Vlogcanic

Ian Murdock announced the Debian Manifesto in 1993 while in Purdue University. It was a call to create an universal operating system through the use of Linux –a Linux distribution commited to the GNU principles and values, developed and mantained in an open way. Thus was Debian GNU/Linux born.

Nowadays Debian is among the most popular, respected, stable and, above all, influential distros in the Linux world. Their strict quality control stability-wise is well-known. Also famous is the exuberance of choices it provides: some 18200 pre-compiled packages in the current stable release which is available in eleven different architectures.

Debian’s early days were arguably slow. Initial releases came to light in 1994, and porting to other architectures started on 1995. The rest is history –one of the most complex stories in Linuxlore involving changes in leadership, value articulation, development process, etc. — so let’s just say that by 1999 Debian’s performance and reputation was so rock solid that it started to become the base upon which other distros build themselves: Libranet, Corel Linux and Stormix among others got released that year, all based in Debian. None of those remain active but many other are, more on that below.

Debian is too successful not to stir some controversy. The main criticism against it has to do with one of its main advantages: stability. The Debian project enforces a very strict quality control when it comes to stability and they don’t release anything with the lable stable until they are as sure as hell it’s not going to embarrass them. While this attitude accounts for their OS remarkable solidity, it also takes time. That means their stable releases are few and far between, and never in the technology bleeding-edge.

Another common criticism goes for Debian’s strict interpretation for the GNU/Linux. They hold a view as steadfast as their stability to the letter of the GNU license which results in multiple documentation and software exclusions not because it’s not open source in a broader sense, but because if it doesn’t fit Debian’s criteria to be considered truly open.

Whatever the critics say, one can’t really say Debian spends its time on the hurricane’s eye –it’s actually among the most venerated existing distros. A testimony to Debian’s reliability and popularity among the Linux geeks is the large amount of other currently active distros using Debian as a base. Some exampes:

• Knoppix. The first LiveCD based in Debian.
• Linspire. The ever controversial distro that wanted to take on Redmond with a pragmatic view of proprietary software use. In the future it will be based upon Ubuntu which is in turn based in Debian.
• Ubuntu. The new kid on the block prompting the biggest hype ever achieved by a single distro inside the Linux world, or for Linux in the Windows world.
• SimplyMEPIS. A desktop distro with KDE available as an installable LiveCD.
• Musix. Aimed at multimedia use.
• Zen Linux.
• And a host of other ones.