Debian is a community-driven Linux distribution with a very large number of packages and many supported architectures. Several distributions derive from it in some form, the best-known being Ubuntu.
Philosophy
The goal of the Debian project is to produce a free operating system. The Debian Free Software Guidelines are one of the notable definitions of free software, and the Open Source Definition derives from it. Debian provides a small amount of non-free software, though it is not formally part of Debian.
Releases
At any point in time, there are three distributions of Debian:
- stable: the officially released distribution.
- testing: the preparation ground for “stable”. This can be seen as a rolling release.
- unstable: the latest packages as they come in.
In addition to Debian GNU/Linux, there are projects for BSD-based versions of Debian and Debian GNU/Hurd.
Documentation
- FAQ
- Installation manual (including supported hardware)
- Debian Reference
- Wiki
- Mailing list archives
- Security information
- Bug reports (
http://bugs.debian.org/42to see bug #42) - Available packages (quick search:
http://packages.debian.org/package-name) - Manual pages (e.g. man(1))
Common tasks
- Install a package:
apt-get install package-name - Apply updates:
apt-get update; apt-get upgrade
