

Happy birthday Debian - neya
http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120816

======
d0m
Anecdote (I assume I'll get down-voted since it's HN but I don't give a fuck,
please yourself):

In my city, in Montreal, people love to honk all over the place when their
favourite sport team wins. It's freakin annoying.. I'm not a hockey fan and I
couldn't care less that a team just won a tournament or whatever. Don't get me
wrong, I'm happy to see people happy about it.. but it's not an excuse to go
honk in the streets at 10 PM and yelling non-stop.

Anyway, 2 years ago, a Linux kernel was just released and I decided to have
some fun driving the street and honk-ing at 10PM. I did that for a good 15-20
minutes before being arrested by the police. I then explained why I was
honking and that since hockey fans could go in the street, _I_ could do it.

Believe it or not, I had no tickets and they told me they understood and would
make sure nobody would honk in my neighbour.. and even now, after 2 years, I
see police cars in front of my house arresting people who honk when hockey or
football/soccer teams win.

Meh.. so when I see these "Happy birthday Debian", I like to think that, maybe
somewhere, a little nerd like me is happy and go out honking in their
neighbour.

~~~
jiggy2011
I have a feeling you might get quite a few upvotes, that made me chuckle.

I'm trying to imagine a society where this is in reverse and it's all the
"jocks" who are into Linux and the nerds who watch sports. That would
certainly be interesting.

------
AceJohnny2
Debian was my third distribution (after Slackware and a short stint on
Redhat). I started using it on the recommendation of some more experienced
students in college, around 2001(?).

I've stayed with Debian ever since. In the beginning it was (of course) for
the automatic package dependancy resolution and retrieval.

Over a decade+ of use, I've never understood people who made fun of Debian for
being deprecated by the time it came out. I always used sid/unstable to get
the latest-and-greatest on my desktops and put up with the occasional breakage
(maybe 2 or 3 times in over a decade), and used the rock-solid stable on my
servers.

I've also always been impressed by the work and dedication of Debian
Developers (DDs). From knowing a few, I think having "Debian Developer" on
your resume is an excellent badge of quality.

~~~
w1ntermute
In my experience, most of the heat Debian has received has been from its
strict adherence to open source guidelines. A lot of people like to make fun
of the distro for its lack of pragmatism.

~~~
jcurbo
I would agree. The Firefox/Iceweasel thing is probably the best example of
this.[1] It seems silly on the surface (who cares right?) but Debian is very
strict on the idea of freely redistributable software, even to minute levels
other distros might not care about. The presence of debian-legal for so long
is another testament to this fact (the mailing list archives go back to 1998).
[2]

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation_software_re...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation_software_rebranded_by_the_Debian_project#Origins_of_the_issue_and_of_the_Iceweasel_name)

[2] <http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/>

~~~
fdr
I think it is completely non-silly. Debian was very simply and to the letter
of the law in violation of the terms under which a piece of software can be
called Firefox, and at any time Mozilla Corporation is entitled to bring civil
action, as far as I can tell. My understanding is that at the time they were
backpatching security fixes to derivative versions of Firefox -- specifically,
older versions for which upstream had dropped support. What if one of those
introduced an annoying crash or security problem? Is it fair that Mozilla
Corporation's Good Name on the hook for it, if it does not wish to be?

If Mozilla Corporation (or would it be Foundation?) felt that they wanted to
enable this kind of derivative distribution of their software, they could have
very simply offered provisions like the Linux Trademark Institute:
<http://www.linuxfoundation.org/programs/legal/trademark>. Clearly, Debian
still has many references -- and modifications -- to Linux.

Problem solved. But, as far as I can tell, this was not to be.

I am not a Debian developer nor someone who was actively following that
conversation, but when I heard about the decision I have not heard a single
convincing (or even any) argument that it was an incorrect one, but again, I'm
not familiar with the matter in great detail. Proprietary software companies
can be awfully persnickety about...well, everything regarding their license
and trademark, and I don't see why lack of adherence to a contract is
acceptable just because there is Free Software (but not free trademark)
involved.

The silliest part is the name chosen.

