Whether it is Linux or open source, in recent years, it has been like a turbulent whirlpool, with great fanaticism and constant debate. From last year's popular open source npm packages "colors" and "faker" being maliciously introduced by the author to wrong content, to the recent Red Hat modification of the release rules of the public version of the RHEL source code, it has caused a lot of controversy in the industry about open source software. debate.
And Debian, which has always been dubbed "slow and conservative", is like a rational and stable island in the waves. In the past 30 years, we thought it was tepid, but it has actually penetrated to the point where we can't live without it. We have no way of knowing exactly how many people are using it.
1. Debian is very slow, suitable for fishing?
Debian is indeed a stable-first release strategy. It updates very slowly. Other distributions may update several versions a year, while Debian updates a version every few years. It is no wonder that there are remarks that "Debian is suitable for fishing".
Conversely, as a derivative of Debian, Ubuntu's update cycle is much faster. Fast updates mean new bugs are guaranteed to be introduced. So, the choice of Linux version depends entirely on the development scenario:
Sometimes you need new versions of multiple software packages, and you don’t want to bother compiling or using third-party packages, so you can only wait for the system version to upgrade; but if the functions required by the developer can be well satisfied with the old version, then the slow The update rate becomes "steady" in a way. In fact, the rock-solid Debian has three variants: Stable stable version, Testing beta version, Unstable unstable version (codename: SID).
Stable is the current release, targeting stable and well-tested software requirements. It is only updated when major security or usability fixes are included; Testing is the preview branch that will eventually become the next major release. Packages contained in this branch have had some testing in unstable, but they may not be ready for release yet. It contains packages that are newer than stable but older than unstable. Unstable is unstable, always code-named sid (Still In Development), and is the backbone. Accept a package without checking the entire distribution. This branch is usually run by software developers who are involved in projects and need the latest available libraries, as well as those who like cutting-edge software. As you go from stable to unstable, you'll find newer, less stable software. A new stable branch of Debian is released approximately every two years. It gets official support for about 3 years, updated with major security or usability fixes.
Source: Zhihu
People choose Debian, naturally there are other reasons. Compared with the proud community atmosphere of some other versions, Debian has become a paradise for discussing technical issues with Slack users.
2. It would be another world without Debian
In China, Debian seems to be less popular than distributions such as RedHat, Ubuntu, and SUSE, but if there is no Debian, the world may become another look.
First of all, without Debian, many companies or software we know today would not have developed so smoothly. For example, to some extent, it is the free Linux distribution that made Google what it is today, and Debian is undoubtedly the most important free distribution. Even though Google makes its own ChromeOS available to the masses, internally it actually runs on Google's internal distribution gLinux Rodete, which is also based on Debian.
Another example is Ubuntu. Ubuntu was and is a direct fork of Debian. It is the Unstable release, integrated, tested and repackaged.
Many people may not know that before its launch in October 2004, the Ubuntu website didn't even have a decent name. Its only website is no-name-yet.com, and humbly states:
"We have a great team of Debian and other FOSS developers - we're tentatively calling ourselves 'Wolf Warriors' until our official name is finalized."
So that the foreign media Register did not report Ubuntu for the first time until 2006, when the first LTS version appeared for two months. Secondly, on a non-technical level, Debian is a distribution that always pursues freedom and openness. It is developed by volunteers from all over the world and is not supported by a corporation like many other Linux distributions. A free and open software never asks users to pay too much (whether energy or money) for it. FOSS operating systems also work better on older, slower computers, driving adoption for billions of people who can't afford the latest laptops.
A good example is Endless OS, the Linux distribution that is probably the most widely used and least experimental immutable desktop Linux. It doesn't always depend on the network, it's built on Debian. It can be said that if there is no free and open source software operating system, there will be no prosperous "cloud".
It's not technical: it works just fine on paid OS instances, and they're part of it. Virtual machine deployment and elastic control make the cloud powerful, but if the license fee is $1,000 per instance, I believe that no one wants to afford the cost of auto-scaling to deploy thousands of instances. Of course, on a technical level, Debian is also a general-purpose operating system that supports almost all CPU architectures and is very popular in the server field.
