Debian Celebrates Its Birthday
The great community Linux distro turns 25 years old.
The Debian GNU/Linux project celebrated its 25th birthday on August 16, 2018. Debian was created in 1993 by Ian Murdock. The name of the project came from the first three letters of his then girlfriend Debra and his own name – Deb Ian.
In the Debian manifesto, Murdock wrote, “Debian Linux is a brand-new kind of Linux distribution. Rather than being developed by one isolated individual or group, as other distributions of Linux have been developed in the past, Debian is being developed openly in the spirit of Linux and GNU. The primary purpose of the Debian project is to finally create a distribution that lives up to the Linux name. Debian is being carefully and conscientiously put together and will be maintained and supported with similar care.”
Debian has evolved to become one of the most popular distributions. Its stable branch dominates the Linux-powered web hosting services. The popularity of Debian also lead to an entire generation of Debian-based distributions, including Ubuntu and Knoppix.
Debian has three releases: stable, testing, and unstable. Stable is meant to be used on servers and by users who don’t want their systems to change frequently. Stable has packages that are very well tested; as a result, they can be old.
Testing has packages that are not part of stable yet but are in the queue. Most Debian-based distributions, such as Ubuntu, are based on testing. It’s also suitable for desktop use on home PCs.
Debian Unstable is the place where all development happens; it’s really bleeding edge and is meant only for developers.
Version 9 is the current version of Debian, and its code name is Stretch. Each version of Debian is code-named after a character from the movie Toy Story. The unstable branch is code-named Sid, because Sid is the character that breaks everything.
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.

News
-
Red Hat Releases RHEL 10 Early
Red Hat quietly rolled out the official release of RHEL 10.0 a bit early.
-
openSUSE Joins End of 10
openSUSE has decided to not only join the End of 10 movement but it also will no longer support the Deepin Desktop Environment.
-
New Version of Flatpak Released
Flatpak 1.16.1 is now available as the latest, stable version with various improvements.
-
IBM Announces Powerhouse Linux Server
IBM has unleashed a seriously powerful Linux server with the LinuxONE Emperor 5.
-
Plasma Ends LTS Releases
The KDE Plasma development team is doing away with the LTS releases for a good reason.
-
Arch Linux Available for Windows Subsystem for Linux
If you've ever wanted to use a rolling release distribution with WSL, now's your chance.
-
System76 Releases COSMIC Alpha 7
With scores of bug fixes and a really cool workspaces feature, COSMIC is looking to soon migrate from alpha to beta.
-
OpenMandriva Lx 6.0 Available for Installation
The latest release of OpenMandriva has arrived with a new kernel, an updated Plasma desktop, and a server edition.
-
TrueNAS 25.04 Arrives with Thousands of Changes
One of the most popular Linux-based NAS solutions has rolled out the latest edition, based on Ubuntu 25.04.
-
Fedora 42 Available with Two New Spins
The latest release from the Fedora Project includes the usual updates, a new kernel, an official KDE Plasma spin, and a new System76 spin.