------
pixelmonkey
I have such fond memories of sneaking printouts of The Debian Policy Guide and
A Brief History of Debian into my boring high school classes and reading them
tucked into my binders labeled "Spanish" and "Pre-Calc".

I still remember how I marveled at the Debian Developers Map
(<http://www.debian.org/devel/developers.loc>), which showed in one image a
collaboration of hundreds of talented individuals across the globe, working to
make computers better and freer.

I remember reading these words in the "Debian Manifesto", which seemed like an
ideal for all life, not just software: "The Debian design process is open to
ensure that the system is of the highest quality and that it reflects the
needs of the user community. By involving others with a wide range of
abilities and backgrounds, Debian is able to be developed in a modular
fashion. Its components are of high quality because those with expertise in a
certain area are given the opportunity to construct or maintain the individual
components of Debian involving that area."

Yep, Debian is 19 years old today, but its effect on my philosophy toward
software engineering just as strong now as it was over a decade ago. Cheers to
a great project: <http://www.pixelmonkey.org/2012/08/16/the-debian-manifesto>

~~~
icebraining
I didn't know the Manifesto, but the Debian Social Contract[1] was
definitively an important part in my choice to use Debian on all my systems.

[1]: <http://www.debian.org/social_contract>

------
dsr_
The killer feature that Debian offered to me, way back in 1.2 or 1.3 days, was
that I would never have to reinstall the whole system for a major version
upgrade.

Debian kept that promise, and I've been using Debian ever since. The company I
work at is now almost entirely Debian for servers, and the non-Mac users also
have it as their desktop system.

------
mattwdelong
It was 8 years ago when I started using Debian after trying out numerous
distributions and it was the first one that just "worked" for me. I have been
using it on all my servers, and my desktop (During the Vista years) ever
since.

Here's to another 19 years!

------
brusch
After getting late to the whole Linux game I've started with Ubuntu. Everytime
I upgraded to the next version something broke (I think I started with 8.10
and stayed until 10.04). Everytime I got the death stare from my gf. (She just
wants everything to work - why did I change anything ?). Then I didn't bother
with it any more and went directly to Debian. Now I'm running nearly
exclusively Debian (testing at home, stable at work / servers) and I am happy
with it.

The change to gnome3 was a big ordeal (one of my desktops refused to work
correctly for 2 month - another time of death - stareing), but now it seems
great and stable.

I think I am not the right person for an unstable distribution.

A bit thank you to the people who make Debian possible ! Every distribution I
am using and I've been using was based on Debian - Ubuntu / Crunchbang and
AvLinux and it was always a good foundation for these distributions.

------
jeza
I first installed Debian in 1999. I remember when Potato came out and was all
the rage. :)

The installer certainly was intimidating though once I got my head around
dselect it made sense. I don't think they even use dselect on the installer
anymore by default anymore.

I still run it on a few servers and its a great server distro.

------
ta12121
I really wish I could use Ubuntu, but I can't bring myself to use any Debian
derivative after the OpenSSL debacle.

~~~
DanBC
A reasonable, perhaps a tad extreme, approach. May I ask which OS you do use?
OpenBSD?

~~~
ta12121
Fedora. Yes I know it's bleeding edge and probably has vulnerabilities, but I
can't imagine what kind of organization lets a single developer patch OpenSSL
without oversight and then ship it. For me, its a matter of principle, not
practical security.

------
jebblue
I'm an Ubuntu user (though if I keep having to use Unity I don't know for how
much longer). Where would Ubuntu be (except the vast Unity mistake crap bs
which has nothing to do with Debian), Ubuntu (except for Unity) rocks! That
means Debian must also rock, happy birthday Debian!

~~~
icebraining
I won't try to convince you not to switch to Debian, but you don't actually
need to use Unity on Ubuntu. At work we use Ubuntu, so I just installed a
different WM (Awesome, in my case) and logged out and back in.

~~~
bergie
_sudo apt-get install gnome-shell_ also goes a long way to make Ubuntu usable.

~~~
jebblue
I tried Gnome Shell. For me Gnome classic is better but since I keep
encountering Ubuntu systems that use Unity, I feel like I should keep trying
to like it.

------
vandershraaf
(No one does this yet, so I wanna be the first one) Happy birthday debian!