Speaking of desktop environments, it offers live ISO downloads with Cinnamon, GNOME, KDE Plasma, XFCE, LXDE, and MATE desktops. In the end, no one really knows how many Linux users there are; TrueList estimates that Ubuntu has a 33.9% market share, followed by Debian at 16%. That's half of the market for Debian and its better-known descendant, Linux. The domestic Linux systems we are familiar with, such as Kirin Linux, Tongxin UOS, etc., are basically based on Debian redeveloped distributions.
3. Why is Debian getting louder and louder?
"When the server was a pet instead of a cow, I started using Debian." A technical person who turned to Debian made a very vivid metaphor. The implication is that if a piece of software becomes a tool that requires too much effort to take care of instead of helping production, developers will often think of Debian as good.
At the same time, except that Debian does not charge, people care more about not having to track licenses, find out upgrade paths, or decode license agreements. These tedious and tortured experiences. In addition, developers are inherently "uncomfortable" about maintaining Linux versions in enterprises. The acquisition by IBM made many people exclaim: this move killed CentOS Linux.
According to Truelist's survey, Red Hat-based distributions account for only about 10% of the market, and about 95% of them are free. Debian and its descendants have 50 times as many users as RHEL. Even accounting for CentOS and Fedora, it has only one-fifth as many users as Debian. And much of the big business publicity argues for a relatively small share of payments. Meanwhile, public interest software companies quietly fund the modest giant. What really matters is the free stuff, and Debian is the surest rock in the "move fast, break everything" vortex.
4. Problems to be solved for domestic soaring popularity
The voice of Debian's domestic community is obviously not as good as that of foreign countries. If you want to go further, you may solve these three problems. First of all, the difficulty of installation and configuration has completely retreated a large number of novices. Even Linus, the father of Linux, admitted at a press conference that Debian installation is too troublesome. The version suitable for Debian as a desktop includes testing and sid. In fact, installing testing is a very worrying thing, because it needs to be connected to the Internet when installing grub2, which requires the user to have a router. Although stable can be installed without networking, stable is definitely not suitable for use as a desktop. Secondly, the configuration is also a little troublesome, so that novices who are relatively resistant to the command line still need to know how to configure such as, add sudoers, configure apt sources, fonts and many other problems. An obvious example, when the sudo apt-get install command prompts that the current user is not in sudoers, the novice gets dizzy.
Secondly, Debian's publicity, especially in China, is not strong enough. Debian is originally a relatively high-level system, and it is difficult for ordinary users to master it. It is not easy to develop if it only relies on private forces. Finally, there are incompatibility issues with popular versions. For example, the main problem stuck between Ubuntu and Debian is a library: libc6, because many software operations need this library, and the Ubuntu version is 2.14, but Debian wheezy and sid are still 2.13. There are other problems, such as the library required for installing steam, there are two debians not available, these have to be solved by themselves, which invisibly increases the difficulty of use.
5. Written at the end: a system legend created by a letter
Thirty years ago, the late Ian Murdock wrote to the comp.os.linux.development newsgroup about the completion of a whole new linux release, which he named "The Debian linux release".
It's not the oldest distribution in existence, like Slackware, which is a month older than it. Slackware is still run by the original project founder Patrick
Volkderding maintains, and unfortunately, the founder of Debian is no longer with us. Still, Debian has more mashups, remasters, and derivatives, and more users, than any other Linux distribution. Of course, ChromeOS is an exception, and many people think that ChromeOS is not a Linux distribution. Similar is Android. Although it is based on Linux, no one will compare Android with Linux. After all, the two are not in the same competitive environment.
A letter from Ian Murdock created the open and free Debian, one of the largest and oldest free operating systems, which has grown over the past 30 years and witnessed the ups and downs of the entire IT field. A lot of open source software has gone commercial, but Debian seems to be an island of stability and sanity in the constant chaos of Linux and open source. Hope this world-changing version of Linux can continue to bring more surprises to the world.
Reference link: https://www.zhihu.com/question/20431197/answer/16618047https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/17/debian_turns_30/