CULTURE Richard Stallman
FSF's founder and author of the GPL license, Richard M. Stallman (often referred to by his initials, RMS) is a charismatic leader of the Free Software movement. Due to his uncompromising positions, he's not unanimously admired, but his non-technical contributions to Free Software (in particular at the legal and philosophical level) are respected by everybody.
1.1.1. A Multi-Platform Operating System
COMMUNITY Ian Murdock's journey
Ian Murdock, founder of the Debian project, was its first leader, from 1993 to 1996. After passing the baton to Bruce Perens, Ian took a less public role. He returned to working behind the scenes of the free software community, creating the Progeny company, with the intention of marketing a distribution derived from Debian. This venture was a commercial failure, sadly, and development abandoned. The company, after several years of scraping by, simply as a service provider, eventually filed for bankruptcy in April of 2007. Of the various projects initiated by Progeny, only discover still remains. It is an automatic hardware detection tool.
Debian, remaining true to its initial principles, has had so much success that, today, it has reached a tremendous size. The 11 architectures offered cover 9 hardware architectures and 2 kernels (Linux and FreeBSD). Furthermore, with more than 14,500 source packages, the available software can meet almost any need that one could have, whether at home or in the enterprise.
This largess becomes, sometimes, an embarrassment of riches: it is really unreasonable to distribute 50 CD-ROMs to install a complete version on an Intel machine... This is why we think of Debian ever increasingly as a “meta-distribution”, from which one extracts more specific distributions intended for a particular public: Debian-Desktop for traditional office use, Debian-Edu for education and pedagogical use in an academic environment, Debian-Med for medical applications, Debian-Junior for young children, etc. A more complete list can be found in the section dedicated to that purpose, see Section 1.3.3.1, “Existing Debian Sub-Projects”.
These divisions are organized in a well-defined framework, thus guaranteeing hassle-free compatibility between the various “sub-distributions”. All of them follow the general planning for release of new versions. Built on the same foundation, they can be easily extended, completed, and personalized with applications available in the Debian repositories.
All of the Debian tools operate in this direction: debian-cd has for a long time now allowed the creation of a set of CD-ROMs bearing only pre-selected packages; debian-installer is also a modular installer, easily adapted to special needs. APT will install packages from various origins, while guaranteeing the overall cohesion of the system.
TOOL Creating a Debian CD-ROM
debian-cd creates CD-ROM ISO installation images ready for use. Raphaël Hertzog is the author of the latest rewrite, but maintenance is essentially conducted by Steve McIntyre. Any matter regarding this software is discussed (in English) on the <debian-cd@lists.debian.org> mailing list.
BACK TO BASICS To each computer, its architecture
The term “architecture” indicates a type of computer (the most known include Mac or PC). Each architecture is differentiated primarily according to its processor, usually incompatible with other processors. These differences in hardware involve varying means of operation, thus requiring that software be compiled specifically for each architecture.
Most software available in Debian is written in portable programming languages: the same source code can compile on various architectures. In effect, an executable binary, always compiled for a specific architecture, will not usually function on the other architectures.
Recall that each program is created by writing source code; this source code is a text file composed of instructions in a given programming language. Before you can use the software, it is necessary to compile the source code, which means transforming the code into a binary (a series of machine instructions executable by the processor). Each programming language has a specific compiler to execute this operation (for example, gcc for the C programming language).
TOOL Installer
debian-installer is the name of the Debian installation program. Its modular design allows it to be used in a broad range of installation scenarios. The development work is coordinated on the <debian-boot@lists.debian.org> mailing list under the direction of Otavio Salvador and Joey Hess.
1.1.2. The Quality of Free Software
Debian follows all of the principles of Free Software, and its new versions are not released until they are ready. Developers are not forced by some set schedule to rush to meet an arbitrary deadline. People frequently complain of the long time between Debian's stable releases, but this caution also ensures Debian's legendary reliability: long months of testing are indeed necessary for the full distribution to receive the “stable” label.
Debian will not compromise on quality: all known critical bugs are resolved in any new version, even if this requires the initially forecast release date to be pushed back.
Debian does not exclude any category of users, however small the minority. Its installation program has long been rough around the edges, because it was the only one able to operate on all of the architectures on which the Linux kernel runs. It wasn't possible to simply replace it with a program that was more user-friendly, but limited to only the PC (i386 architecture). Fortunately, since the arrival of the debian-installer, those days are over.
1.1.3. The Legal Framework: A Non-Profit Organization
Legally speaking, Debian is a project managed by an American not-for-profit, volunteer association. The project has a thousand Debian developers, but brings together a far greater number of contributors (translators, bug reporters, artists, casual developers, etc.).
To carry its mission to fruition, Debian has a large infrastructure, with many servers connected across the Internet, offered by many sponsors.
COMMUNITY Behind Debian, the SPI association, and local branches
Debian doesn't own any server in its own name, since it is only a project within the association Software in the Public Interest (SPI) which manages the hardware and financial aspects (donations, purchase of hardware, etc.). While initially created specifically for the Debian project, this association now has a hand in other free software projects, especially the PostgreSQL database, Freedesktop.org (project for standardization of various parts of modern graphical desktop environments, such as GNOME and KDE). The OpenOffice.org office suite has also long been a part of SPI, as well.
→ http://www.spi-inc.org/
In addition to SPI, various local associations collaborate closely with Debian in order to generate funds for Debian, without centralizing everything in the U.S.A. This setup avoids prohibitive international transfer costs, and fits well with the decentralized nature of the project. It is in this spirit that the Debian France association was founded in the summer of 2006. Do not hesitate to join and support the project!
→ http://france.debian.net/