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Debian GNU is Not Unix

Debian Turning 10 407

Posted by michael from the hitting-puberty dept.
Rubbersoul writes "On August 16th, the Debian Project will celebrate its 10th birthday. Check debCONF for the birthday party nearest you!"
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Debian Turning 10 More

Debian Turning 10

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  • Title is wrong (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rogerborg ( 306625 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @06:11AM (#6684056) Homepage
    Should be "Debian Turning 1010"

  • I'm older than you (Score:5, Funny)

    by fruey ( 563914 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @06:11AM (#6684059) Homepage Journal
    So all you Gentoo and Knoppix zealots, remember that Debian can duff you up because it's 10.

    And don't try bringing your Parents into it, my Dad is bigger than your Dad, because Debian could be your Dad anyway !

  • Debian Design (Score:5, Funny)

    by gowen ( 141411 ) <gwowen@gmail.com> on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @06:11AM (#6684060) Homepage Journal
    Please not: The Debian Testing birthday cake will have 10 candles, the Debian Unstable birthday cake will have 9, and the Debian Stable birthday cake will have 7 -- and will only be upgraded to 10 candles when the concept of 10 candle cakes has proved itself sufficiently robust.

    Scheduled for sometime around Debian's 15 birthday.

    However, the recipe for the cake will be freely available and modifiable for all, as will instructions for the manufacture of the candles, and the party hats.

  • Happy Birthday! (Score:3, Informative)

    by cspenn ( 689387 ) <financialaidpodcast AT gmail DOT com> on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @06:13AM (#6684079) Homepage Journal
    Debian is one of my favorite distributions, it's earned a well-deserved accolade for 10 years of reasonably stable operation without all the hype of other operating systems. Stable, fast, easy to use once you're comfortable with its way of doing things... can't love it more than that!

    Chris
    I pimp this product [studentplatinum.com]

  • Debian's greatest achievement? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Urkki ( 668283 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @06:19AM (#6684134)
    Is that apt-get?

    I mean, same kind of system is now all over the place, in about every distro.
    But did Debian "invent" it, or were they first to make the concept work in practice?

    Then again, they are also responsible for dselect...

    • Re:Debian's greatest achievement? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @06:29AM (#6684258)
      No. Debian's greatest achievement is creating a 100% free ( as in beer and free speech ), community supported GNU/Linux operating system.

      • Re:Debian's greatest achievement? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Joe Tie. ( 567096 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @06:48AM (#6684348)
        No. Debian's greatest achievement is creating a 100% free ( as in beer and free speech ), community supported GNU/Linux operating system.

        It's only after switching to debian, and then trying out some other distros, that I've really come to appreciate just how impressive that community support is. I like having the newest and shiniest versions of most programs, and I'd be willing to pay a small fee for an easy way to keep everything on my system current. But surprisingly, I havn't seen any commercial distros that update the packages I'm interested in as quickly and neatly as happens with Debian Unstable. Given that it's community supported that's darn impressive!
        • You're obviously not interested in stuff like KDE & Gnome; there have been long periods where Debian lagged behind most other distros in its versions of those packages.

          That said, Debian has worked very well for me on the two linux boxes I have at home and apt-get is a wonderful tool.

          • If you REALLY need bleeding edge, run Unstable. It isn't as unstable as it sounds heh. It is good for a box to play around with. Testing would be more suited for a reliable desktop. Stable is rock solid. Stable is what you run on the server. My dual-PII has been up almost two months now and two months ago was the last extended power outage.
            • Er, that was on unstable; we went months without the newest versions of KDE, Gnome and XFree. Stable was even further behind, but I agree, it has a reputation for being rock solid stability, if only because it doesn't change much (only for bugfixes & security updates).

              I tend to run unstable (albeit without many updates) and it's been reliable with very few crashes (of any kind) on the system.

            • There have been several kernel patches since then, including that correct errors introduced in the first. I guess you haven't been patching.
            • It took months for KDE 3 to go into unstable.
            • My dual-PII has been up almost two months now and two months ago was the last extended power outage.


