Alpha, originally known as Alpha AXP, was a 64-bit reduced instruction set computer instruction set architecture developed by Digital Equipment Corporation , designed to replace the 32-bit VAX complex instruction set computer ISA and its implementations.... architecture
SPARC is a Reduced Instruction Set Computer microprocessor instruction set Computer architecture originally designed in 1985 by Sun Microsystems.... architecture on sun4u/v
Sun-4
Sun-4 is a series of Unix computer workstations and server s produced by Sun Microsystems, launched in 1987. The original Sun-4 series were VMEbus-based systems similar to the earlier Sun-3 series, but employing microprocessors based on Sun's own SPARC V7 RISC architecture in place of the 68k family processors of previous Sun models.... systems
The ARM architecture is a 32-bit RISC central processing unit architecture developed by ARM Limited that is widely used in embedded system designs.... on Risc PC
Risc PC
The Risc PC was Acorn Computers's next generation RISC OS/ARM architecture computer, launched in 1994, which superseded the Acorn Archimedes.... and various embedded systems (both little-endian deprecated ABI and EABI)
PowerPC is a RISC instruction set architecture created by the 1991 Apple Inc.?IBM?Motorola alliance, known as AIM alliance. Originally intended for personal computers, PowerPC CPUs have since become popular embedded system and high-performance processors.... architecture
PA-RISC is an instruction set architecture developed by Hewlett-Packard's Systems & VLSI Technology Operation. As the name implies, it is a RISC architecture, where the PA stands for Precision Architecture.... architecture
Itanium is the brand name for 64-bit Intel microprocessors that implement the Intel Itanium architecture . Intel has released two processor families using the brand: the original Itanium and the Itanium 2.... (IA-64) architecture
MIPS is a RISC instruction set architecture developed by MIPS Technologies . In the mid to late 1990s, it was estimated that one in three RISC microprocessors produced were MIPS implementations.... (big-endian and little-endian)
z/Architecture, initially and briefly called ESA/390 Modal Extensions , refers to IBM's 64-bit computing architecture for the current generation of IBM mainframe computers....
The m68k port was the second official port in Debian, and has been part of five stable Debian releases. Due to its failure to meet the release criteria, it has been dropped before the release of etch. Still, it continues to be available as part of the unstable distribution:
The Motorola 680x0/m68k/68k/68K is a family of 32-bit Complex instruction set computer microprocessor central processing unit chips and was the primary competition for the Intel x86 family of chips in personal computers of the 1980s and early 1990s.... architecture on Amiga
Amiga
The Amiga is a family of personal computers originally developed by Amiga Corporation. Development on the Amiga began in 1982 with Jay Miner as the principal hardware designer.... , Atari
Atari ST
The Atari ST is a home computer/personal computer that was commercially available from 1985 to the early 1990s. It was released by Atari Corporation in 1985.... , Macintosh
Macintosh
File:Imac alu.pngMacintosh, commonly shortened to Mac, is a brand name which covers several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc.... , and various embedded VME
VMEbus
VMEbus is a computer bus standard, originally developed for the Motorola 68000 line of Central processing unit, but later widely used for many applications and standardized by the IEC as American National Standards Institute/Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers 1014-1987.... systems
The SuperH is brandname of a certain microcontroller and microprocessor architecture. The SuperH is fundamentally a 32-bit load/store reduced instruction set computer architecture found in a large number of embedded systems.... (sh) and Renesas M32R
M32R
The M32R is a 32-bit embedded Reduced instruction set computer microcontroller originally developed and manufactured by Renesas Technology succeeded by a FPGA-implemented Memory management unit'ed M32R which runs Linux, and is supported by the GNU Compiler Collection.... (m32r) architectures, big-endian ARM port (armeb), and 64-bit-only PowerPC port (ppc64
Ppc64
ppc64 is an identifier commonly used within the Linux and GNU Compiler Collection open source software communities to refer to the target computer architecture for applications optimized for 64-bit PowerPC- and Power Architecture processors, frequently used when compiling source code.... ).
