Debian Gnu Linux

DebianGnuLinux is the recommended distribution by the FreeSoftwareFoundation, as far they recommend any GnuLinuxDistribution.

DebianGnuLinux is a LinuxDistribution maintained by a large group of volunteer developers, rather than a commercial entity as with RedHatLinux. (For legal purposes some Debian assets are held by the non-profit corporation Software in the Public Interest (SPI).) It's also notable for its package management tool, AptGet, which retrieves packages based on name rather than location. http://www.debian.org/doc/FAQ/ has more information.

Debian serves as the base for some other Linux distributions, including

DebianGnuLinux has its own DebianWiki which you can find at http://wiki.debian.org/. DebianWiki seems somewhat inactive, though.

Good points:

Probably the best package management (AptGet) of all the Linux distributions. This includes such niceties as:
- Installing a package doesn't require manual downloading.
- Installing a package automatically installs its dependencies.
- Single-command upgrading.
- Upgrading won't clobber config files without prompting.
- Purge (completely remove a package) vs Remove (don't delete config files).
Releases are very thoroughly tested.
Wide package selection.
Amazingly helpful user communities (Mailing lists and IRC)
Ideologically pure :-).

Bad points:

Probably the most sluggish release schedule of all the Linux distributions.
- This is actually considered a Good Point by many, being one of the reasons that Debian has earned a reputation as one of the most stable distributions available.
Not as widely used as RedHatLinux, with all that implies.
Ideologically pure :-).

When given a choice of distributions, I always choose Debian. -- ShaeErisson

The ideological stance of the debian developers is a wonderful thing. The ensured freedom of the software allows for a sense of future that works against the natural depression induced by non-free software and works for creativity. FreeSoftware also creates and enhances community, and is in turn created and enhanced by community.

PatrickLesslie and SimonBurton

Idelogical purity is well and good, but it should never replace a fully functional system.

The FreeSoftwareFoundation people would argue that they are trying to ensure a fully functional system, by not allowing closed software to break how different packages and so on interact. Of course, the places that non-free software is most often included in popular distros are the parts that deal with proprietary hardware, because OpenSourceHardWare? is few and far between in most systems you can buy today, and are the parts people are least willing to do without (particularly WiFi). Where closed software had in the past been used, it is often replaced by free software (Flash -> Gnash, other examples) which is then widely adopted as an acceptable or even superior alternative; but it is difficult to make free hardware alternatives, because HardWareIsHard?.

The slow release schedule is easily overcome, of course, by the ease of update created by the package management tool AptGet.

That debian is not widely used is true. This is a relative thing of course; debian has won awards, but until recently has not been available in a boxed set, unlike some other distributions of Linux. The boxed set is not necessary as the distribution can be obtained cheaply by mail order or from linux user groups, or off the web (see http://www.debian.org for sites).

The GnuHurd is another interesting project, implementing a MachMicrokernel architecture upon which several kernels (a herd of them?) may run independently. Debian has links to pages on debian GnuHurd.

HURD would be more interesting if it wasn't a virtually dead project, chances are it'll never be finished.

PatrickLesslie

Makes use of AptGet, a powerful automated package management system. GUI's also available for apt, such as dselect, Aptitude, Synaptic, or Kpackage. This is important so that you don't spend all your time looking for packages through HTML websites. Other distros may use similar systems, but I've found so far Apt to be a nice feature for Debian, when sources.list is configured well.

I just started using DebianGnuLinux. I've been using RedHatLinux for years, and before that I used SlackwareLinux for years. Anyway, dselect obviously has some nice things to it, but it make it hard to override it's dependency checking (for instance, it won't allow me to install tkstep without removing tk, but programs that depend on tk don't recognize that tkstep is close enough). Also, I keep clobbering my system by doing things like removing lilo without warning or overwriting my 2.4 tree with the 2.2 headers. I wish that there was a version (preferably graphical) that could be used safely without destroying things. I also wish there were an easier way to review changes before they are actually made.

This is all quite possible, but I'd recommend using apt-get, apt-cache, and dpkg directly, and not touching dselect. ex.: "apt-get update && apt-get -uf upgrade" - for more info, see the irc channel #debian on irc.freenode.net -- ShaeErisson

Or, take a look at synaptic, a GUI-frontend for APT.

Even when using apt-get, some times no matter how many options you specify it 'will not' allow you to do something, based on dependency problems. -- ArlenCuss?

AptiTude? is another option as a front-end to APT. -- Werner

This is personal opinion, but I find Arch's package management (Pacman.) system blows Debian's away in terms of reliability and performance. -- Yaro

At EugeneLinuxUserGroup?, we've found that as users get more experienced, they tend to switch to Debian.

Hi, I'm a Linux admin from Holland and the only distro I use is Debian. The only disadvantage is that the stable release lacks some packages or it takes a long time before they are in the distro.

Of course. So you can pull packages in from testing or unstable, if you don't mind the risk of breaking things or expect to be able to cope with fixing them. You can even recompile code from unstable against older libraries in some cases, with (of course) bigger flashing caveats about unexpected breakage...

One bigger problem is that packages in testing aren't subjected to security audits. You could make the argument that by installing 'testing' or 'unstable' packages, you're accepting that, but the fact of the matter is that the same software that isn't subject to security audits because it's in 'testing' is subject to security patches and releases in other distributions. This makes Debian a slightly harder sell as an enterprise server. If you absolutely don't need anything from 'testing', though, it's an easier sell.

This is not true for some time, testing is already supported by security team.

According to a few sources, RichardStallman (RMS) may use Debian as his major distro?

CategoryLinux