Happy birthday Debian | Hacker News Reader

Happy birthday Debian

debian.org

206 pointsneya32 comments

Anecdote (I assume I'll get down-voted since it's HN but I don't give a fuck, please yourself):

In my city, in Montreal, people love to honk all over the place when their favourite sport team wins. It's freakin annoying.. I'm not a hockey fan and I couldn't care less that a team just won a tournament or whatever. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to see people happy about it.. but it's not an excuse to go honk in the streets at 10 PM and yelling non-stop.

Anyway, 2 years ago, a Linux kernel was just released and I decided to have some fun driving the street and honk-ing at 10PM. I did that for a good 15-20 minutes before being arrested by the police. I then explained why I was honking and that since hockey fans could go in the street, I could do it.

Believe it or not, I had no tickets and they told me they understood and would make sure nobody would honk in my neighbour.. and even now, after 2 years, I see police cars in front of my house arresting people who honk when hockey or football/soccer teams win.

Meh.. so when I see these "Happy birthday Debian", I like to think that, maybe somewhere, a little nerd like me is happy and go out honking in their neighbour.

I have a feeling you might get quite a few upvotes, that made me chuckle.

I'm trying to imagine a society where this is in reverse and it's all the "jocks" who are into Linux and the nerds who watch sports. That would certainly be interesting.

The only wrong thing about your post is your complain about getting downvoted.

Have an upvote anyway.

Nice. Was the cop a Linux user? (Just kidding).

Debian was my third distribution (after Slackware and a short stint on Redhat). I started using it on the recommendation of some more experienced students in college, around 2001(?).

I've stayed with Debian ever since. In the beginning it was (of course) for the automatic package dependancy resolution and retrieval.

Over a decade+ of use, I've never understood people who made fun of Debian for being deprecated by the time it came out. I always used sid/unstable to get the latest-and-greatest on my desktops and put up with the occasional breakage (maybe 2 or 3 times in over a decade), and used the rock-solid stable on my servers.

I've also always been impressed by the work and dedication of Debian Developers (DDs). From knowing a few, I think having "Debian Developer" on your resume is an excellent badge of quality.

In my experience, most of the heat Debian has received has been from its strict adherence to open source guidelines. A lot of people like to make fun of the distro for its lack of pragmatism.

I would agree. The Firefox/Iceweasel thing is probably the best example of this.[1] It seems silly on the surface (who cares right?) but Debian is very strict on the idea of freely redistributable software, even to minute levels other distros might not care about. The presence of debian-legal for so long is another testament to this fact (the mailing list archives go back to 1998). [2]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation_software_re...

[2] http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/

I think it is completely non-silly. Debian was very simply and to the letter of the law in violation of the terms under which a piece of software can be called Firefox, and at any time Mozilla Corporation is entitled to bring civil action, as far as I can tell. My understanding is that at the time they were backpatching security fixes to derivative versions of Firefox -- specifically, older versions for which upstream had dropped support. What if one of those introduced an annoying crash or security problem? Is it fair that Mozilla Corporation's Good Name on the hook for it, if it does not wish to be?

If Mozilla Corporation (or would it be Foundation?) felt that they wanted to enable this kind of derivative distribution of their software, they could have very simply offered provisions like the Linux Trademark Institute: http://www.linuxfoundation.org/programs/legal/trademark. Clearly, Debian still has many references -- and modifications -- to Linux.

Problem solved. But, as far as I can tell, this was not to be.

I am not a Debian developer nor someone who was actively following that conversation, but when I heard about the decision I have not heard a single convincing (or even any) argument that it was an incorrect one, but again, I'm not familiar with the matter in great detail. Proprietary software companies can be awfully persnickety about...well, everything regarding their license and trademark, and I don't see why lack of adherence to a contract is acceptable just because there is Free Software (but not free trademark) involved.

The silliest part is the name chosen.

Heh, I had a hand in the creation of the latter:-)

http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/1998/11/msg02560.html

The only problem with it is that, at least in the past, there were no qualifications to join it, so you got lots of "legal opinions" from people that weren't necessarily grounded in any sort of actual ... reality.

In any event though, Debian is awesome, and an extremely impressive volunteer effort.

The thing that's always bothered me about that browser is the name, it almost sounds like it was chosen to be antagonistic, like they had a chip on their shoulder. I am probably reading too much into it, but that's the impression I get when comparing the two names: Firefox = fast & determined; Iceweasel = cold & deceitful.

Do you remember the heat debian used to get because of the installer?

I rejected debian a number of times early on because of d-i. Just like the parent I did slack->redhat->debian and it was a friend in college that helped me get over my debian installer phobia. After that I have not looked back.

I will admit I flirted with Ubuntu once or thrice but I never found any compelling reason to switch and I was never been able to get used to the minor modifications that they make to Debian. Do not read that as a knock on Ubuntu. I think Ubuntu is a great distribution for casual linux users. Ubuntu (and canonical) has done a lot for the adoption of linux in general.

They get heat from the other side too, because of the non-free repository.

Derivatives like Knoppix or Ubuntu wouldn't be possible -- or at least couldn't sprout so easily -- if it weren't for that strict adherence to open source guidelines. The way it is, makers of derivatives need not worry about infringing IP rights, they can simply depend on the Debian community to sort that out and only include free software in the distribution (free as in freedom).

-- Debian user since April 1996 (0.93R6)

How does accepting "this software cannot be used to build devices with certain (mis-)features (except for personal use that doesn't count as distribution)" and declaring it compatible with dfsg#6 count as a lack of pragmatism?