Kernels
The Debian Project's goal is the development of a free operating system. There are Debian variants under development which use the GNU
GNU
GNU is a computer operating system composed entirely of free software. Its name is a recursive acronym for GNU's Not Unix; it was chosen because its design is Unix-like, but differs from Unix by being free software and containing no Unix code.... tool-sets (gcc
GNU Compiler Collection
The GNU Compiler Collection is a compiler system produced by the GNU Project supporting various programming languages. GCC is a key component of the GNU toolchain.... , coreutils
GNU Core Utilities
The GNU Core Utilities or coreutils is a Software package of GNU software containing many of the basic tools such as cat , ls, and rm needed for Unix-like operating systems.... , bash
Bash
Bash is a free software Unix shell written for the GNU Project. Its name is an acronym which stands for Bourne-again shell. The name is a pun on the name of the Bourne shell , an early and important Unix shell written by Stephen Bourne and distributed with Version 7 Unix circa 1978, and the concept of being "Born again Christianity".... , etc.) with other kernels
Kernel (computing)
In computing, the kernel is the central component of most computer operating systems. Its responsibilities include managing the system's resources .... apart from Linux
Linux kernel
The Linux kernel is an operating system kernel used by a family of Unix-like operating systems. The term Linux distribution is used to refer to the various operating systems that run on top of the Linux Kernel.... :
The Linux kernel is an operating system kernel used by a family of Unix-like operating systems. The term Linux distribution is used to refer to the various operating systems that run on top of the Linux Kernel.... the original, officially released port. Most Debian users run Debian GNU/Linux.
Debian GNU/Hurd is the Debian Project's distribution of the GNU operating system .Debian GNU/Hurd has been in development for years, but still has not been officially released.... , on GNU Hurd
GNU Hurd
GNU Hurd is a free software computer kernel , released under the GNU General Public License. It consists of a set of Server that work on top of a microkernel; together they form the kernel of GNU.... . Debian GNU/Hurd has been in development for years, but still has not been officially released. Roughly half of the software packaged for Debian GNU/Linux has been ported to the GNU Hurd. However, the Hurd itself remains under development, and as such is not ready for use in production systems. The current version of Debian GNU/Hurd is K16 (released 2007-12-21). It works on i386
IA-32
IA-32 , often generically called x86 or x86-32, is the instruction set architecture of Intel's most commercially successful microprocessors.... and amd64
X86-64
x86-64 is a superset of the x86. x86-64 Central processing units can run existing 32-bit or 16-bit x86 programs at full speed, but also support new programs written with a 64-bit address space and other additional capabilities.... PCs.
FreeBSD is a Unix-like free software operating system descended from AT&T Unix via the Berkeley Software Distribution branch through the 386BSD and Berkeley Software Distribution#4.4BSD and descendants operating systems.... kernel, for the i386
IA-32
IA-32 , often generically called x86 or x86-32, is the instruction set architecture of Intel's most commercially successful microprocessors.... and amd64
X86-64
x86-64 is a superset of the x86. x86-64 Central processing units can run existing 32-bit or 16-bit x86 programs at full speed, but also support new programs written with a 64-bit address space and other additional capabilities.... architectures. It is a port of the Debian operating system that consists of the GNU userland, GNU C library, Debian package management (dpkg, apt etc.) and system tools, on top of the FreeBSD
FreeBSD
FreeBSD is a Unix-like free software operating system descended from AT&T Unix via the Berkeley Software Distribution branch through the 386BSD and Berkeley Software Distribution#4.4BSD and descendants operating systems.... kernel. The k in kFreeBSD refers to the fact that only the kernel of the complete FreeBSD operating system is used. Although some bugs still exist, Debian GNU/kFreeBSD is a very complete and usable system. Supported desktop environments include GNOME, KDE and Xfce, among others. The FreeBSD 7.1 kernel is used in the install CD. Ging is a Debian GNU/kFreeBSD Live CD
Live CD
A live CD or live DVD is a CD or DVD containing a booting computer operating system. Live CDs are unique in that they have the ability to run a complete, modern operating system on a computer lacking Computer_storage , such as a hard disk drive.... .
Debian GNU/NetBSD, is a port of the Debian Operating System to the NetBSD
NetBSD
NetBSD is a freely redistributable, open source version of the Unix-derivative Berkeley Software Distribution computer operating system. It was the second open source BSD descendant to be formally released, after 386BSD, and continues to be actively developed.... kernel. It is currently in an early stage of development - however, it can now be installed from scratch.
Although these are official Debian projects, there have been no official releases of the non-Linux ports yet, so currently Debian is exclusively a Linux distribution.
