Debian Archive

Custom Debian Distributions

Debian 11 Comments
This paper written by Andreas Tille is intended to people who are interested in the philosophy of Custom Debian Distributions and the technique which is used to manage those projects. It is explained in detail why these are no forks from Debian but reside completely inside the Debian GNU/Linux distribution and which advantages can be gathered by this approach. The concept of meta-packages and user role based menus is explained. In short: This document describes why Custom Debian Distributions are important to the vitality and quality of Debian.
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Debian Installer Beta 3 Usability Review

Debian 29 Comments
Debian Installer Beta 3 was released two days ago and I wrote a small review concerning the installation part. The new debian installer is good way to set up your favorite distribution. Nontheless there are a few usability things and I thought that it might be a good idea to write a walkthrough from another point of view: Bob "average" User. Read more .
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Linux on Laptops Part II: Libranet 2.8.1

Debian 50 Comments
I considered reviewing Debian for this article. I downloaded a copy of Debian 3.0r2, making sure to get the disk with the 2.4 kernel. Everything you've heard about Debian being difficult to install? It's not totally true, but it's pretty close. I really wanted to try Debian, though, if only to use the vaunted apt-get system. I'd tried apt-rpm on a previous Red Hat installation, and it was great. Since Debian was turning out to be too difficult to put together, I decided to look for a debian-based distro.
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Garbee says Debian has a place in society

Debian 1 Comment
"Governments in countries without strong IT infrastructure or skills are utilising free and open source software as part of a comprehensive plan to "boot strap" the populace into technology, a leading Linux representative has claimed. Speaking at the Linux.conf.au event in Adelaide on Friday, former Debian Project Leader and Hewlett-Packard Linux CTO Bdale Garbee said for the cost of paying a foreign software company to provide a software solution, governments in countries such as Spain and Brazil are in favour of developing their own localised software with free and open source code." Read the rest of the article at LinuxWorld.au.
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Debian GNU/Linux 3.0r2 Released

Debian 16 Comments
This is the second update of Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 (codename 'woody') which mainly adds security updates to the stable release, along with a few corrections of serious bugs. Those who frequently update from security.debian.org won't have to update many packages and most updates from security.debian.org are included in this update. Please note that this update does not produce a new version of Debian 3.0 but only adds a few updated packages to it. There is no need to throw away 3.0 CDs but only to update against ftp.debian.org after an installation to incorporate those late changes.
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Libranet 2.8.1 Impressions

Debian 32 Comments
I'm always looking at different and new Linux distribution's now and then, trying to finally find one that is good enough to overthrow windows on my PC. But all the distributions seem to have a weakness, Mandrake is rpm based, Debian makes it hard to set some things up and Gentoo requires a lot of work and time compiling. And so I decided to try out Libranet.
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Libranet 2.7 Classic: Free Beer, Not Watered

Debian 38 Comments
Debian is widely considered the Linux distribution with the best package management tool, APT and one of the largest software bases (>13,000). However, the installation horror stories kept me away. Nevertheless, eager to try it out, I failed to install various other Debian GNU/Linux based distributions. Some failed to boot even after I tried to reinstall for the fourth time, and others just couldn’t detect my hardware. While Knoppix is highly recommended, I decided to stick with hard-drive based distros (Although it is the distribution of choice for LiveCDs). Then came Libranet.
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