Debian at 17: As Important as Ever

“It’s not exactly a milestone birthday, but Debian’s 17th
birthday deserves a bit of recognition. Ian Murdock’s baby came
into the world on August 16th, 1993 and has been a force for free
software ever since. Debian might seem a bit crufty compared to
newer, faster-moving distros, but it’s still one of the most
important.

“Debian kicked off when Linux distributions were still a
relatively novel concept. The only older surviving distro is
Slackware, Red Hat didn’t enter the picture until 1994. Depending
on how you look at it, Debian either enjoys a very small niche user
base, or one of the largest of any Linux distribution. Strictly
speaking, Debian is widely (though it’s hard to say how widely)
deployed on servers and not quite as popular on desktop systems
compared to Fedora, Linux Mint, or Ubuntu.

“Then again, Ubuntu is based on Debian, and Linux Mint is based
on Ubuntu. One could make a case that all Ubuntu users are also
Debian users, too.”

Complete
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