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Happy birthday to my first permanent GNU/Linux distribution, from Etch all the way to Jessie. It's --you've, we've-- come a long way. I hope to see the community remain as strong as ever. The Debian forums were always my weapon of last resort when Google didn't have the answer to my problem, and not once was I let down. And best of luck to the new DPL!



My first release was Potato. I still remember downloading so many (3? 6?) CDs...

God, I feel old.

I don't use Debian much these days, certainly not as a desktop, but it will forever be the "real" Linux distribution in my heart. Without the ongoing work of umpteen Debian package managers, you wouldn't have Ubuntu (and all its humongous downstream), Knoppix, and so on.


I started out with... Rex I think. Or maybe Buzz? I kept the CD's out of nostalgia for a while, but may have finally got rid of them. I liked it so much that, despite not having a lot of skills, I signed up to help, and packaged up a few things. Debian was an awesome learning experience, and a great "escalator" in that I came in with not a lot of knowledge, and by the time I left, knew a whole lot more about a variety of things. I know I'm not the only one for whom it was such a formative experience.

My first Linux experience was downloading Slackware over a slow modem line (I want to say 14.4, but it was a while ago) onto floppies.


I spent about a week downloading perhaps 7 CDs for Woody (I guess it would have been 2002). I'm fairly sure I never actually installed packages from most of the CDs.


IIRC most of the x86 packages were on disc 1 and 3. I don't think I've ever touched the rest.


People can elect to install a package called "popularity-contest", which reports what packages you've installed to a central server. At release, the most popular packages are put on the first discs.

Each set of discs is for one architecture only.


I downloaded all 7 CDs for Woody, but didn't actually know how to burn a CD from an ISO, so I ended up with 7 coasters. I figured out my mistake and tried again the next week, but this time I picked a distro that only needed one CD: Ubuntu (Hoary). Never managed to get back to straight Debian since then.


When I first installed Woody, I didn't know that you could "apt-get" from the net. I don't remember ever using any of the CDs but 1, but I still have all seven for nostalgic purposes :3


You were lucky.

I had to install my first Debian hit (1.1 / buzz) via recycled floppies downloaded over a 33.6k dialup.

There is not a single time at my life since where I haven't had a Debian installation somewhere since (currently have 46 machines running it at my command).


I shyed away from Debian initially, as I had a bad experience with Knoppix on my hardware (though it did pique my interest.) However I do remember that Fedora Core 3 came on 4 CDs though. That was the very early 2000s.

I still remember when Fedora moved to DVDs. I was quite frustrated because I didn't have a DVD burner at the time. Almost 13 years later and my distro of choice fits on a single CD-R; I guess I've come full circle.


The first Debian "release" I installed was called "Slink-and-a-half." It was Slink with some important Potato packages backported by VA Linux.

I quickly upgraded it using dist-upgrade to unstable, which was potato at the time (testing didn't exist yet).


I built "slink and a half" and I'm lying in a tent in a field in Switzerland after the main Debian b-day party, bonfire, triple rainbow (no kidding!), etc. Wave!


I assume "joeyh" stands for Joey Hess, a name I recognize from seeing it many, many times over the years. :) I didn't know you did slink-and-a-half though.

Thanks for all your hard work, and especially for introducing me to Debian. Have a wonderful Debian birthday!


I think potato was six CDs.


Debian has forums? I never knew that. I always use debian-users or #debian. To be honest one of my favorite things about debian is using bts from the commandline or just plain email to submit/query/track bug reports and never having to use forums for bug reporting.


http://forums.debian.net/ is one forum.

I'm not sure if it is actually a part of the Debian project or just something that grew alongside. Can be useful sometimes, but if your present channels work for you then I'd suggest you might want to do without the 'noise'[1]

[1] http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=106389

PS: never ceases to amaze me that you can download an iso, boot a computer, install an operating system and application software, and do stuff just when you want to without upfront cost (other than time). Debian is a large part of that history isn't it?


> Debian is a large part of that history isn't it?

Debian was an early full Linux distribution, but it wasn't the first. Debians big (early) contribution was apt, which could install packages and resolve dependencies over the internet and made package management easier than rpm based distributions of the time.


> made package management easier

That is quite the understatement. I can remember the shock and amazement that came over me the first time I used apt. It was one of those computing moments that I will always remember.

Unfortunately I also remember being frightened whenever I had to read the XFree86 README and saw the section about video cards setting on fire.


apt still has that effect on me. Get new hardware and within 20 minutes youre on your way to have it setup exactly how you want it.


I am actually a little embarassed by the extent of my Debian fanboyness. So even though I would like to shower apt with platitudes I think stellar hardware support is most likely the result of a kernel package that provides almost every kernel module turned on.[1]

[1] And to a lesser extent xserver-xorg-{input-all|video-all}


Slackware's 20th birthday was just last month!

It's a little hard to view in landscape mode but Wikipedia has this cool graphic to show the development of Linux distros.


I guess not surprisingly, Debian was the distro that switched me off of Slackware. I remember the defining moments for each distribution for me: in 1993, when we set my computer down on a friend's pool table next to a stack of 20+ disks with Slackware on them. (Took the plunge.) And the moment a coworker told me "just install Debian, and use apt-get." (Stopped having to fiddle with configure and make files for things that I "just needed.")

Linux has come a long way... =)


Apparently dozing and posting doesn't work. Here's the graphic I was talking about: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Linux_Di...


Very neat indeed, though its sheer size seemed to cause indigestion in every app I tried to display it with (they could display it OK, but try to zoom in/out and prepare to wait...).

It would be even cooler if there was some indication of popularity over time as well, e.g. via variation in line thickness or something (...image gets even bigger... ><).


...But if the visuals were that accurate I never would have noticed "GNUGuitarINUX"[1]!

[1] http://gnuguitarinux.sourceforge.net/


RedHat reaches 20 in a year and nine months.


debian.net projects are unofficial. sometimes they graduate to official debian.org projects.


Hamm here - after tinkering with Red Hat (5.x I think?) I switched to Debian and I've used it ever since. I still have slink CDs somewhere plus the bumper sticker I got with them, which I laminated and is now attached to my Debian home server. (which you can see here: https://twitter.com/jcurbo/status/368424063422566401/photo/1)




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