Debian Live
A Debian Live system is a version of Debian that can be booted directly from removable media
Removable media
In computer storage, removable media refers to storage media which can be removed from its reader device, conferring portability on the data it carries.... (CDs, DVDs, USB keys) or via netboot
Network booting
Network booting is the process of booting a computer from a computer network rather than a local drive. This method of booting can be used by routers, diskless workstations and centrally managed computers such as public computers at library and schools.... without having to install it on the hard drive. This allows the user to try out Debian before installing it or use it as a boot-disk. There are prebuilt Debian Live CD images for rescue, standard, GNOME
Gnome
A gnome is a mythical creature characterized by its extremely small size and wiktionary:subterranean lifestyle. The word gnome is derived from the New Latin gnomus.... , KDE
KDE
KDE is a free software project based around its flagship product, a desktop environment for Unix-like systems. The goal of the project is to provide basic desktop functions and applications for daily needs as well as tools and documentation for developers to write stand-alone applications for the system.... , Xfce
Xfce
Xfce is a free software desktop environment for Unix and other Unix-like platforms, such as Linux, Solaris and BSD. It aims to be fast and lightweight, while still being visually appealing and easy to use.... and LXDE
LXDE
LXDE is a FOSS desktop environment for Unix and other POSIX compliant platforms, such as Linux or BSD. The name LXDE stands for "Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment".... in both i386
IA-32
IA-32 , often generically called x86 or x86-32, is the instruction set architecture of Intel's most commercially successful microprocessors.... and amd64
X86-64
x86-64 is a superset of the x86. x86-64 Central processing units can run existing 32-bit or 16-bit x86 programs at full speed, but also support new programs written with a 64-bit address space and other additional capabilities.... . A hard disk installation can be achieved using the Debian Installer included in the CD. Customized CD images can be built using live-helper. Live-helper can not only generate CD Images, but also bootable DVDs, images for USB thumb drives, or netboot
Network booting
Network booting is the process of booting a computer from a computer network rather than a local drive. This method of booting can be used by routers, diskless workstations and centrally managed computers such as public computers at library and schools.... images. Live-magic is a GUI
Gui
Gui or guee is a generic term to refer to grillinged dishes in Korean cuisine. These most commonly have meat or fish as their primary ingredient, but may in some cases also comprise grilled vegetables or other vegetarian ingredients.... for live-helper. Ging is a Debian GNU/kFreeBSD Live CD
Live CD
A live CD or live DVD is a CD or DVD containing a booting computer operating system. Live CDs are unique in that they have the ability to run a complete, modern operating system on a computer lacking Computer_storage , such as a hard disk drive.... .
Desktop environments
Debian offers stable and testing CD images specifically built for GNOME
Gnome
A gnome is a mythical creature characterized by its extremely small size and wiktionary:subterranean lifestyle. The word gnome is derived from the New Latin gnomus.... (the default), KDE
KDE
KDE is a free software project based around its flagship product, a desktop environment for Unix-like systems. The goal of the project is to provide basic desktop functions and applications for daily needs as well as tools and documentation for developers to write stand-alone applications for the system.... , Xfce
Xfce
Xfce is a free software desktop environment for Unix and other Unix-like platforms, such as Linux, Solaris and BSD. It aims to be fast and lightweight, while still being visually appealing and easy to use.... and LXDE
LXDE
LXDE is a FOSS desktop environment for Unix and other POSIX compliant platforms, such as Linux or BSD. The name LXDE stands for "Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment".... . Less common window manager
Window manager
A window manager is computer software that controls the placement and appearance of window within a windowing system in a graphical user interface.... s such as Enlightenment, Fluxbox
Fluxbox
In Unix computing, Fluxbox is an X window manager fork on Blackbox 0.61.1. It aims to be lightweight and customizable, and has minimal support for graphical icon .... , GNUstep
GNUstep
GNUstep is a free software implementation of NeXT's OpenStep Objective-C libraries , widget toolkit, and application development tools not only for Unix-like operating systems, but also for Microsoft Windows.... , IceWM
IceWM
IceWM is a stacking window manager for the X Window System graphical infrastructure, written by Marko Macek. It was coded from scratch in C++ and is released under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License.... , Window Maker
Window Maker
Window Maker is a window manager for the X Window System, allowing graphical applications to be run on Unix-like operating-systems. It is designed to emulate NeXT's graphical user interface as an OpenStep-compatible environment and has been described as "one of the most useful and universal window managers available." Window Maker is released... and others can also be installed.
