Debian

Debian is a Unix-like computer operating system and a Linux distribution that is composed entirely of free and open-source software, most of which is under the GNU General Public License, and packaged by a group of individuals known as the Debian project. At each point in time the Debian project offers three branches named "stable", "testing" and "unstable". The Debian Stable distribution is one of the most popular for personal computers and network servers, and has been used as a base for several other Linux distributions. Debian was first announced in 1993 by Ian Murdock, and the first stable release was made in 1996. The development is carried out over the Internet by a team of volunteers guided by a project leader and three foundational documents. New distributions are updated continually, and the next candidate is released after a time-based freeze. As one of the earliest Linux distributions, it was envisioned that Debian was to be developed openly in the spirit of Linux and GNU. This vision drew the attention and support of the Free Software Foundation, which sponsored the project from November 1994 until November 1995. Upon the ending of FSF sponsorship, the Debian project formed the non-profit organisation Software in the Public Interest Debian is primarily a Linux distribution with access to online repositories that contain over 37,500 software packages. Debian officially contains only free software, but non-free software can be downloaded from the Debian repositories and installed. Debian includes popular free programs such as LibreOffice, Iceweasel web browser, Evolution mail, K3b disc burner, VLC media player, GIMP image editor and Evince document viewer. Debian is a popular choice for web servers. The cost of developing all of the packages included in Debian 5.0 Lenny (323 million lines of code) has been estimated to be about US$ 8 billion, using one method based on the COCOMO model. As of 2014, Ohloh estimates that the codebase (78 million lines of code) would cost about US$ 1.5 billion to develop, using a different method based on the same model. The current stable release, code-named Wheezy, is officially supported on thirteen architecture ports, introducing s390x and armhf. Notable new features in this release include: multiarch, which allows 32-bit Linux software to run on 64-bit operating system installs; UEFI support for amd64; improved multimedia support, reducing reliance on third-party repositories; compiled packages with hardened security flags; AppArmor, which assists in protecting a system against unknown vulnerabilities; and systemd, which ships as a technology preview.