Penguin

Differences between version 11 and predecessor to the previous major change of Debian.

Other diffs: Previous Revision, Previous Author, or view the Annotated Edit History

Newer page: version 11 Last edited on Wednesday, April 12, 2006 7:06:50 pm by CraigBox Revert
Older page: version 9 Last edited on Friday, June 10, 2005 1:39:49 pm by CraigBox Revert
@@ -1 +1,34 @@
-< ?plugin RedirectTo page= DebianLinux ?>  
+Debian is a [GNU]/[Linux] distribution. The name comes from the founder of the project, Ian Murdock, and his wife, Debra. Hence "Deb" and "Ian".  
+  
+If you use Debian, you tend to love Debian. Why ?  
+  
+__Non-commercial__ :  
+ It's not controlled by a corporate entity.  
+__[APT]__ :  
+ To install anything you just type <tt>apt-get install ''package''</tt> and you're away. Dependencies are all handled for you. No more rabbiting around the internet for an [RPM] that might do what you want it to do...  
+__Runs on ''lots'' of platforms__ :  
+ i386, Motorola 68k, Alpha, Sparc, PowerPC, ARM, MIPS, HP PA-RISC, IA64 (Itanium) and S390. AMD64 coming soon!  
+__Incredibly easy to maintain__ :  
+ <tt>apt-get upgrade</tt> every night and you'll be running the latest versions of everything.  
+__Very true to Linux__ :  
+ Some purists dont like RedHat's directory structures. It's also pragmatic __and__ ideological; what you know as Debian today is Debian GNU/Linux, and they are also looking at Debian GNU/HURD.  
+  
+There are some reasons not to like Debian, the most obvious of which is that the "stable" distribution, while historically __very__ stable, achieves this by being up to three years 'out of date'. [Ubuntu], a derivative of Debian, addresses this by having regular (six-monthly) release cycles. Also, Debian has a mentality of "we have official packages for everything", meaning that $new_thing has to be uploaded into the repository before you can get it. However, more people are packaging things in third party repositories that you can add to your AptSourcesList, and you can always install things from source.  
+  
+The DebianLinux PackageManagement format is [Deb]. See DebianPackaging on how to create these, or DebianPackageTools for how to use dpkg(8)/[APT]/other programs that install .deb packages.  
+  
+See NewZealandLinuxMirrors for places in NewZealand to get [Deb]s/[ISO]s.  
+  
+debian.org have an [online FAQ | http://www.debian.org/doc/FAQ/]; we have a local DebianFaq as well as some handy DebianNotes.  
+  
+Read about the different FlavoursOfDebian.  
+  
+For people who want to install DebianLinux but are scared off by stories about its installer, there's [The Very Verbose Debian 3.0 Installation Walkthrough | http://www.osnews.com/story.php ?news_id=2016].  
+  
+See also:  
+* [ Debian Wiki | http://wiki.debian.net]  
+* [ A Debian Grimoire | http://deb.riseup.net/ ]  
+* [ Debian Help (UK) | http://www.debianhelp.co.uk/ ]  
+  
+----  
+Part of CategoryDistribution and CategoryDebian