Hardware requirements
Debian has no hardware requirements beyond those of the Linux kernel
Linux kernel
The Linux kernel is an operating system kernel used by a family of Unix-like operating systems. The term Linux distribution is used to refer to the various operating systems that run on top of the Linux Kernel.... and the GNU
GNU
GNU is a computer operating system composed entirely of free software. Its name is a recursive acronym for GNU's Not Unix; it was chosen because its design is Unix-like, but differs from Unix by being free software and containing no Unix code.... tool-sets (gcc
GNU Compiler Collection
The GNU Compiler Collection is a compiler system produced by the GNU Project supporting various programming languages. GCC is a key component of the GNU toolchain.... , coreutils
GNU Core Utilities
The GNU Core Utilities or coreutils is a Software package of GNU software containing many of the basic tools such as cat , ls, and rm needed for Unix-like operating systems.... , bash
Bash
Bash is a free software Unix shell written for the GNU Project. Its name is an acronym which stands for Bourne-again shell. The name is a pun on the name of the Bourne shell , an early and important Unix shell written by Stephen Bourne and distributed with Version 7 Unix circa 1978, and the concept of being "Born again Christianity".... , etc.). Therefore, any architecture or platform to which these packages have been ported, and for which a Debian port exists, can run Debian.
In computing, symmetric multiprocessing or SMP involves a multiprocessor computer-architecture where two or more identical processors can connect to a single shared main memory.... . This does not inhibit support for single-processor systems.
Debian's recommended system requirements differ depending on the level of installation, which corresponds to increased numbers of installed components:
Gigabyte is an SI prefix-multiple of the unit byte for Computer data storage. Since the giga- prefix means 109, gigabyte means 1,000,000,000 bytes ....
Gigabyte is an SI prefix-multiple of the unit byte for Computer data storage. Since the giga- prefix means 109, gigabyte means 1,000,000,000 bytes ....
A central processing unit is an electronic circuit that can execute computer programs. This broad definition can easily be applied to many early computers that existed long before the term "CPU" ever came into widespread usage.... is the minimum recommended for desktop systems.
The real minimum memory requirements are a lot less than the numbers listed in this table. Depending on the architecture
Computer architecture
Computer architecture in computer engineering is the conceptual design and fundamental operational structure of a computer system. It is a blueprint and functional description of requirements and design implementations for the various parts of a computer, focusing largely on the way by which the central processing unit performs internally an... , it is possible to install Debian with as little as 20 MB
Megabyte
Megabyte is a SI prefix-multiple of the unit byte for digital information computer storage or transmission and is equal to 106 bytes.... for s390 or 48 MB
Megabyte
Megabyte is a SI prefix-multiple of the unit byte for digital information computer storage or transmission and is equal to 106 bytes.... for i386
IA-32
IA-32 , often generically called x86 or x86-32, is the instruction set architecture of Intel's most commercially successful microprocessors.... and amd64
X86-64
x86-64 is a superset of the x86. x86-64 Central processing units can run existing 32-bit or 16-bit x86 programs at full speed, but also support new programs written with a 64-bit address space and other additional capabilities.... . The same is applicable for disk space requirements which depend on the packages to be installed.
A graphical user interface is a type of user interface which allows people to human-computer interaction such as computers; hand-held devices such as MP3 Players, Portable Media Players or Gaming devices; household appliances and office equipment.... s on older or low-end systems, but it is recommended to install window manager
Window manager
A window manager is computer software that controls the placement and appearance of window within a windowing system in a graphical user interface.... s instead which are less resource-intensive than desktop environment
Desktop environment
In graphical computing, a desktop environment commonly refers to a style of graphical user interface that is based on the desktop metaphor which can be seen on most modern personal computers today.... s. The LXDE
LXDE
LXDE is a FOSS desktop environment for Unix and other POSIX compliant platforms, such as Linux or BSD. The name LXDE stands for "Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment".... desktop environment
Desktop environment
In graphical computing, a desktop environment commonly refers to a style of graphical user interface that is based on the desktop metaphor which can be seen on most modern personal computers today.... was released with lenny and has much lower processor and memory usages compared with GNOME
Gnome
A gnome is a mythical creature characterized by its extremely small size and wiktionary:subterranean lifestyle. The word gnome is derived from the New Latin gnomus.... or KDE
KDE
KDE is a free software project based around its flagship product, a desktop environment for Unix-like systems. The goal of the project is to provide basic desktop functions and applications for daily needs as well as tools and documentation for developers to write stand-alone applications for the system.... .
