Debian Archive

MEPIS, one of the more popular Debian-derived distributions, may be moving in a new direction soon. MEPIS founder Warren Woodford is considering building future MEPIS releases from Ubuntu sources rather than from Debian. SimplyMEPIS 3.4-3, which is scheduled for release today, has been quite a challenge to build, according to Woodford. "It's taking up all my time, fighting the Etch pool... We've had a lot of trouble, because the Debian community has become so active, it's been difficult to get this out, so I'm looking at alternatives to getting out stable releases."

Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Ubuntu Linux, has explained why he thinks the DCC (Debian Common Core, but don't let the Debian guys hear that) will fail. "The vision behind DCC, which is indeed compelling, is that it would provide a common platform for certification, and that the distros that make up the DCC would all ship exactly that same core. But it strikes me that this approach has never worked in the past. In fact, every distro ALWAYS modifies elements of the core, and with good reason. And while we would love that not to be the case, the truth is that the reasons to specialise outweigh the benefits of homogeneity."

When we speak of Debian Linux distribution, the number one thing that come into our minds is its flag-ship utility apt-get . Infact this package management is so popular that a large part of Debian's popularity revolves around it. Ask any person why he or she thinks Debian is a better distribution and in 7 out of 10 cases the answer will be apt-get. Here is a consice but very complete article on using apt-get and dpkg the backend for apt-get.

"Basically the operation is shutting down." With these words, Tal Danzig, the owner and technical lead for the Libranet distribution, quietly announced in his blog on November 25 the news that users had been dreading ever since his announcement two months ago that the distribution was "restructuring." Danzig did not rule out the possibility of reviving the distribution after his return in February 2006 from a three-month trip to Israel. Yet, for now, the announcement seems to mark the end of one of the oldest and best-loved Debian-based distributions. On Distrowatch, Libranet's status is now marked as "dormant." On June 1st, 2005, Jon Danzig, co-founder of Libranet and father of Tal Danzig passed away.

Ging, the only live distribution based on Debian GNU/kFreeBSD, has made its way to the 0.1.0 release. Ging is now using KDE 3.4 as its desktop, and includes a mixture of KDE and GNOME applications: Konqueror, Gimp, Koffice, Gaim, and more. And for those who have tried previous versions of Ging, you'll be greatly pleased to see the boot time has decreased by a factor of ~15 times.

"Debian is one of the most common Linux distributions in the world. With a possible total of fourteen CDs, it is also one of the biggest. As you may have gathered from the fact that this guide exists, Debian is not the easiest Linux distribution. However, anybody that is relatively competent with computers should be able to use Debian, and this guide is here to help you get started."