Thursday, 24 April 2025
Why Debian GNU/Linux
A Computing Platform to meet your needs: Debian GNU/Linux
Debian is one
of the most popular Linux distributions, i.e., a collection
of software based around the Linux kernel designed to ease
installation, administration, and use. 2003
was a banner year for Debian GNU/Linux as it celebrated its
10 year anniversary and received numerous accolades and honorable
mentions in the press. 2004 started with
Netcraft's
report that Debian is the Debian Fastest Growing Linux Distribution for
web services. LinuxForce has used Debian extensively since 1996.
Most of our products are based on a Debian platform.
Some of Debian's key advantages in providing a platform to meet your needs:
- Debian has the most carefully thought out
policy of any computing platform.
- Relatively straightforward configuration and upgradeability.
- Source code availability to help us find bugs and customize features
to better meet your business objectives.
- Support by a community that includes over 1200 registered developers.
- The
most cosmopolitan Linux distribution with large installed bases in
every region on SpaceShip Earth making it uniquely positioned to benefit
from the growing trends of globalization.
- Supported by a guiding vision in its
Social Contract and Software
Guidelines that will ensure a dedicated army of committed people to keep
Debian growing better and better on a sustainable basis.
- The best bug tracking system of any
Linux distribution to route out bugs and misfeatures.
- The synergetic effect of these advantages is that our Debian-focused
development is less expensive and more robust than if we based our software on
other Linux distributions.
- More advantages are discussed in the Debian
Advantages HOWTO.
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Debian Projects Targeting Important Market Segments
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Netcraft
reported in January that Debian is the Fastest Growing Linux Distribution
for web services. Here is a sampling of other important news
about Debian GNU/Linux from 2004:
- OSdir
publishes Debian Installation with the Net-Installer RC2 by
Luis Lima.
- NewsForge.com
publishes Debian Women: Geek feminists in action by Bruce Byfield.
- NewsForge.com
publishes An apt-get primer by Bruce Byfield.
- DeskTopLinux.com
publishes a guest editorial by Binh Nguyen "A Constructive Critique of
Debian Linux".
- NewsForge
publishes an article about the group Debian Women.
- ZDNet
reports that Europcar International has migrated 1500 systems to Debian
GNU/Linux.
- Hindistan
Kivilcim writes in Newsforge about why he uses the Debian GNU/Linux
operating system (OS) on his workstation.
- ZDNet
reports on Debian Sarge.
- ZDNet
reports that Oxford University's computer centre embraces PostgreSQL running on Debian.
- Lägler completely
migrates to Debian GNU/Linux.
- Linux
Times.net publishes a review and installation guide for "How to
Install Debian Linux on a desktop computer" by Tarun Agnani.
- A
book The Debian System Concepts and Techniques by
Martin F. Krafft is available.
- A
book Debian GNU/Linux Desktop Survival Guide by
Graham Williams is available.
- ActivMedia
switches to Debian.
- Debian
is used for the new Hong Kong Aircrew Officers Association (HKAOA) online
information system.
- New
Mexico Software, Inc. (NMXS) announced that it will release the new Santa Fe
desktop environment which is Desktop-oriented and based on Debian GNU/Linux on
August 3rd this year.
- Hewlett-Packard
offers 24x7 support for Debian GNU/Linux with HP Extensions.
- HP
Chooses Debian to expedite feature additions for Carrier Grade Linux.
- Debian
continues to grow its market share of Linux-based web hosting providers at a brisk pace.
- Debian has given users more power than they have ever had.
- Google
sysadmin lauds Debian for software management.
- Debian's testing
release adds integrated XML Support.
- eWeek: Debian Linux Distribution Earns Quiet Popularity.
- Debian Security
Advisories are Declared CVE-Compatible.
- ServerWatch
Reviews Debian's stable release.
- Andreas
Tille's paper Custom Debian Distributions on bridging the
link between upstream software developers and end users.
-
Marcus Thiesen's review of the
Debian Installer.
-
Open source
data mining efforts by CSIRO run under Debian.
-
Debian
is the Fastest Growing Linux Distribution according to Netcraft.
-
Barry Smith published articles comparing five Debian based
distributions in a Small Office/Home Office (SOHO) environment:
Lindows 4.0,
Lindows 4.5,
Libranet,
Mepis,
and Xandros 2.0 Deluxe.
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2003 was a banner year for the Debian GNU/Linux distribution. Debian
celebrated its tenth anniversary and won many awards, placed high in many
industry surveys, and was cited in case studies and white papers. Here is
a sampling of the most important news about Debian GNU/Linux from 2003:
- Debian Weekly
News - 2003 Timeline.
- Debian GNU/Linux
3.0 (r2) is released.
- HP
Expands Debian Linux Support.
- Wired
News reports on a new Debian GNU/Linux based distribution called
"UserLinux".
- Debian GNU/Linux won the 2003
Linux New Media Award in the category "Best Distribution".