Ram, ram, or RAM as a non-acronymic wordAs a non-acronymic word Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to:... and disk space requirements can vary widely.
The release of lenny (5.0) coincided with the release of 1.0, which gives much more control over packing Debian for extremely resource-constrained embedded systems. So far only ARM (EABI) is supported for the smallest Crush flavour.
Response
Debian was ranked second only to Ubuntu for Most Used Linux Distribution for both Personal and Organizational use in a 2007 survey by SurveyMonkey.com. Debian won the 2007 poll on Server Distribution of the Year by LinuxQuestions.org
LinuxQuestions.org
LinuxQuestions.org is a community-driven, self-help site for Linux users. As of June 2007, it has over 300,000 registered members. Started in 2000 by Jeremy Garcia, LQ is one of the most popular free software community sites and is usually reputed for helpfulness.... .
Both the Debian distribution and their website have won various awards from different organizations. Debian was awarded the 2004 Readers' Choice Award for Favorite Linux Distribution by the Linux Journal
Linux Journal
Linux Journal is a monthly technology magazine published by Belltown Media, Inc. of Houston, Texas. The magazine focuses specifically on Linux, allowing the content to be a highly specialized source of information for open source enthusiasts.... . A total of fifteen other awards have been awarded throughout Debian's lifetime including Best Linux Distribution.
Debian has also received negative assessments. In May 2008, Luciano Bello, a fellow Debian Developer, revealed his discovery that changes made in 2006 to the random number generator in the version of the openssl
OpenSSL
OpenSSL is an open source implementation of the Transport Layer Security protocols. The core library implements the basic cryptography functions and provides various utility functions.... package distributed with Debian and other Debian-based distributions such as Ubuntu or Knoppix
Knoppix
Knoppix, or KNOPPIX , is an operating system based on Debian designed to be run directly from a Compact Disc / DVD, one of the first of its kind for any operating system.... , made a variety of security keys vulnerable to a random number generator attack
Random number generator attack
The security of cryptographic systems depends on some secret data that is known to authorized persons but unknown and unpredictable to others. To achieve this unpredictability, some randomization is typically employed.... . The security weakness was caused by changes made to the openssl code by a Debian developer in response to compiler warnings. The security hole was soon patched by Debian and others, but the complete resolution procedure was cumbersome for users because it involved regenerating all affected keys, and it drew criticism to Debian's practice of making Debian-specific changes to software.
Some in the free software community have criticized the Debian Project for providing the non-free repository, rather than excluding this type of software entirely. Others have criticized Debian for separating the non-free repository from the distributions' main repositories.
The Debian Project drew considerable criticism from the free software community because of the extended period between stable releases. This triggered the creation of Ubuntu in 2004. Ubuntu has releases every 6 months which are forks
Fork (software development)
In software engineering, a project fork happens when developers take a copy of source code from one Computer software and start independent development on it, creating a distinct piece of software.... of Debian's unstable distribution with bug fixes and other modifications. Other free software users have suggested to use Debian testing instead of stable as it contains more modern, though slightly less stable packages instead of using Ubuntu's Debian-based unstable distribution.
Since the release of 5.0 (lenny), Debian is generally more up to date than Ubuntu stable (8.04), especially in the realm of Ubuntu's universe repository, which is generally quite untested (compared to the same packages in Debian) and out of date, yet contains the majority of software. Ubuntu only tests a core default system, even for security fixes.
This page provides general information about notable Linux distributions in the form of a categorized list. Distributions are organized into sections by the major distribution they are based on, or the package management system they are based around....
Technical variations of Linux distributions include support for different hardware devices and systems or software package configurations. Organizational differences may be motivated by historical reasons....
The DCC Alliance was an industry association designed to promote a common subset of the Debian GNU/Linux operating system that multiple companies within the consortium could distribute....