              Everyone go take down this guys machine... according to my inbox the last kernel update on the security list was 5 days ago... so it should really have 5 days of uptime like my server does.
          • There's nothing stopping you from using KDE/Gnome from CVS in Debian, but why would you want to? The reason unstable lags behind the bleeding edge by a teensie weensie bit is that the package maintainers are obsessively testing it. I run unstable on the desktop (with apache in the background) and can tell you, it's pretty damned stable (as compared to ANY windows, yes, even XP which I support at work). You can install anything you want in Debian (there's even rpm support for simple enough packages throug

            • People complaining that Debian is out of date always bug me just because all they have to do is change a bunch of instances of the word "stable" to "unstable" and then run apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade. *boom* bestest upgrade process EVAR.

              Important note to naive passers by: its not this easy. Take me for example. I had been running testing on a desktop for a few months. I did my usual update;dist-upgrade to get all the latest stuff. Some bozo had committed an incompatible version of lib

              • How long ago did this occur?

                I "apt-get update" and "apt-get upgrade" nightly, and run quite a bit from testing/unstable; I have been for quite a long time now.

                I do not recall this error; I suspect either it only came up with "dist-upgrade" or it was the result of a package which I do not run.

                I agree; I don't know that there is any advantage to using "dist-upgrade". Most of the packages held back by default with "upgrade" are ones that you probably want to keep in stable.

                Be sure to run "apt-get" with the
                • Well, I have to eat some humiliation pie at this point, because there was a misconfiguration that's not entirely not my fault.

                  There was a copy of gcc 3 sitting in (nfs-mounted) /usr/local. Debian does the path backwards (/usr/local/bin before /usr/bin), and so it was finding an incompatibile libstdc++ and running amok. Don't ask me why this isn't a problem when I run plain woody.
            • Did you mean to link to apt-get.org [apt-get.org]? Apt-get.com seems like a completely useless site (all links point to index.html, which it says doesn't exist).

      • Re:Debian's greatest achievement? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by qtp ( 461286 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @07:30AM (#6684510) Journal
        Perhaps from an activist's point of view, you are correct.

        From a user's point of view, Debian's greatest achievement is having an "unstable" branch that is as stable as some other dist's releases.

        From a CS student's point of view, Debian's great achievement may be the package creation and management tools.

        For socioligists, it may be the democratic nature [debian.org] of the project.

        From a project managers point of view, it may be the fine example of how to establish a development policy [debian.org].

        For me, it's simply that I get to use an OS that does not suck.

    • I think Debian is great and I've put it on just about all my machines now ... but I must admit I don't have the first clue how 'dselect' works!

      Rich.

      • Re:dselect (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I must admit I don't have the first clue how 'dselect' works
        This presupposes that 'dselect' works. It doesn't. It is an entirely unusable monstrous piece of shit. I like Debian too, but only came to like it when someone told me to use 'apt' exclusively for package management.

      • Re:dselect (Score:3, Informative)

        by Psiren ( 6145 )
        Personally I've never had major problems with dselect, although it could be better in places. You could try aptitude. It will require a little time to master, but it's very configurable, which is something lacking in dselect.

        • Re:dselect (Score:3, Informative)

          by Jellybob ( 597204 )
          Or even better, if you're running a desktop, synaptic.

    • Re:Debian's greatest achievement? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Malc ( 1751 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @07:22AM (#6684475)
      apt-get is great, but it's not really the best part. Other distros have similar systems these days. What makes Debian (and apt-get) great is the care and attention that goes in to it. apt-get works because the packages it retrieves work. That's down to the individuals who contribute to Debian.
    • Debian's greatest achievement is surely its policy and strict adherence to that policy. apt-get is only as usable as this due to the policy.

      Docs somewhere other than /usr/share/doc? That's a bug.

      Config files somewhere other than /etc/? That's a bug.

      The bug tracking system hassles the author to fix the policy violation.

