Cap. 1. The Debian Project

Before diving right into the technology, let us have a look at what the Debian Project is, its objectives, its means, and its operations.

1.1. What Is Debian?

Debian is a GNU/Linux distribution. We will discuss what a distribution is in further detail in Secțiune 1.5, „The Role of Distributions”, but for now, we will simply state that it is a complete operating system, including software and systems for installation and management, all based on the Linux kernel and free software (especially those from the GNU project).

When he created Debian, in 1993, under the leadership of the FSF, Ian Murdock had clear objectives, which he expressed in the Debian Manifesto. The free operating system that he sought would have to have two principal features. First, quality: Debian would be developed with the greatest care, to be worthy of the Linux kernel. It would also be a non-commercial distribution, sufficiently credible to compete with major commercial distributions. This double ambition would, in his eyes, only be achieved by opening the Debian development process just like that of Linux and the GNU project. Thus, peer review would continuously improve the product.

1.1.1. A Multi-Platform Operating System

COMMUNITY Ian Murdock's journey

Ian Murdock, founder of the Debian project, was its first leader, from 1993 to 1996. After passing the baton to Bruce Perens, Ian took a less public role. He returned to working behind the scenes of the free software community, creating the Progeny company, with the intention of marketing a distribution derived from Debian. This venture was, sadly, a commercial failure, and development was abandoned. The company, after several years of scraping by, simply as a service provider, eventually filed for bankruptcy in April of 2007. Of the various projects initiated by Progeny, only discover still remains. It is an automatic hardware detection tool.

Ian Murdock died on 28 December 2015 in San Francisco after a series of worrying tweets where he reported having been assaulted by police. In July 2016 it was announced that his death had been ruled a suicide.

Debian, remaining true to its initial principles, has had so much success that, today, it has reached a tremendous size. The 12 architectures offered cover 10 hardware architectures and 2 kernels (Linux and FreeBSD, although the FreeBSD-based ports are not part of the set of officially supported architectures). Furthermore, with more than 25,000 source packages, the available software can meet almost any need that one could have, whether at home or in the enterprise.

The sheer size of the distribution can be inconvenient: it is really unreasonable to distribute 14 DVD-ROMs to install a complete version on a standard PC… This is why Debian is increasingly considered as a “meta-distribution”, from which one extracts more specific distributions intended for a particular public: Debian-Desktop for traditional office use, Debian-Edu for education and pedagogical use in an academic environment, Debian-Med for medical applications, Debian-Junior for young children, etc. A more complete list of the subprojects can be found in the section dedicated to that purpose, see Secțiune 1.3.3.1, „Existing Debian Sub-Projects”.

These partial views of Debian are organized in a well-defined framework, thus guaranteeing hassle-free compatibility between the various “sub-distributions”. All of them follow the general planning for release of new versions. And since they build on the same foundations, they can be easily extended, completed, and personalized with applications available in the Debian repositories.

All the Debian tools operate in this direction: debian-cd has for a long time now allowed the creation of a set of CD-ROMs containing only a pre-selected set of packages; debian-installer is also a modular installer, easily adapted to special needs. APT will install packages from various origins, while guaranteeing the overall consistency of the system.

BACK TO BASICS To each computer, its architecture

The term “architecture” indicates a type of computer (the most known include Mac or PC). Each architecture is differentiated primarily according to its processor, usually incompatible with other processors. These differences in hardware involve varying means of operation, thus requiring that software be compiled specifically for each architecture.

Most software available in Debian is written in portable programming languages: the same source code can be compiled for various architectures. In effect, an executable binary, always compiled for a specific architecture, will not usually function on the other architectures.

Recall that each program is created by writing source code; this source code is a text file composed of instructions in a given programming language. Before you can use the software, it is necessary to compile the source code, which means transforming the code into a binary (a series of machine instructions executable by the processor). Each programming language has a specific compiler to execute this operation (for example, gcc for the C programming language).

1.1.2. The Quality of Free Software

Debian follows all of the principles of Free Software, and its new versions are not released until they are ready. Developers are not forced by some set schedule to rush to meet an arbitrary deadline. People frequently complain of the long time between Debian's stable releases, but this caution also ensures Debian's legendary reliability: long months of testing are indeed necessary for the full distribution to receive the “stable” label.

Debian will not compromise on quality: all known critical bugs are resolved in any new version, even if this requires the initially forecast release date to be pushed back.

1.1.3. The Legal Framework: A Non-Profit Organization

Legally speaking, Debian is a project managed by an American not-for-profit, volunteer association. The project has around a thousand Debian developers, but brings together a far greater number of contributors (translators, bug reporters, artists, casual developers, etc.).

To carry its mission to fruition, Debian has a large infrastructure, with many servers connected across the Internet, offered by many sponsors.

COMMUNITY Behind Debian, the SPI association, and local branches

Debian doesn't own any server in its own name, since it is only a project within the Software in the Public Interest association, and SPI manages the hardware and financial aspects (donations, purchase of hardware, etc.). While initially created specifically for the Debian project, this association now hosts other free software projects, especially the PostgreSQL database, Freedesktop.org (project for standardization of various parts of modern graphical desktop environments, such as GNOME and KDE Plasma), and the Libre Office office suite.

→ http://www.spi-inc.org/

In addition to SPI, various local associations collaborate closely with Debian in order to generate funds for Debian, without centralizing everything in the USA: they are known as “Trusted Organizations” in the Debian jargon. This setup avoids prohibitive international transfer costs, and fits well with the decentralized nature of the project.

While the list of trusted organizations is rather short, there are many more Debian-related associations whose goal is to promote Debian: Debian France, Debian-ES, debian.ch, and others around the world. Do not hesitate to join your local association and support the project!

→ https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Auditor/Organizations

→ https://france.debian.net/

→ http://www.debian-es.org/

→ https://debian.ch/