دبيان هي توزيعة GNU/Linux. سنناقش ماهية التوزيعات أكثر في
قسم 1.5, “دور التوزيعة”، لكن حالياً، سوف نقول فقط أنها نظام تشغيل كامل، يتضمن برمجيات ونظم تثبيت وإدارة، وكل ذلك يعتمد على النواة Linux (لينكس) وعلى البرمجيات الحرة (خصوصاً المأخوذة من مشروع GNU).
When he created Debian, in 1993, under the leadership of the Free Software Foundation (
FSF), Ian Murdock had clear objectives, which he expressed in the
Debian Manifesto. The free operating system that he sought would have to have two principal features. First, quality: Debian would be developed with the greatest care, to be worthy of the Linux kernel. It would also be a non-commercial distribution, sufficiently credible to compete with major commercial distributions. This double ambition would, in his eyes, only be achieved by opening the Debian development process just like that of Linux and the GNU project. Thus, peer review would continuously improve the product.
1.1.1. نظام تشغيل متعدد المنصات
Debian, remaining true to its initial principles, has had so much success that, today, it has reached a tremendous size. Currently, it officially supports nine hardware release architectures and several variations of each architecture known as “flavors”, and also other kernels like FreeBSD, although the FreeBSD-based ports are not part of the set of officially supported architectures either. Furthermore, with more than 31,000 source packages, the available software can meet almost any need, whether at home or in the enterprise.
The sheer size of the distribution can be inconvenient: it is really unreasonable to distribute 18 DVD-ROMs (only containing the packages qualifying as "Free Software") to install a complete version on a standard PC… This is why Debian is increasingly considered as a “meta-distribution”, from which one extracts more specific distributions intended for a particular public: Debian Science for scientific use, Debian Edu for education and pedagogical use in an academic environment, Debian Med for medical applications, Debian Jr. for young children, etc. A more complete list of the sub-projects can be found in
قسم 1.3.3.1, “Existing Debian Sub-Projects and Blends”, dedicated to that purpose.
تُنظّم هذه الأقسام الفرعية في إطار عمل مُحدَّد بوضوح يضمن التوافق السلس بين ”التوزيعات الفرعية“ المختلفة. تتبع كل هذه التوزيعات الخطة العامة لإصدار النسخ الجديدة. وبما أنها تبنى على الأساسات نفسها، فيمكن توسعتها وإكمالها وتخصيصها بسهولة باستخدام التطبيقات المتوفرة في مستودعات دبيان.
تعمل جميع أدوات دبيان لتيسير هذا الأمر: فقد كان debian-cd يسمح منذ زمن طويل بإنشاء مجموعات من الأقراص الليزرية التي تحوي مجموعة محددة مسبقاً من الحزم فقط؛ كما أن debian-installer هو مُثبِّتٌ تجزيئي (modular)، يمكن ملائمته مع الحاجات الخاصة بسهولة. وAPT سوف تثبّت الحزم من مصادر متنوعة، وتضمن في الوقت نفسه الاتساق العام للنظام.
1.1.2. جودة البرمجيات الحرة
Debian follows all of the principles of Free Software, and its new versions are not released until they are ready. Developers do not work upon a set schedule and don't have to rush to meet an arbitrary deadline. People frequently complain of the long time between Debian's stable releases, but this caution ensures that Debian's legendary reliability is met: long months of testing are indeed necessary for the full distribution to receive the “stable” label.
Debian will not compromise on quality: all known critical bugs on key packages are resolved in any new version, even if this requires the initially forecast release date to be pushed back. Optional packages whose critical bugs are not fixed, and thus do not meet the quality requirements, are simply dropped from the stable release.
1.1.3. إطار العمل القانوني: منظمة غير ربحية
من الناحية القانونية، دبيان هو مشروع تديره جمعية أمريكية تطوعية غير ربحية. في المشروع حوالي ألف Debian developer (مطور دبيان)، لكنه يلمُّ شمل عدد أكبر بكثير من المتطوعين (مترجمون، مبلغون عن العلل، فنانون، مطورون غير ملتزمون، الخ).
To carry its mission to fruition, Debian has a large infrastructure, with many servers connected across the Internet, offered and hosted by many sponsors.