    • Re:Debian's greatest achievement? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rweir ( 96112 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @08:11AM (#6684743) Homepage Journal
      No, it's not. The greatest thing about Debian is Policy [debian.org]. It demands that packages meet the highest standards of quality. It makes sure that packages work together. It brings us things like the Debian Menu system, where every X-based package register's with EVERY window manager's app menu. It means that packages will upgrade smoothly, and (via the DFSG) that EVERYTHING is freely modifiable and re-distributable. Linkage: about Policy [iwethey.org], why it rocks [iwethey.org], more Debian policies [debian.org].
    • "But did Debian "invent" it, or were they first to make the concept work in practice?"

      Neither.
      (FreeBSD's ports came before Debian's apt, didn't it? Perhaps I'm wrong)

  • Shouldn't that be debian reaches 1.0? It sure feels like it sometimes... ;)

    On a serious note, 10 years and only up to version 3. This is what makes debian so great. The software is tested and retested to death, so that you know the software in stable is truely stable. I love it. I've used heaps of different distros, but I always come back to debian. I left winddoze back in 1999 due to stability and debian delivers it!

  • Debian superiority (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mirko ( 198274 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @06:44AM (#6684336) Journal
    What makes Debian greater than SuSe, RedHat and others is mostly the point it is *not* commercial.
    I mean : we're not even sure RedHat will still be there in a few years but we know that if in 10 years, we perform an :
    apt-get update ; apt-get upgrade
    our system will be updated...
    This might however be the case with other systems but I doubt that satisfied Debian pioneers actually switched.
    I guess the Gentoo-ers are mostly former SuSe-ists or RedHat-ters

    • This might however be the case with other systems but I doubt that satisfied Debian pioneers actually switched. I guess the Gentoo-ers are mostly former SuSe-ists or RedHat-ters[sic]

      Or, believe it or not, Slackware users. I switched a server at work from Slack to Debian because it was a fairly slow machine, and building Slackware packages on it was a pain, and I wanted something easier to maintain. Surprisingly, moving to Debian wasn't that big of a deal, and I couldn't be happier about the system, for a s

    • Re:Debian superiority (Score:5, Informative)

      by 10Ghz ( 453478 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @07:09AM (#6684422)
      I guess the Gentoo-ers are mostly former SuSe-ists or RedHat-ters


      Uh, not really. Sure, there are former SuSE, RH, Slackware, LFS etc. etc. users, but large part are ex-Debianists. Case in point: link [debian.org]. You can "meet" some nice arrogant Debianists in that discussion.

    • but we know that if in 10 years, we perform an :
      apt-get update ; apt-get upgrade
      our system will be updated...

      Actually, in ten years you will want to perform an apt-get dist-upgrade. This will allow removal of obselete packages to meet the dependency requirements of new packages.

    • Not exactly, according to this poll [gentoo.org] and that one [gentoo.org].

      Personally, I used Slackware, Redhat and Debian almost equal time (2 years each) before I found Gentoo a year ago. With Portage in my hands there is no way I'll return back to any of those three my previous distros. And I am not a zealot - I am a software developer often responsible for deployment, I need a fine-graine package management tool (something like Portage) for living, not just for personal installation.

    • I know I switched a machine over to gentoo. Within two months I am back to debian and could not be happier. Gentoo is all hype. I have a machine that has run debian since 1996, and I have NEVER had an apt-get update; apt-get upgrade fail. NOT ONCE. Gentoo was a major pain in the ass, compile for an hour only to find out that the app doesn't work, then google, then find out that one other person somewhere says the app can't compile with "-Os" or some other optimization your using, rince change repeat. in
    • I used 'vanilla' Debian, KNOPPIX, RedHat, Mandrake and Xandros (Debian-based) before settling on Gentoo.

      Portage isn't hugely better than apt, but it's enough of an improvement to be worth switching, and I found Gentoo's installation easier.

      I'd certainly be using Debian if Gentoo didn't exist, though.

