Debian turns 23

Debian is my favourite OS[0]. I&#x27;ve been using it full time for years: I use it on my desktop and laptop (Debian testing), and servers (Debian stable). I&#x27;ve installed it with big success on parents and siblings computers, and the extended family&#x27;s computers.<p>Debian takes freedom seriously[1]<p>It&#x27;s getting better with age:<p>- Since Sarge (2005) there&#x27;s been release every ~2 years<p>- Debian LTS allows you to run Debian securely for 5 years (with caveats)<p>Things I agree with, that may be somewhat controversial:<p>- Debian takes packaging software seriously (it splits the application and development files)<p>- Debian follows the FHS (e.g. config goes in &#x2F;etc, data goes in &#x2F;var&#x2F;lib, etc)<p>- Debian stable is stable. Apart from security patches, it really doesn&#x27;t change.<p>Other great things:<p>- Debian is a great base to build on (see the many derivatives[2])<p>Cool things to come:<p>- Reproducible builds[3]<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.debian.org&#x2F;social_contract" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.debian.org&#x2F;social_contract</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Debian#Derivatives" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Debian#Derivatives</a><p>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.debian.org&#x2F;ReproducibleBuilds" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.debian.org&#x2F;ReproducibleBuilds</a><p>[0] I think Debian is one of the few Linux distros that can truly call itself an OS, as opposed to just a &quot;distro&quot;

~13 years ago, I picked up a KNOPPIX 3.3 CD on the front cover of Australian Personal Computer and experienced the wonders of a Debian-based distro for the first time.<p>13 years later, and here I am, still using Debian on my home desktop, my personal laptop, my work machine and my VPS, and working professionally as a Free Software developer.<p>So thanks, Debian devs!

I understand the desire to keep corporate communication positive, but it&#x27;s sad to see the absence of Ian Murdock so soon after his passing.

I&#x27;m old enough to remember all the &quot;Debian is dying&quot; posts on Slashdot back in the day. As a very happy convert since the potato days, it&#x27;s amazing how far Debian has come and a testament to the power of free software. Go Debian!

Debian you are my hero! And I cannot think of a more fitting tribute to all of Ian&#x27;s hard work. This is how he should be remembered.

I&#x27;ve been using various forms of Unix, Linux , and BSD since 1998. Early days were a lot of Slackware, and eventually moved into FreeBSD, where I was happy for years. In the end the usability, stability, and package management of the Debian system has me using it for all of my server setups. I&#x27;ve found it the easiest of the Linux environments to get up and running quickly. It&#x27;s what I would consider the &quot;standard&quot; for a Linux OS at this point.

After fighting RPM hell so much in the late 90s, Debian linux was such a revelation. I&#x27;ve been using Debian and its derivatives ever since.

I used to use debian. But their bureaucratic self righteous organization have -at my own personal- opinion created a drift between them and upstream packages.<p>Countless decisions of debian maintainers (that are proficient at packaging and NOT at coding) to think of themselves has «smarter» than upstream open source software maintainers have resulted in countless teeth grinding:<p>- the openSSL randomness «fix» that resulted in openSSH being shipped with only 65535 potential keys<p>- the complexity of building clean src vs bin packages (in opposition with RPM or slackware packaging) and the numerous kombinat called debian helpers makes packaging a hell,<p>- latex packages being a tad broken<p>- ruby&#x2F;python packages requiring a tad of contorsion to have them work the way they were inteded to work natively (the overzealous package slicing which in python&#x2F;ruby required you to install non trivial package to use gem&#x2F;pip)<p>- the multiplication of packages for «ease of use» that cluttered debian with so many fixed dependencies hell that it makes stable often hard and slow to upgrade vs testing that can break and the hell of version pinpointing<p>- the bureaucratic approach of splitting configurations in so many directories that it is mind blowing and as usual not always following upstream simpler conventions<p>- poor default config (like apache cgi-bin being global to help install 3rd party modules)<p>- and the debian community above all that has taken «the melon» and kind of been evolving to be a tad overconfident leading to impose choices that are more than disputable to the users (such of course as systemd) but let&#x27;s say that ubuntu having sucked most of their community of maintainer during the split it is even more obvious that they have a «microsoft» syndrome of we know better than you what is good for you (desktop choices...)<p>As a result, I have almost happily left debian as my main OS, but I still am hating that «securing&#x2F;hardening» an OS after default install has become the norm in free&#x2F;open source main distribution.<p>The more I have seen open source project take a turn of «sectarism» the less I am convinced in the so called intrinsic values of openness in free software.<p>Yet, there are still enough valuable open source projects out there for my comfort

For my birthday in 1996, I ordered a Debian CD and some game. I played the game once or twice, but am still using Ubuntu, a Debian derivative. Debian has its faults, but has done a lot of good work over the years.

I&#x27;ve been using Debian for ever .. but honestly it&#x27;s mostly b&#x2F;c the critical mass it has. If I have a problem it&#x27;s pretty straightforward to find solutions. I think there are distributions that are more advanced and interesting (NixOS) and with quicker updates to their packages (Arch), but since I don&#x27;t want to fiddle with my computer all day I just use use Debian.<p>Maybe some day something a little more modern will take off but for the time being I&#x27;ll stick to what works - Debian

around 17 years ago i remember flapping betwee slack and debian .... debian package management was always superior so i stayed ... still using debian today. Also remember that I&#x27;ve always liked gnome-panel but not the whole desktop env , so i would use window maker + gnome-panel :) .

Never did get into Debian, only because the configure files were in different locations than red hat, at least back in the day. Using fedora and Slackware.

I a week ago I upgraded an oldstable debian installation to stable and now it hangs on shutdown and reboot due to systemd.<p>Thanks Debian.

Does anyone know what happened to the case of the debian founder?

Don&#x27;t use stable. Stable doesn&#x27;t mean what you think it means. It means that, among other things, it doesn&#x27;t get any major updates to core software.