- Debian GNU/Linux won the 2003 Linux Journal
Reader's Choice Award for "favorite distribution".
- Debian GNU/Linux won the German
Linux Enterprise magazine reader's
choice award for "Best Enterprise Distribution".
- Debian GNU/Linux placed third in
LinuxDevices.com's
annual Embedded Linux Market Survey for most popular GNU/Linux
distribution for embedded development.
- Newsfactor Special Report:
Is There a
Place for Debian in the Enterprise?
- Netcraft rated Debian GNU/Linux as the second
most popular distribution on Internet web sites and the most
cosmopolitan.
- Debian celebrates its 10th
Birthday
- The Ministerio para
las Administraciones Públicas ("Ministry for
Public Administration") recommended the use of Debian
as a free GNU/Linux distribution in its guidelines for standardization,
security
and conservation
of information.
- LinuxForce published a
case study featuring our Remote Responder service for a Debian GNU/Linux
ISP network.
- LinuxForce published a case
study featuring our Remote Responder service in a Debian GNU/Linux web
hosting environment.
- LinuxForce
announced the development of a new, web-based educational application
built under Debian GNU/Linux.
- HP published a white paper using Debian GNU/Linux to demonstrate "leveraging
open source for web services development".
- Colm
MacCárthaigh and Colin Whittaker publish a Case-Study in
Best Practice for Operating System Management featuring Debian
GNU/Linux..
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- Guide to Debian from Scratch
Newsforge has made a guide to installing Debian from Scratch - as they put it, it gives you the possibility to check aspects about the installation you haven't checked for a long, long time!
However, the conclusion is that "In the end, DFS doesn't offer anything that can't be found elsewhere. But, whether you want knowledge, security, or simply a handy collection of tools, DFS is a return to the basics that experienced Debian users will value." - User Mode Linux with woody and LVM
I wrote a small HOWTO about how to install User Mode Linux on woody with LVM. - Optimize Debian Packages For Your System
"Since the arrival of the very first versions of Gentoo, some people have announced that 'Debian is good, but that's not optimized for [distribution in which you run make all the time]'. And this is wrong, you are free to recompile software you use on Debian, using the apt system. Downloading a tarball, uncompressing it, running configure scripts and make install, is an easy task for every Linux user, but this is not adapted for the Debian package management system. Stow was a way which worked without too much effort, but compiled programs were not really integrated in the apt dependancies. The ultimate solution is to use apt-build to recompile a software already packaged for Debian."
Read the article by Julien Danjou. - Dealing with udev
The latest version of GNOME, 2.8, contains a new tool, gnome-volume-manager for automatically dealing with removal media devices. This relies on hal, the Hardware Abstraction Layer. In order for this to work well the user space /dev/ management tool udev is required. This works by mounting a tmpfs filesystem over /dev/ and creating device nodes as devices are detected and configured. Currently udev expects to be first run on a reboot, however Debian upgrades rarely involve such a reboot so Marco d'Itri is trying to work out how to do this without a reboot.
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- xpp - X Printing Panel
Graphical substitute for the lp/lpr command. With xpp, you can control every printing option known to the CUPS print system (the cupsys package). Best results are available with usage of the appropriate PPD file for your printer. Each user can save their own customized printing preferences.
Home Page: http://cups.sourceforge.net/xpp/
Also recommended by Malte S.:
My favorite printer frontend. Good for people who sometimes print .ps files or similar. You don't have to learn the whole syntax of lpr or alike.
Funny. I never thought lpr was too difficult to learn. But then I grew up writing sendmail.cf files. *shudder* Fortunately, I had that portion of my brain surgically excised.
More information on this package can be found on the Debian web site.
(If there is a package you would like to see featured here, go to the userinfo page and follow the directions there to submit your entry.)
Now available in RSS and ATOM flavors too. - installwatch - Track installation of local software
Installwatch is used to track the changes made during the installation of local (i.e. non-deb) software.
This is the package on which checkinstall depends that was recommended by Malte S. yesterday. It is just amazing how much useful and powerful software is out there just waiting to be discovered. And the amazing thing is it's all free to use and improve. After years and years of using Debian, there is always another cool package to discover.
More information on this package can be found on the Debian web site.
(If there is a package you would like to see featured here, go to the userinfo page and follow the directions there to submit your entry.)
Now available in RSS and ATOM flavors too. - checkinstall - installation tracker
CheckInstall keeps track of all the files created or modified by your installation script ("make install" "make install_modules", "setup", etc), builds a standard binary package and installs it in your system giving you the ability to uninstall it with your distribution's standard package management utilities.
Suggested by Malte S.:
I think it's really useful if you've got a tarball archive with software that you have to compile with the usual:
./configure
make
make install
Makes removal and reinstalling really easy!
More information on this package can be found on the Debian web site.
(If there is a package you would like to see featured here, go to the userinfo page and follow the directions there to submit your entry.)
Now available in RSS and ATOM flavors too.
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