Debian

Debian Logo

Debian is a free Linux distribution with thousands of contributors from all over the world. It serves as the basis for a number of other distributions, most notably Ubuntu and Knoppix. All of Debian is open source software, conforming to the Debian Free Software Guidelines. Many architectures are supported, including x86, AMD64, PowerPC, SPARC, ARM, etc. The latest version, code-named etch, was released on April 8, 2007.

History

Debian was created by Ian Murdock in 1993. The actual name of the project comes from the names of the creator of Debian, Ian Murdock, and his wife, Debra.

The Debian Social Contract, a document describing the moral guidelines followed by the Debian project, was first published in July 1997.

Releases

Codenames for releases are inspired by the names of characters from the movie Toy Story. Previous stable releases have been named buzz (1.1), rex (1.2), bo (1.3), hamm (2.0), slink (2.1), potato (2.2), woody (3.0), sarge (3.1) and etch (4.0). There is always a "testing" version, which is periodically frozen into a stable release, and an "unstable" version (known as "sid" - after the character that breaks toys for fun), where packages are initially uploaded.

External Links

• www.debian.org - Debian project homepage