  • Well done on Debian (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rf0 ( 159958 ) <rghf@fsck.me.uk> on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @06:50AM (#6684352) Homepage
    Debian is a well though out and stable distribution. People might complain that the packages are old and yes that might be true but they work. IF you want a machine to keep running then its great. Apt-get package and sit back. Also for security its great for admins. apt-get update && apt-get upgrade and thats it. No dependancy problems. Even the unstable is pretty stable

    Hope it goes on for many more years

    Rus

    • Re:Well done on Debian (Score:4, Insightful)

      by isorox ( 205688 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @07:38AM (#6684552) Homepage Journal
      apt-get update && apt-get upgrade and thats it.

      Strange how people automatically trust debian's updates, but would trust windows auto-update with a barge pole.

      • Re:Well done on Debian (Score:3, Interesting)

        by rf0 ( 159958 )
        I've never ever had debian's update leave my machine unbootable after a good 3 years. Windows update on the other hand has...

        Just my personal expierence

        Rus
      • apt-get update && apt-get upgrade and thats it.

        Strange how people automatically trust debian's updates, but would trust windows auto-update with a barge pole.

        Debian updates are actually thoroughly tested, unless you're using unstable, in which case you're the one doing the testing.

  • Hurd? (Score:2)

    by imag0 ( 605684 )
    There's a joke about Hurd in here somewhere, just waiting for someone to make it.

    Oh Wait,

  • Dselect (Score:4, Funny)

    by niko9 ( 315647 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @07:16AM (#6684449)
    Scaring the poop out of Linux users since 1993.

  • IRC Party Central (Score:4, Informative)

    by rweir ( 96112 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @08:01AM (#6684667) Homepage Journal
    #debian-party on irc.oftc.net. Come and break it down! Er, fix some RC bugs :-)

  • 10 years since.... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Theory of Everything ( 696787 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @08:01AM (#6684671)
    Or is that just the length of time since the last stable release?
    • take my wife, please.

      but seriously folks, I'm here all week.
    • Or is that just the length of time since the last stable release?

      The last stable release was on July 19, 2002 (Woody).
      The one before that was released on August 14th, 2000 (Potato).
      Slink was released in March 1999.
      Hamm on July 24, 1998.
      Bo on June 2, 1997.
      Rex in December 1996.
      Buzz in June 1996.

      So as you can see, Debian releases are actually fairly regular, except for the little hiccup with potato.
  • Hey, wait, saturday the 16th... The very same day Blaster is expected to lead a DDoS attack against MS update servers. Sweet gift for Debian's birthday.

  • Next release? (Score:3, Funny)

    by richie2000 ( 159732 ) <rickard.olsson@gmail.com> on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @08:05AM (#6684696) Homepage Journal
    After "Woody" comes "Puberty". After that, I suggest "A shave and a real job". ;-)

    Just kidding. Though I have never used Debian myself (I went from Mandrake to Red Hat and now Gentoo), I can acknowledge and recognize the amount of work their community has done/is doing and the innovations which have spilled over into other distros. Good job!

  • If you want to help out with the next release (Score:3, Informative)

    by rweir ( 96112 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @08:26AM (#6684872) Homepage Journal
    Go squash some bugs! [debian.org]

  • Whoa.... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Soko ( 17987 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @08:29AM (#6684889) Homepage
    Even Debian is getting the marketing bug. Debian 10? Directly from 3? Shades of Red Hat, SuSE et al. Debian isn't suppo...

    Cake? Candles? Ooops.

    Nevermind.

    Soko

    (P.S. - Thanks Debian team for leading the way. And for supporting my Alpha when others won't.)
  • This isn't meant as flamebait, can anyone list an objective list of pros and cons between debian and gentoo? So far debian seems to be the powerhouse but the more I read of gentoo and the more people I talk to that use it, it seems like a better way to do linux.

    Any thoughts?
    • I prefer gentoo, so this is probably biased...

