Guide Note

Debian is a free, open source operating system composed of entirely free software. Debian is the basis of many of the current Operating System's, such as Ubuntu. Debian has over 26,000 software packages available for download and the operating system itself can be configured in many different combinations.

Fast Facts

1. Latest stable release: 4.0 ("Etch")
2. Next release's name: Lenny
3. Many ports of the operating system so it can run on different architecture
4. A 1.0 release was never released

Debian was first released in 1993 by Ian Murdock while at Purdue University. Murdock wanted the software to be completely free and open so other users could edit and modify his code to improve the operating system, unlike other operating systems at the time. Debian grew very slowly from 1993-1994, but in early 1995, it started to get ported out to other operating systems.

Because Debian is the basis for many of other Linux operating systems, it is relatively similar to others. The package management feature allows users to update the installation easily, rather than having to reformat or do some other complicated configuration. All of the features of the Debian operating system are developed by volunteers.

1. 1GHz processor
2. 512MB of RAM
3. 5GB hard drive

1. i386 (every PC computer)
2. amd64 (computers with a 64 bit processor)
3. alpha
4. sparc
5. arm
6. powerpc
7. hppa
8. ia64
9. mips, mipsel
10. s390