News

Debian Celebrates Its Birthday

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.

Linux Magazine

http://www.linux-magazine.com

ADMIN HPC

http://hpc.admin-magazine.com/

Shared Storage with NFS and SSHFSJeff Layton

HPC systems require shared filesystems to function effectively. Two really good choices for both small and large systems are NFS and SSHFS.

ADMIN Online

http://www.admin-magazine.com/

Version 5.2 of the Ruby Framework

Stefan Wintermeyer

Ruby on Rails 5.2 was released during RailsConf, which took place in Pittsburgh in mid-April 2018. Although not much has changed for old Rails applications, you'll find a few notable additions for new ones.

Many Approaches Help Secure a Web Server

Matthias Wübbeling

We submit an Apache web server to the Qualys SSL Server Test and look at how to protect against data theft with a combination of TLS by way of Let's Encrypt, SELinux or AppArmor, a firewall, and restraining your web server's verbosity.

Protecting Documents with Azure Information Protection * Klaus Bierschenk

Azure Information Protection helps businesses control how information in communications between employees is handled.

ADMIN DevOps Focus

http://www.admin-magazine.com/DevOps

Security as Code * Chris Binnie

Gauntlt is a sophisticated DevOps tool that can test the security of your continuous integration/continuous delivery pipeline.

Buy this article as PDF

Express-Checkout as PDF
Price $2.95
(incl. VAT)

Buy Linux Magazine

SINGLE ISSUES
 
SUBSCRIPTIONS
 
TABLET & SMARTPHONE APPS
Get it on Google Play

US / Canada

Get it on Google Play

UK / Australia

Related content

comments powered by Disqus
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.

Learn More

News