Debian Review

Over the last couple of posts I played with Debian, ran through the install, showed the desktop environment; which is Gnome 3, and went through some of the programs.  I learned a lot about Debian during the past week; their philosophy, how they manage their releases, and who creates the new releases.  Debian has a lot to offer in an operating system for Linux, but what I liked the most is the way it is put together.

Debian is not some fancy company sitting in an office building collecting money.  Debian is everyday users who donate their free time to programming, testing, documenting and fixing bugs.  You read that right. People all over the world help in the process of creating Debian.  Debian also doesn't shove out new releases before they're ready thus leaving you to install update after update in hopes that the bugs that you face are fixed during these updates.  When a new version of Debian is released you can be sure that it has gone through a very long process of testing and that you are getting a very stable version of the operating system.

There are three stages to packages and distributions; unstable, testing, and stable.  In the unstable stage a program or new distribution must go through a testing process.  The security team at Debian does not offer anything for these versions and they may cause harm to your system due to the instability of the program.  These packages should only be used, if you know what you are doing.  Why would Debian even offer packages like that? Because it's a step so a developer can get their packages into the testing stage and then hopefully into the stable stage. 

In the testing stage you find a more stable package.  The testing stage does not get timely security updates from the security team.  However, these packages are intended to become a part of the next distribution.  They have already met the criteria to get into the testing stage and are working to become a part of the stable stage.

Finally we have the stable packages.  Stable means that you are less likely to have problems with the package.  It has gone through testing, been searched thoroughly for bugs and security risks.  Debian holds a high standard before considering a package to be stable.  While every package released may not be completely bug free these packages paired with the security team make them the safest to use with your system.

Debian distribution releases are treated much on the same level as their packages.  They are unstable or called Sid until they can reach their testing phase and are given a new name.  The current testing distribution is called Jessie.  Finally you have the stable version which is what we have reviewed, which is Wheezy.  Yes the distributions are named after Toy Story Characters.  While anything unstable will always be called Sid, the distributions get a name once they hit testing and those names stick with them through to the eventual release.

If you are running the stable distribution you can only run stable packages, if you wanted to run the testing version of Debian you can run the testing versions of programs.  If you wanted to run stable on testing you would need to download the stable repositories on your testing system.  For the new user I recommend that you only use the stable versions of Debian and it's packages.

There is no release date set for Jessie yet, but they will not be defaulting to Gnome as a desktop environment.  This makes me a happy camper.  While I really like Debian and all the programs it offers as well as their philosophy, I am not a fan of Gnome 3.  I dislike the lack of personalization capabilities and the way the desktop is set up.  It all boils down to personal preference and Gnome 3 lacks a lot for me.

The only thing I disliked about Debian was the way their packages are made available.  You will see later how other distributions have a software manager installed where you can search for, read reviews, and easily install packages.  There is a software manager that you can install but I feel like it should have been included with the original distribution install.  I hope they include it with Jesse.

For all the good qualities and the 37,500+ packages that come with Debian, I think it makes up for the few features I think are missing.  I recommend at least trying it, and if you find you also don't like Gnome 3 try a different desktop environment.  Again you can do that by choosing Advanced Settings before the install.  If you have any other questions about Debian please visit them at www.Debian.org for more information.