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Our Blogs Open Sauce Why Debian is different | Why Debian is different |
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| by Sam Varghese | |
| Tuesday, 19 August 2008 | |
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If one goes back to the original manifesto , issued by founder Ian Murdock in 1993, and last revised in June 1994, one sees these words: "Many distributions have started out as fairly good systems, but as time passes attention to maintaining the distribution becomes a secondary concern." (Those uncomfortable with the word manifesto can use the weasel word vision instead.) Murdock's reference was to Soft Landing Systems Linux, which was, at that time, the best known commercial distribution. The Slackware Linux project had kicked off too, but according to its founder Patrick Volkerding, "Slackware started in early 1993, but it wasn't until the middle of 1994 that I was contacted by Michael Johnston of Morse Telecommunications and asked if I was interested in having them publish Slackware commercially." Arguably, the problem of maintaining a system has been addressed better by Debian than any other distribution. There are various package managment programs - dpkg and apt to name two - which provide a way to install packages and keep one's system updated using a number of sources. There are other tools such as aptitude and synaptic, the latter providing a graphical interface. These applications provide varying functionality for managing one's system. Another statement which Murdock made about Debian was that it was "an attempt to create a non-commercial distribution that will be able to effectively compete in the commercial market". Fifteen years on, it is doubtful whether anyone will be able to contest this statement. Debian has proved its merits to the extent that it has been the base for the most successful desktop distribution - Ubuntu - put out by a commercial entity. It is also the base for the best live distribution - Knoppix. |
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