Happy 15th birthday, Debian

Hello boys and girls — That's me in the Debian T-shirt above. Ilene got it for me from AboutDebian I don't think I need to tell any of you that I'm proud to be a Debian user.

Sure I've had (and have) my problems getting Debian to do exactly what I want on every machine on which I have it installed, but I'd call Debian ultra-reliable, easily fixable and extremely useful. I've never mistakenly hosed a Debian installation, and I've never seen a machine on which Debian won't run — and run pretty well.

The only thing that "beats" Debian on my Gateway Solo 1450 (The $0 Laptop) is Ubuntu, which of course is based on Debian. And if I could figure out the mysteries of suspend/resume, the two OSes would be equal on my main platform.

As it is, I'm having some trouble with Ubuntu, and I'm not entirely sure it's my fault. It could be a result of my partition nightmare when I was trying to install FreeBSD on my fourth primary partition, but now that the offending partition has been deleted, I'm still having a problem in Ubuntu 8.04 with stalling during boot. I've narrowed it down to something either with the ATA2 configuration or the USB HID core driver. (Ubuntu eventually does boot, but it takes a bit longer.)

Did I mention that Debian Lenny was unaffected. I look back at my experiences with Ubuntu 7.04, 7.10 and 8.04, and I've had the boot sequence eventually go bad on me with all three. I think Ubuntu doesn't like having the drive's partition scheme messed with. But Debian? It never complains, always boots, always runs.

And if you've been following Debian Lenny through its Testing phase, you've seen it get better and better over the past six months. When Lenny goes Stable, we're going to have an excellent release.

Whether you use Debian or not (and many of us do, even if we don't run Debian itself, since quite a few other distributions use it as their core), the project and those who work and have worked on it are quite a tribute to and example of free, open-source software at its finest.

Today we have hundreds of Linux distributions, a half-dozen or so BSDs and a few other (Haiku, FreeDos) free operating-systems, but looking back 10 or more years ago, being able to install Slackware or Debian and have a full (and FOSS) working environment on the desktop or server was not so easy to come by.

I'm a big proponent of not stealing software, operating systems or applications, and it's only through projects like Debian — and the thousands of packages that go into it — that I'm able to practice what I preach and not habitually install bootleg copies of MS Windows and Office, Photoshop and Illustrator.

I understand why many still use those proprietary tools — even if they know about the vast world of FOSS (though they usually don't). I still begrudgingly have to use a few proprietary applications myself while at work.

The one task for which I use Photoshop could be done with the GIMP and Inkscape, but it can't be done exactly the same way, which leaves me jumping from my desk to a PC that has a licensed copy of Photoshop. (This task could be done just as well with FOSS, but it's not my call ...)

And I'm still searching for a video-editing solution in FOSS, something that can replace iMovie and Final Cut. So far Cinelerra looks like the best choice, but I'm unconvinced and still looking.

But for the vast majority of what I (and most people) do, free, open-source choices are not just "as good" as proprietary solutions, they're much better.

From Linux as the OS on the desktop and server to applications like Firefox, Thunderbird, Evolution, OpenOffice, K3b, plus the GNOME and KDE desktop environments and the many apps that come with them, the numerous other window managers (everything from Fluxbox and Fvwm to JWM, Enlightment and Xfce), critical server software like Apache, MySQL, OpenSSH and the hundreds of utilities that make it all work.

The simple but critically important fact that I can make a free, open-source operating system work on even my oldest hardware and that every version from the first to the latest is still freely available (try buying an old version of Windows from Microsoft) gives users an important degree of ownership of their own computing experience. Microsoft and Apple want you to dump your hardware every few years and buy new, with new and expensive software to go with it. I guess that's OK; that's their business.

But having an alternative — or hundreds of alternatives — puts power right into the hands (and computers) of the users. If that's not democracy in action, I don't know what is. Call the proprietary alternative what you like.

I did my first Debian install when Etch went Stable in April 2007, and I've been using it ever since. I don't think the installation process is any harder than that in most of the Linux distributions out there, and if you've done even one install of another distro, you can probably install Debian with no problem.

So if you want to celebrate Debian's 15 years, I suggest you grab an ISO of the network installer (go here for Testing, which I recommend at this point, with Lenny so close to going Stable; or go here for Etch, here for the Etch and a Half network installer for i386) and do an install of the monumental achievement that is and continues to be the Debian GNU/Linux distribution.