I could have written this same post almost exactly. started on Slackware, moved to Red Hat 5 then to Debian around when hamm (2.0) came out. Still have the bumper sticker I got from buying an official slink CD set. I even flirted around with helping a bit and thinking of becoming a DD but never went through with it.

I've always preferred Debian's package management over all others and was happy to see Ubuntu take the approach and try to take it to a wider audience.

Same here. I suspect this is a very well worn path.

Yup, same boat here. I remember scouring the web for RPMs for my various Redhat installs and always thinking, "there must be a better way." In doing some work on the Gnome 2 HIG around 2000 or so, someone suggested I give Debian another shot. At the time, the installation process was absolutely terrible compared to the install of Redhat; but, I'd installed Slackware as early as 1996, so I made it through.

I'm not sure I've ever been as satisfied as the first time I ran "apt-get install XXXXXXX" and all my dependencies were hammered out for me.

Ran SID for a couple of years before my love of Dark Age of Camelot drove me back to Windows for a while. Been using Ubuntu since the 6.04 days and mostly like it: I always referred to Ubuntu as "Debian with a 'just works' attitude."

Sadly, I'm not sure that characterization still applies to Ubuntu; maybe it's time I give Debian another go.

My route: Slackware, Redhat, Mandrake, Kubuntu, Ubuntu, and now Mint Debian.

I finally got fed up with reinstalls, and so far very happy with Mint Debian's semi-rolling approach.

Also very happy with their inclusion of Cinnamon and Mate. Excellent community. Give it a go!

I have such fond memories of sneaking printouts of The Debian Policy Guide and A Brief History of Debian into my boring high school classes and reading them tucked into my binders labeled "Spanish" and "Pre-Calc".

I still remember how I marveled at the Debian Developers Map (http://www.debian.org/devel/developers.loc), which showed in one image a collaboration of hundreds of talented individuals across the globe, working to make computers better and freer.

I remember reading these words in the "Debian Manifesto", which seemed like an ideal for all life, not just software: "The Debian design process is open to ensure that the system is of the highest quality and that it reflects the needs of the user community. By involving others with a wide range of abilities and backgrounds, Debian is able to be developed in a modular fashion. Its components are of high quality because those with expertise in a certain area are given the opportunity to construct or maintain the individual components of Debian involving that area."

Yep, Debian is 19 years old today, but its effect on my philosophy toward software engineering just as strong now as it was over a decade ago. Cheers to a great project: http://www.pixelmonkey.org/2012/08/16/the-debian-manifesto

I didn't know the Manifesto, but the Debian Social Contract[1] was definitively an important part in my choice to use Debian on all my systems.

[1]: http://www.debian.org/social_contract

The killer feature that Debian offered to me, way back in 1.2 or 1.3 days, was that I would never have to reinstall the whole system for a major version upgrade.

Debian kept that promise, and I've been using Debian ever since. The company I work at is now almost entirely Debian for servers, and the non-Mac users also have it as their desktop system.

It was 8 years ago when I started using Debian after trying out numerous distributions and it was the first one that just "worked" for me. I have been using it on all my servers, and my desktop (During the Vista years) ever since.

Here's to another 19 years!

After getting late to the whole Linux game I've started with Ubuntu. Everytime I upgraded to the next version something broke (I think I started with 8.10 and stayed until 10.04). Everytime I got the death stare from my gf. (She just wants everything to work - why did I change anything ?). Then I didn't bother with it any more and went directly to Debian. Now I'm running nearly exclusively Debian (testing at home, stable at work / servers) and I am happy with it.

The change to gnome3 was a big ordeal (one of my desktops refused to work correctly for 2 month - another time of death - stareing), but now it seems great and stable.

I think I am not the right person for an unstable distribution.

A bit thank you to the people who make Debian possible ! Every distribution I am using and I've been using was based on Debian - Ubuntu / Crunchbang and AvLinux and it was always a good foundation for these distributions.

I first installed Debian in 1999. I remember when Potato came out and was all the rage. :)

The installer certainly was intimidating though once I got my head around dselect it made sense. I don't think they even use dselect on the installer anymore by default anymore.

I still run it on a few servers and its a great server distro.

I really wish I could use Ubuntu, but I can't bring myself to use any Debian derivative after the OpenSSL debacle.

A reasonable, perhaps a tad extreme, approach. May I ask which OS you do use? OpenBSD?

Fedora. Yes I know it's bleeding edge and probably has vulnerabilities, but I can't imagine what kind of organization lets a single developer patch OpenSSL without oversight and then ship it. For me, its a matter of principle, not practical security.

I'm an Ubuntu user (though if I keep having to use Unity I don't know for how much longer). Where would Ubuntu be (except the vast Unity mistake crap bs which has nothing to do with Debian), Ubuntu (except for Unity) rocks! That means Debian must also rock, happy birthday Debian!

I won't try to convince you not to switch to Debian, but you don't actually need to use Unity on Ubuntu. At work we use Ubuntu, so I just installed a different WM (Awesome, in my case) and logged out and back in.

sudo apt-get install gnome-shell also goes a long way to make Ubuntu usable.

I tried Gnome Shell. For me Gnome classic is better but since I keep encountering Ubuntu systems that use Unity, I feel like I should keep trying to like it.

(No one does this yet, so I wanna be the first one) Happy birthday debian!

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