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Happy 20th birthday Debian
- m_ram 13y agoToday is also day 6 of DebConf13 [1]. They're live streaming many of the talks. Downloadable videos, slides, and the talk schedule are also linked to from that page. [1] http://debconf13.debconf.org http://debconf13.debconf.org
- aspensmonster 13y agoHappy birthday to my first permanent GNU/Linux distribution, from Etch all the way to Jessie. It's --you've, we've-- come a long way. I hope to see the community remain as strong as ever. The Debian forums were always my weapon of last resort when Google didn't have the answer to my problem, and not once was I let down. And best of luck to the new DPL!
- dfc 13y agoDebian has forums? I never knew that. I always use debian-users or #debian. To be honest one of my favorite things about debian is using bts from the commandline or just plain email to submit/query/track bug reports and never having to use forums for bug reporting.
- keithpeter 13y agohttp://forums.debian.net/ http://forums.debian.net/ is one forum. I'm not sure if it is actually a part of the Debian project or just something that grew alongside. Can be useful sometimes, but if your present channels work for you then I'd suggest you might want to do without the 'noise'[1] [1] http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=106389 http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=106389 PS: never ceases to amaze me that you can download an iso, boot a computer, install an operating system and application software, and do stuff just when you want to without upfront cost (other than time). Debian is a large part of that history isn't it?
- mhurron 13y ago> Debian is a large part of that history isn't it? Debian was an early full Linux distribution, but it wasn't the first. Debians big (early) contribution was apt, which could install packages and resolve dependencies over the internet and made package management easier than rpm based distributions of the time.
- ics 13y agoSlackware's 20th birthday was just last month! It's a little hard to view in landscape mode but Wikipedia has this cool graphic to show the development of Linux distros.
- drone 13y agoI guess not surprisingly, Debian was the distro that switched me off of Slackware. I remember the defining moments for each distribution for me: in 1993, when we set my computer down on a friend's pool table next to a stack of 20+ disks with Slackware on them. (Took the plunge.) And the moment a coworker told me "just install Debian, and use apt-get." (Stopped having to fiddle with configure and make files for things that I "just needed.") Linux has come a long way... =)
- ics 13y agoApparently dozing and posting doesn't work. Here's the graphic I was talking about: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Linux_Distribution_Timeline.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Linux_Di...
- snogglethorpe 13y agoVery neat indeed, though its sheer size seemed to cause indigestion in every app I tried to display it with (they could display it OK, but try to zoom in/out and prepare to wait...). It would be even cooler if there was some indication of popularity over time as well, e.g. via variation in line thickness or something (...image gets even bigger... ><).
- toyg 13y agoMy first release was Potato. I still remember downloading so many (3? 6?) CDs... God, I feel old. I don't use Debian much these days, certainly not as a desktop, but it will forever be the "real" Linux distribution in my heart. Without the ongoing work of umpteen Debian package managers, you wouldn't have Ubuntu (and all its humongous downstream), Knoppix, and so on.
- leoedin 13y agoI spent about a week downloading perhaps 7 CDs for Woody (I guess it would have been 2002). I'm fairly sure I never actually installed packages from most of the CDs.
- toyg 13y agoIIRC most of the x86 packages were on disc 1 and 3. I don't think I've ever touched the rest.
- mortehu 13y agoPeople can elect to install a package called "popularity-contest", which reports what packages you've installed to a central server. At release, the most popular packages are put on the first discs. Each set of discs is for one architecture only.
- prg318 13y agoWhen I first installed Woody, I didn't know that you could "apt-get" from the net. I don't remember ever using any of the CDs but 1, but I still have all seven for nostalgic purposes :3
- m_myers 13y agoI downloaded all 7 CDs for Woody, but didn't actually know how to burn a CD from an ISO, so I ended up with 7 coasters. I figured out my mistake and tried again the next week, but this time I picked a distro that only needed one CD: Ubuntu (Hoary). Never managed to get back to straight Debian since then.
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- jcurbo 13y agoHamm here - after tinkering with Red Hat (5.x I think?) I switched to Debian and I've used it ever since. I still have slink CDs somewhere plus the bumper sticker I got with them, which I laminated and is now attached to my Debian home server. (which you can see here: https://twitter.com/jcurbo/status/368424063422566401/photo/1 https://twitter.com/jcurbo/status/368424063422566401/photo/1)
- agumonkey 13y agoKudos. So large, so reliable and for so long. Rare feat.
