{"id":3742,"date":"2011-08-16T12:07:32","date_gmt":"2011-08-16T12:07:32","guid":{"rendered":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:diffrentcolours:901434"},"modified":"2011-08-16T12:07:32","modified_gmt":"2011-08-16T12:07:32","slug":"debian-turns-18-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/2011\/08\/debian-turns-18-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Debian Turns 18"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So the Debian project, home of Debian GNU\/Linux and other great software distributions, has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.debian.org\/News\/2011\/20110816\" rel=\"nofollow\">turned 18<\/a>. That&#8217;s impressive for a free software project (the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gnu.org\/\" rel=\"nofollow\">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<p>Debian wasn&#8217;t my first introduction to the world of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gnu.org\/philosophy\/free-sw.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">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&#8217;s only improved since then. Other distributions have come along since, but I&#8217;ve tried many and none match Debian&#8217;s vast collection of high quality-assured free software.<\/p>\n<p>Debian&#8217;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<p>So thanks to the entire Debian community, some of whom I&#8217;m happy to call friends, for the hard work they&#8217;ve put in over the last 18 years. While I&#8217;ve never been a Debian developer, I&#8217;ve spent a lot of time supporting users on IRC, and met lovely people like <span  class=\"ljuser  i-ljuser  i-ljuser-type-P     \"  data-ljuser=\"resiak\" lj:user=\"resiak\" ><a href=\"http:\/\/resiak.livejournal.com\/profile\"    class=\"i-ljuser-profile\" ><img decoding=\"async\"  class=\"i-ljuser-userhead\"  src=\"http:\/\/l-stat.livejournal.net\/img\/userinfo.gif?v=17080?v=143.7\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/resiak.livejournal.com\/\" class=\"i-ljuser-username\"      ><b>resiak<\/b><\/a><\/span> that way. I&#8217;ll go on using, supporting and advocating Debian, and look forward to the 21st birthday!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So the Debian project, home of Debian GNU\/Linux and other great software distributions, has turned 18. That&#8217;s impressive for a free software project (the GNU project itself is only 27), and makes Debian the oldest extant distribution except for Slackwa&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1211,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3742","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\/3742","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=3742"}],"version-history":[{"count":229,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3742\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8363,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3742\/revisions\/8363"}],"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=3742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}