The noticeable lack of hard facts disturbed me, so I decided to see if I could find any indicators of Debian’s health on-line. On Facebook, Vaughan-Nicholls explained that his basic question was, “‘Where will the new Debian developers come from to keep it going?’ I see 20-something developers working on Android or Ubuntu, Debian, not [...]

It wasn’t too long ago that I did a very late review of Debian 5. I’m happy to say that it didn’t take me nearly as long to get around to the latest release, Debian 6 Squeeze. If you aren’t familiar with Debian then this release is a great chance to learn about a distro [...]

Just a number of days ago Debian released Squeeze as the new stable version. I decided to test the upgrade one or two of CC’s servers to see how it would go. The upgrade process was standard and went without problems, as one comes to expect with Debian. Any problems with the upgrade didn’t manifest [...]

Finally, after 24 Months of constant developement Debian Squeeze 6.0 has been released today, this release comes with many updates and new features, it includes the KDE Plasma Desktop and Applications, the debianGNOME, Xfce, and LXDE desktop environments…

When I asked the rhetorical question, “Is Debian Linux still relevant?” I knew I’d cause a ruckus. But, I also felt the question needed to be asked: For Debian’s own good. Seriously.

The new Debian release is notable in many ways, not least of which is that it is the first version ever to incorporate an entirely free Linux kernel, using only software published under the GNU General Public License (GPL) or other free licenses compliant with the official Open Source Definition.

If you look at the feature list for Debian 6, released on February 6, it’s easy to be underwhelmed. This is especially true when measuring Debian against its offspring, like Ubuntu. Looks, however, can be deceiving — Debian is as relevant as it ever was, despite opinions to the contrary.

Once upon a time, a new Debian Linux release was a big deal in Linux circles. It still is, but its child, Ubuntu Linux, is the Linux distribution that gets all the headlines. There’s a reason for that. Over the years, Debian has become more and more a Linux just for Linux fanatics while the [...]

As predicted – the release is starting this weekend 5/6 February 2011. IRC channels are starting to buzz — irc.debian.org #debian-release – and there’s also a live commentary session at http://identi.ca/debian

A lot of Debian users prefer running Unstable/Sid or Testing on the desktop. I may very well take that route myself. There’s also talk of a Constantly Usable Testing branch of Debian.

With debian (6.0) squeeze release just days away, I have been following some of the news closely. My interest is in free software that can be modified and distributed under reasonable terms, and much of what Debian does I like.

openSuse’s Vincent Untz organized a meeting around cross-platform application installer in Germany. The meeting was attended by developers representing major distros. Debian is one of the most reputed distributions, which also wears the crown of being the father/mother of popular distributions like Ubuntu and Linux Mint. We talked to Stefano Zacchiroli, Debian project leader, to [...]

At any rate, Debian is not for newbies who don’t have someone to hold their hand. I really like it, and it’s support is almost as long as for RHEL and clones.

The idea was indeed to challenge the meme that, in the era of distributions that release every 6 months, a distribution with a release cycle of circa 2 years (like Debian, considering the past 5 years) is not a project that deserves your attention anymore. Is it really the case? In the talk I (obviously) [...]

The next release of the Debian GNU/Linux distribution is likely to take place this weekend. The last release, Lenny, was made on February 14, 2009. However, given that Debian only makes a release when it is ready, and not according to some artificial timetable, the date could slip.

The current leader of the Debian GNU/Linux project, Stefano Zacchiroli (pictured below, left), posed the question with a little more force – Why the bloody hell should you care about Debian? – in a talk at the 12th Australian national Linux conference today.

Why wouldn’t a Linux distribution project wish to showcase the distribution by hosting its infrastructure using its own system? I completely share the underlying assumption. Eating its own dog food is very important if you want to build a Linux distribution and claim with some confidence that it’s of quality and usable. Debian does quite [...]

The Debian Project would like to invite representatives of distributions derived from Debian to participate in a census[1] of Debian derivatives. In addition we would like to invite representatives of distributions derived from Debian to join the Debian derivatives[2] front desk[3][4]. Debian encourages members of derivative distributions to contribute their ideas, patches, bug reports to [...]

Once again, a polemic regarding how to properly integrate the Ruby language and libraries with the Debian distribution has been ignited. Similar arguments were presented in November and December 2008 and September 2010

One [clue] to surface early this morning was mentioned on the Debian Forum by Sid user Revenger. He noticed during updates this morning that the latest base-files package changes the codename from “Debian GNU Linux squeeze/sid” to “Debian GNU/Linux 6.0.”

Previously the Debian logo in the lower right side of the Grub screen tended to obscure the portion of the boot message that tells you how many seconds are left until the machine boots automatically.

Every piece of software written has bugs. From the insignificant to the showstopper, bugs are there despite the herculean efforts of developers. But thanks to a new Debian project, many previously undetected bugs may finally get squashed.

It’s with these changing-world realizations in mind that I set out on my fifth-generation system designed to re-capture the super-powers that I lost in the Web’s evolution. Or rather: what good is being an old-school superhero if everyone on the planet just got better powers than you?

A couple of months ago, Debian project membership voted, after extensive discussion, to implement a fundamental change in the Debian community: to welcome as members people who make a valuable contribution to the project, even if they are contributing something other than source code.

I first met Debian because of Ubuntu (I was using Fedora in that time), I was introduced to Ubuntu Dapper Drake in August 2006 more or less, and then when I realized it was based on Debian, I decided to test Debian, and started with Debian Sarge the stable release in that time.

Debian Unstable (also known as sid) is one of the 3 distributions that Debian provides (along with Stable and Testing). It’s not conceived as a product for end-users, instead it’s the place where contributors are uploading newer packages.

The Debian project has been working in removing non-free firmware from the Linux kernel shipped with Debian for the past two release cycles. At the time of the releases of Debian 4.0 “Etch” [1] and 5.0 “Lenny” [2], however, it was not yet possible to ship Linux kernels stripped of all non-free firmware bits. Back [...]

Debian Sarge has been added to the OpenVZ Template lineup today. This will allow admins to provision Debian Sarge distributions to grant access to Debian users to the open source software that is available on each and every Debian VPS Servers built on a OpenVZ Project server

I interviewed David Kalnischkies who is not (yet) a Debian developer. But he’s contributing to one of the most important software within Debian—the APT package manager—since 2009. You can already see him in many places in Debian sharing his APT knowledge when needed.

The debian-legal is a great source of knowledge about legal issues related to FLOSS. A couple of days ago one of the contributors sent a mail informing that a computer shop has taken the Debian logo and used it for his business.