      Pros for debian: There's a package for everything, and nothing you install from the stable tree will break your machine. Auto-dep resolution.

      Cons for debian (and most everything else): the packages are compiled with out optimization for specific platforms.

      Pros for gentoo: 100% optimized, compiled system, from the ground up. Easy to use. Good documentation.

      Cons for gentoo: Not as easy as some others.

      Bascially, I break it down like this: 3 things are the "

      • Parent is 100% right. I've used both, although I now run Debian.

        Debian is - by design - meticulously assembled for reliable use/administration. Debian just works.

        Gentoo is - by design - for the builder who wants to tweak their system for every drop of performance or every neat feature.

        Which you use depends on your wants and needs. If you are someone who enjoys squeezing a little more out of your system, if you want to develop kernel code, if you are running a production server that needs a lot of T

        • You've nailed it on the head, much better than I did. Exactly right.

          I have a friend who's running gentoo on his laptop because, with debian and redhat, things like mozilla, natulus, etc were very slow. With the compiler optimizations in gentoo, he's got a very much improved system, plus a later version of gnome (2.2.1).

          The laptop is a 700 mhz, but it's 500 mhz when not plugged in (speed step), so it's pretty important to have, for him, more optimization. This, you accomplish with gentoo by compiling fo
          • One thing I've noticed that SuSE seems to do better than any other distro is hardware detection (and initial setup for that matter.)

            With debian, I've got a k6-2 450 box I was trying to setup and kept getting EIP errors when I tried using their 2.4 kernel that's on the downloadable ISO.

            And then I'm not sure how to setup my network card because SuSE always did it for me and made me lazy.

            How is Gentoo compared to Debian for initial setup and hardware detection?

            Your points were very useful, I think they've
            • See, the thing here is gentoo will detect everything when you use the bootable CD. Network, hard drives, etc. But, then, you have to do the install. It's not graphical. It's actually kind of hard.

              On the other hand, have you seen the install documentation? It's about 35 pages. So, you have to do everything yourself, but it walks you through it step by step, with boxes that show you *exactly* what to type. You have to partition your hard drive manually, then use mke2fs to create the file system (or mk

  • Hooray (Score:2, Flamebait)

    by pudge ( 3605 ) *
    Ten years of having a pickle up their ass about inane and retarded things [perl.org]!
    • Excluding perl? Hmm, maybe Debian will be my next distribution!
      • They are not excluding perl. Is Debian the distribution for people who can't read? :)
        • Clearly not; I was talking about switching to Debian. ;)

          (in my defense, I don't know what perlreftut is, though I'm assuming it's related to perl in some way)

  • Debian is great (Score:2, Interesting)

    by scarolan ( 644274 )
    I still consider myself somewhat of a linux newbie, but I've learned as much as I need to manage a few small servers.

    My day job is selling medical equipment on the internet but I'm also the "computer guy" for the company I work at. Which btw has the added benefit of some extra job security, because no one else knows how to fix the network when it breaks.

    I started tinkering with RedHat and Mandrake about 3 years ago, and have recently installed Debian on a little backup server we have here at work. What
    • APT for RPM [tuxfamily.org]

      All of a sudden Red Hat is a pleasure to administer, even with Rawhide packages.

      You could use Red Hat's up2date, even with an arbitrary command line, but I like apt.
  • These parties will be used by SCO to round up potential IP infringers. Stay at home and save yourself!!!
  • Those of you who had to scroll through all that blather just to partition a hard drive in Debian should appreciate this:

    "Before humans had a way of keeping time, no one paid much attention to the anniversary of important events, such as birthdays. Only when ancient peoples began taking notice of the moon's cycles, did they pay attention to the changing seasons and the pattern that repeated itself over and over. Eventually, the first calendars were formulated in order to mark time changes and other specia

  • Bay Area Debian [debian.net] is having a shotgun meeting in Berkeley tonight. I'll be bringing Debian-swirl-iced sugar cookies, and hopefully some folks from the Sacramento area. ;^)

    -bill!

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