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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 apt-get install package 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
apt-get upgrade 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of which is that the "stable" distribution, while historically very stable, achieves this by being up to three years 'out of date'.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 Debs/ISOs.

debian.org have an online 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.

See also:


Part of CategoryDistribution and CategoryDebian