- buster 13y agoHappy Birthday, Debian! Operating System of my choice on my desktop and server-side. To another 20 succesful years! :)
- acd 13y agoHappy birthday and big thanks to all Debian developers!
- ausjke 13y agoHappy Birthday Debian!!! You have been an essential part of my life since 10 years ago. Thank you so much.
- leoedin 13y agoDebian was my first linux distribution. It took me perhaps a week to download the 7 CDs for Woody (I don't think many of them ever actually got used). I was only 12 and really didn't have a clue what I was doing. My main memories are probably more of frustration than enlightenment... However, as the basis of Knoppix (the first linux distribution that I had much success with) it was a huge pillar in my (and no doubt many others') Linux education. The work put in by the maintainers has had a fantastic knock on effect and provides the basis for so much of the internet infrastructure. It's a brilliant project!
- cenhyperion 13y agoI started hacking around in linux at 12 too!
- gedrap 13y agoSame here. Although I can't call it hacking. I lived in the middle of nowhere (tech wise, 30k people town in Lithuania) and somehow I found a book (probably the only one about Linux in my native language at that time) about Mandriva with a CD attached to it. Have no idea what that book was doing there in the local book store. Usually it were a dozen of random IT books and they had 1-2 copies of each. After a couple of tries, I installed it. Didn't have any clue what I was doing (I just heard that Linux was a cool thing) but that's how it's started... :)
- cenhyperion 13y agoI set up a web server with a friend. We had no idea what we were doing and it was wonderful.
- arc_of_descent 13y agoI started using Debian around a year back. Been a Linux user for all my professional life. Started with Red Hat, then Fedora, then ArchLinux. I was always aware of Debian but I got the idea that the installation process was a bit tricky (this was way back). I finally installed Squeeze and the installation process was painless. The dist-upgrade to Wheezy too was easy. And now I'm really glad to see they have a 1 CD download containing only Xfce, which is my display manager of choice. Happy Birthday to the Debian project!
- ctb_mg 13y agoJust recently switched to Debian for a server distro. Early in my linux learning, I had been messing around with Gentoo, Fedora, and even Ubuntu. It's taken me so long to understand what Debian is and how important good package management is, but now I'm grateful. Thanks Debian!
- facorreia 13y agoPlease share what you found out. What characteristics of Debian make it a better server OS than Ubuntu or CentOS?
- vacri 13y agoUbuntu's stated focus from the outset is making an enduser distro. Their success in mindshare made them popular in the server arena, but there are little things here and there where it falls behind. Making a server not based on an LTS version is one early trap to fall into (all debian versions are effectively LTS), but more importantly, debian is not fond of retrograde breakages. Ubuntu is much more of a moving target than debian - when you want to find out how to do something, it often changes between releases (one mildly common desktop task (which I can't recall at the moment :/ ) had five different ways to do it over the past five releases...). There's more unique stuff in ubuntu - like upstart, a core feature which no-one else uses - and that reduces your troubleshooting info pool. Ubuntu also has lots of automagic-helpery stuff, which is good for an end-user distro, but gets in the way a little on a server. One example is the 'did you mean?' thing when you make a shell typo. That consumes time and is pointless on a server. I'm not particularly familiar with CentOS. I've been an apt user since rediscovering linux, and every time I venture onto an rpm-based system, yum just spews hard-to-read crap at me. It feels like rearranging deck chairs, so I head back to what I know.
- facorreia 13y agoThanks for sharing. I stick to the LTS versions but I hear you on Ubuntu being a moving target. I'll try my hand with Debian.
- davexunit 13y agoHappy birthday to the best OS out there!
- INTPenis 13y agoWe had cake at the office today in honor of Debians 20th birthday. Of course I had to keep reminding everyone why and what Debian was but it was still nice. :)
- dman 13y agoUse it on all my home machines since 2004. Provides very pragmatic engineering - by the time changes hit you the noise has been filtered out.
- helloNSA_ 13y agoDebian is the center of my linux universe. Happy Birthday and THANKS! to all who contribute to what is the best representation of what computing freedom should be.
- stox 13y agoOMG! Has it been 20 years already? Time flies when you're having fun!
