Debian
Debian is a free Linux distribution with thousands of contributors from all over the world. It serves as the basis for a number of other distributions, most notably Ubuntu and Knoppix. All of Debian is open source software, conforming to the Debian Free Software Guidelines. Many architectures are supported, including x86, AMD64, PowerPC, SPARC, ARM, etc. The latest version, code-named etch, was released on April 8, 2007.
History
Debian was created by Ian Murdock in 1993. The Debian Social Contract, a document describing the moral guidelines followed by the Debian project, was first published in July 1997.
Releases
Codenames for releases are inspired by the names of characters from the movie Toy Story. Previous stable releases have been named buzz (1.1), rex (1.2), bo (1.3), hamm (2.0), slink (2.1), potato (2.2), woody (3.0), sarge (3.1) and etch (4.0). There is always a "testing" version, which is periodically frozen into a stable release, and an "unstable" version, where packages are initially uploaded.
External Links
- www.debian.org - Debian project homepage