{"id":30,"date":"2011-08-16T12:07:32","date_gmt":"2011-08-16T12:07:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bimedia.org\/blogs\/?guid=d15661f07f69a73f3e8f363638e460c9"},"modified":"2011-08-16T12:07:32","modified_gmt":"2011-08-16T12:07:32","slug":"debian-turns-18","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/2011\/08\/debian-turns-18\/","title":{"rendered":"Debian Turns 18"},"content":{"rendered":"

So the Debian project, home of Debian GNU\/Linux and other great software distributions, has turned 18<\/a>. That’s impressive for a free software project (the GNU project<\/a> itself is only 27), and makes Debian the oldest extant distribution except for Slackware (which is just one month older).<\/p>\n

Debian wasn’t my first introduction to the world of free software<\/a> and GNU\/Linux, but it was the one that stuck. Debian was good enough for me to ditch Windows for over five years ago (after a few years of dual-booting), and it’s only improved since then. Other distributions have come along since, but I’ve tried many and none match Debian’s vast collection of high quality-assured free software.<\/p>\n

Debian’s focus on freedom is commendable, especially while still supporting people who want to use proprietary software, and avoiding the knee-jerk refusal to encourage proprietary creators towards freedom. Its support of as wide a range of architectures and kernels as possible is impressive. All this against a background of a democratic, community-driven volunteer project. For those of us interested in international community organisation, in projects pursuing ethical goals working with commercial organisations, and in co-operative enterprises where the contributors have equal say in the direction of the project, Debian stands as a great example of good practice and high-quality results.<\/p>\n

So thanks to the entire Debian community, some of whom I’m happy to call friends, for the hard work they’ve put in over the last 18 years. While I’ve never been a Debian developer, I’ve spent a lot of time supporting users on IRC, and met lovely people like <\/a>resiak<\/b><\/a><\/span> that way. I’ll go on using, supporting and advocating Debian, and look forward to the 21st birthday!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So the Debian project, home of Debian GNU\/Linux and other great software distributions, has turned 18. That’s impressive for a free software project (the GNU project itself is only 27), and makes Debian the oldest extant distribution except for Slackwa…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1211,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-debian","category-geek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}