- kunai 13y agoI recently switched from Ubuntu to Debian, and I keep wondering to myself why I didn't switch much sooner. The lack of any integration with a specific desktop environment, and having pure GNU and Linux underneath a pure DE is something that is really quite satisfying. It gives you modularity and customizability without having anything break or feel out of place; something that often happened to me while switching DEs in Ubuntu. It really has been the benchmark for all free software so far. And the Toy-Story themed releases are a nice touch. Happy birthday, Debian.
- adamlj 13y agoI made that switch too and Im really happy I did. Same feeling as switching from Wintendo to Linux. And gnome has gotten really good!
- bcent 13y agoYea... I went from Debian to Ubuntu about 5 years ago. Switched back recently, as I've found the farther the Ubuntu gets away from Debian... the less I like it. <3 Debian.
- loser777 13y agoBe careful with taking that too far ;). That modularity and customizability was slippery slope for me--I defected from Debian to Arch in months.
- pboris 13y agoEven I'm Gentoo fan, I have been used Debian for a long time and it was pure satisfaction. Great Linux distro and I hope it will last forever. Happy B-day debian :)
- agumonkey 13y agoA little reminder of debian (amongst the big three) legacy https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9a/Gldt1009.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9a/Gldt1009...
- fingerprinter 13y agoVery glad to see Debian hit 20! Pretty awesome. Though, I have to admit, I downloaded Wheezy and gave it a go. Holy cow, I'm soooooo glad Ubuntu exists. It's amazing all the small touches that Ubuntu does to make Debian unbelievably usable. That being said, Ubuntu wouldn't exist without Debian. Way to go, Debian!
- sigzero 13y agoUbuntu desktop and Debian servers. Life is good.
- fingerprinter 13y agoWhat do you like about Debian servers of Ubuntu server? I have always used Ubuntu for all my servers and never bothered looking at debian for that. The big reason I chose Ubuntu and just ran with it is support and security updates. Ubuntu LTS, I believe still, is supported for much longer than Debian is.
- drone 13y agoLTS was a big deal for me switching over to Ubuntu for servers. We had compliance issues (all software must be vendor supported) with Debian, and not having to replace the entire OS on otherwise perfectly functional servers just because a new release came out six months ago.
- mumbi 13y agoHappy Birthday Debian! Best servers I've ever had.
- dewarrn1 13y agoHappy birthday, indeed! I love the independent spirit of the Debian project, including such extraordinary measures as wrapping their userland around the FreeBSD kernel in addition to Linux[0]. Recently, I've enjoyed using Crunchbang[1], a slick, simple desktop built on top of Debian. To the next 20 years! [0] http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/ http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/ [1] http://crunchbang.org/ http://crunchbang.org/
- jlgaddis 13y agoMy first experience with Linux came after downloading Slackware's "A" and "N" sets and writing the images to 5.25" floppy disks. Somehow, this complete "n00b" managed to get Linux installed and get the machine connected to the Internet via dial-up (which was quite a chore back then). A few weeks later, a handful of people I chatted with on IRC encouraged me to get rid of Slackware and install Debian, so I did. It was a huge learning curve and certainly not the best choice of distribution for a new user but I'm glad I stuck with it. I was forced how to do everything from a command prompt and reading TFM wasn't an option at the time, it was a requirement. In the 17 years since, I have never regretted my decision. There was a short period where the internal politics became overwhelming and I almost switched, but I told myself to hold off. I am glad I did. I'm a big fan of OS X and I've flirted with other distributions over the years but I always come back to Debian for my personal machines. In a large environment I actually prefer another distribution but Debian will always be my true love. I extend thanks to anyone who has been involved in the project over the years and helped move it forward. I owe all of you a beer.
- Arubis 13y agoHappy birthday, old steady. I haven't always been faithful, but always end up coming back to Debian--it was the first distro I could stand to use (after attempting floppy-based Slack, net-install FreeBSD before I knew how to netinstall over a dialup connection, a brief experience in learning how awful RPMs were, and then the absolutely fantastic magic that was and still is Apt), and it's the only one I can ever stand to use for more than a few months.
- cothomps 13y agoNext year we'll take Debian out and get it shitfaced.
- spenrose 13y agoThank you, Debian. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you so very much!