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Happy 20th birthday Debian

bits.debian.org

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Re: Happy 20th birthday Debian

#41

Post by jcurbo »

aspensmonster wrote: post #3

Happy birthday to my first permanent GNU/Linux distribution, from Etch all the way to Jessie. It's --you've, we've-- come a long way. I hope to see the community remain as strong as ever. The Debian forums were always my weapon of last resort when Google didn't have the answer to my problem, and not once was I let down. And best of luck to the new DPL!

Hamm here - after tinkering with Red Hat (5.x I think?) I switched to Debian and I've used it ever since. I still have slink CDs somewhere plus the bumper sticker I got with them, which I laminated and is now attached to my Debian home server. (which you can see here: https://twitter.com/jcurbo/status/368424063422566401/photo/1)

Re: Happy 20th birthday Debian

#42

Post by dewarrn1 »

Happy birthday, indeed! I love the independent spirit of the Debian project, including such extraordinary measures as wrapping their userland around the FreeBSD kernel in addition to Linux[0]. Recently, I've enjoyed using Crunchbang[1], a slick, simple desktop built on top of Debian. To the next 20 years!

[0] http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/ [1] http://crunchbang.org/

Re: Happy 20th birthday Debian

#43

Post by fingerprinter »

sigzero wrote: post #40
fingerprinter wrote: post #36

Very glad to see Debian hit 20! Pretty awesome. Though, I have to admit, I downloaded Wheezy and gave it a go. Holy cow, I'm soooooo glad Ubuntu exists. It's amazing all the small touches that Ubuntu does to make Debian unbelievably usable. That being said, Ubuntu wouldn't exist without Debian. Way to go, Debian!

Ubuntu desktop and Debian servers. Life is good.

What do you like about Debian servers of Ubuntu server? I have always used Ubuntu for all my servers and never bothered looking at debian for that.

The big reason I chose Ubuntu and just ran with it is support and security updates. Ubuntu LTS, I believe still, is supported for much longer than Debian is.

Re: Happy 20th birthday Debian

#44

Post by prg318 »

leoedin wrote: post #13
toyg wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first release was Potato. I still remember downloading so many (3? 6?) CDs... God, I feel old. I don't use Debian much these days, certainly not as a desktop, but it will forever be the "real" Linux distribution in my heart. Without the ongoing work of umpteen Debian package managers, you wouldn't have Ubuntu (and all its humongous downstream), Knoppix, and so on.

I spent about a week downloading perhaps 7 CDs for Woody (I guess it would have been 2002). I'm fairly sure I never actually installed packages from most of the CDs.

When I first installed Woody, I didn't know that you could "apt-get" from the net. I don't remember ever using any of the CDs but 1, but I still have all seven for nostalgic purposes :3

Re: Happy 20th birthday Debian

#45

Post by m_myers »

leoedin wrote: post #13
toyg wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first release was Potato. I still remember downloading so many (3? 6?) CDs... God, I feel old. I don't use Debian much these days, certainly not as a desktop, but it will forever be the "real" Linux distribution in my heart. Without the ongoing work of umpteen Debian package managers, you wouldn't have Ubuntu (and all its humongous downstream), Knoppix, and so on.

I spent about a week downloading perhaps 7 CDs for Woody (I guess it would have been 2002). I'm fairly sure I never actually installed packages from most of the CDs.

I downloaded all 7 CDs for Woody, but didn't actually know how to burn a CD from an ISO, so I ended up with 7 coasters. I figured out my mistake and tried again the next week, but this time I picked a distro that only needed one CD: Ubuntu (Hoary). Never managed to get back to straight Debian since then.

Re: Happy 20th birthday Debian

#46

Post by drone »

ics wrote: post #11
mhurron wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Debian is a large part of that history isn't it? Debian was an early full Linux distribution, but it wasn't the first. Debians big (early) contribution was apt, which could install packages and resolve dependencies over the internet and made package management easier than rpm based distributions of the time.

Slackware's 20th birthday was just last month! It's a little hard to view in landscape mode but Wikipedia has this cool graphic to show the development of Linux distros.

I guess not surprisingly, Debian was the distro that switched me off of Slackware. I remember the defining moments for each distribution for me: in 1993, when we set my computer down on a friend's pool table next to a stack of 20+ disks with Slackware on them. (Took the plunge.) And the moment a coworker told me "just install Debian, and use apt-get." (Stopped having to fiddle with configure and make files for things that I "just needed.")

Linux has come a long way... =)

Re: Happy 20th birthday Debian

#47

Post by drone »

fingerprinter wrote: post #43
sigzero wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ubuntu desktop and Debian servers. Life is good.

What do you like about Debian servers of Ubuntu server? I have always used Ubuntu for all my servers and never bothered looking at debian for that. The big reason I chose Ubuntu and just ran with it is support and security updates. Ubuntu LTS, I believe still, is supported for much longer than Debian is.

LTS was a big deal for me switching over to Ubuntu for servers. We had compliance issues (all software must be vendor supported) with Debian, and not having to replace the entire OS on otherwise perfectly functional servers just because a new release came out six months ago.

Re: Happy 20th birthday Debian

#48

Post by bcent »

kunai wrote: post #30

I recently switched from Ubuntu to Debian, and I keep wondering to myself why I didn't switch much sooner. The lack of any integration with a specific desktop environment, and having pure GNU and Linux underneath a pure DE is something that is really quite satisfying. It gives you modularity and customizability without having anything break or feel out of place; something that often happened to me while switching DEs…

Yea... I went from Debian to Ubuntu about 5 years ago. Switched back recently, as I've found the farther the Ubuntu gets away from Debian... the less I like it.

<3 Debian.

Re: Happy 20th birthday Debian

#49

Post by ics »

ics wrote: post #11
mhurron wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Debian is a large part of that history isn't it? Debian was an early full Linux distribution, but it wasn't the first. Debians big (early) contribution was apt, which could install packages and resolve dependencies over the internet and made package management easier than rpm based distributions of the time.

Slackware's 20th birthday was just last month! It's a little hard to view in landscape mode but Wikipedia has this cool graphic to show the development of Linux distros.

Apparently dozing and posting doesn't work. Here's the graphic I was talking about: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Linux_Di...

Re: Happy 20th birthday Debian

#50

Post by jlgaddis »

My first experience with Linux came after downloading Slackware's "A" and "N" sets and writing the images to 5.25" floppy disks. Somehow, this complete "n00b" managed to get Linux installed and get the machine connected to the Internet via dial-up (which was quite a chore back then).

A few weeks later, a handful of people I chatted with on IRC encouraged me to get rid of Slackware and install Debian, so I did. It was a huge learning curve and certainly not the best choice of distribution for a new user but I'm glad I stuck with it. I was forced how to do everything from a command prompt and reading TFM wasn't an option at the time, it was a requirement.

In the 17 years since, I have never regretted my decision. There was a short period where the internal politics became overwhelming and I almost switched, but I told myself to hold off. I am glad I did.

I'm a big fan of OS X and I've flirted with other distributions over the years but I always come back to Debian for my personal machines. In a large environment I actually prefer another distribution but Debian will always be my true love.

I extend thanks to anyone who has been involved in the project over the years and helped move it forward. I owe all of you a beer.

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