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Debian's anniversary

On August 16, 1993 Ian Murdock announced "the imminent completion of a brand-new Linux release, which I'm calling the Debian Linux Release."

Versions 0.01 through 0.90 were released over the next few months, with 0.91 release in January 1994 followed by two 0.93Rx releases in 1995. The number of developers grew and many of the policy and procedures that are used today have their roots in these earlier times, when each package was assigned a developer and a new master server was donated to Debian by HP.

New package management tools dpkg and dselect were the first new tools developed for Debian. The beginnings of Ian's vision of an easy-to-update system.

By the time the first official 1.x version was released (June 17, 1996), Ian Murdock was no longer the Debian Leader. Bruce Perens took over that role in March 1996. Bruce was working at Pixar at that time and the movie Toy Story was produced by Pixar, so it came to be that Debian releases are named after Toy Story characters, beginning with Debian 1.1 "Buzz".

Overall, Debian today stacks up pretty well with Ian's early vision. In some ways it has exceeded anything that could be imagined in 1993. It can be installed as a sleek and slim system, though with nearly 19,000 packages just an apt-get away, an installation may not stay so slim.

A stable Debian install will not contain the most up-to-date of everything, but then for many people running Debian on production servers, that is a good thing. Debian unstable "sid" does provide the up-to-date and easily updatable system Ian wanted to create.

Back in 1993 many people didn't have Internet connections, or had very slow dial-up modems. Part of Ian's vision was to make it easy for the non-connected to get packages and updates. These days that is no longer a priority, though it is always possible to obtain installation CDs.

Debian's Social Contract has guided thousands of volunteers to create perhaps the largest repository of free/open source software anywhere. So thanks Ian, and to all the volunteers that make Debian great.

Historical facts for this article came from A Brief History of Debian.

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New Releases

Ark Linux releases 2007.1

Ark Linux has released 2007.1 and 2007.1 Live. The release includes KDE 3.5.7, OpenOffice.org 2.2.1 with full KDE integration, glibc 2.6.1, gcc 4.2.1, Xorg 7.3, amaroK 1.4.7, better hardware detection, and many bug fixes and updates.

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Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 updated

The Debian project has announced the first update of its stable distribution Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 "etch". This update mainly adds corrections for security problems to the stable release, along with a few adjustment to serious problems. The first update also corrects a few important issues that have been noticed too late in the release process.

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Announcing Opyum 0.0.2 for Fedora

Opyum 0.0.2 is the first stable release of a new Offline Package Manager for Fedora. Opyum was developed by Debarshi Ray as part of the Summer of Code.

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SmoothWall Express 3.0 Released

SmoothWall Express 3.0 has been released. SmoothWall is a hardened distribution intended for use on dedicated router/firewall systems. New features include ClamAV email filtering, tools for filtering (and recording!) instant messaging sessions, real-time statistics, time-based traffic blocking, a developer edition, and more.

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New Distributions

LinuxMCE

LinuxMCE is a free, open source distribution based on Kubuntu. It includes a complete whole-house media solution with PVR and distributed media, and the most advanced smarthome solution available. It is stable, easy to use, and requires no knowledge of Linux and only basic computer skills. The current version is 0704.

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Distribution Newsletters

Fedora Weekly News Issue 101

The Fedora Weekly News for August 13, 2007 is out. Ask Fedora looks at "Location For Menu Entries And Customization" and "64-bit Java Plugin". Also "Fedora Daily Package Articles in Chinese", "MediaWiki - Collaborative publishing", "RenRot - Rename and rotate photos", "Wednesday Why: Logins and Sessions", "GKrellM - System monitoring tool", "TaxiPilot - Drive a Space Taxi" and "Fedora Daily Package Weekly Video Summary", and other topics.

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Gentoo Weekly Newsletter

The Gentoo Weekly Newsletter for August 13, 2007 covers LWE San Francisco, Simplified Chinese Gentoo Handbook, Gentoo Screenshot Contest and more.

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Ubuntu Weekly News: Issue #53

The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter for August 18, 2007 covers Celebratory Hug Day for GNOME, updates on compromised community servers and LoCo options, LinuxMCE Media Centre addon for Kubuntu, the Portuguese Team's effort to put FOSS in schools, and much much more.

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DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 216

The DistroWatch Weekly for August 20, 2007 is out. "Another busy week of beta testing ahead, with Mandriva, openSUSE and Ubuntu all readying their latest development builds to be released later this week. In the news section: the Ubuntu developers worry about regressions in Compiz Fusion, Puppy Linux introduces experimental features, NimbleX delivers a world's first 100 MB live CD with KDE, and Trustix Secure Linux finds itself being slowly abandoned - both by its developers and its users. In the featured article of the week we'll take a look at the current status of Gentoo Linux and question the project's ever increasing complexity."

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Newsletters and articles of interest

Ark Linux Releases 2007.1 and Announces KDE 4 Plans (KDE.News)

KDE.News looks forward to Ark Linux 2007.2, which will preview KDE 4.0. "The release of Ark Linux 2007.1 also marks the beginning of the development cycle for Ark Linux 2007.2 - over the next few days, we will upgrade our development tree "dockyard-devel" to snapshots of the upcoming KDE 4.0 desktop. Ark Linux 2007.2 is expected to be released shortly after KDE 4.0 - a pre-release for developers and people who are curious about KDE 4.0 will be made available as soon as the migration is complete."

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Technalign releases new community based distribution, Pioneer Linux (DesktopLinux)

DesktopLinux looks at Technalign, the company behind Pioneer Linux. "Technalign, developers of both the community and commercial Pioneer Linux operating systems, recently announced the release of Pioneer Explorer 1.0 and the Programs folder. In the past, Technalign built its Linux distributions from Ubuntu, Debian and MEPIS codebases. While this new distribution still shows its Ubuntu/Debian roots, it's now going in its own direction."

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Distribution reviews

Freespire aspires, but fails to inspire (Linux.com)

Linux.com has a review of Freespire. "Freespire, the free as in beer version of the Linspire Linux distribution, this month released Freespire 2.0, the first version of the operating system based on the popular Ubuntu distribution, and the first to contain proprietary codecs and drivers. Despite its attractive appearance, it left me with mixed feelings."

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