Posted 08/18/08 at 01:26:55 PM by Paul Lilly

What does Debian, one of the most popular and stable Linux operating systems, and myself have in common? We both celebrated a birthday on August 16th! But unlike myself, Debian has proved its maturity at 'only' age 15 and probably doesn't find fart jokes funny anymore. Debian's also been highly influential, as many of the popular GNU/Linux distributions you've read about or played with - including Ubuntu and Knoppix - are based on Debian..

To trace Debian's roots, you'd have to go back to 1993 when Ian Murdock, who is now VP of developer and and community marketing at Sun, first announced the OS. But why call it Debian? Because of a girl, of course! Ian combined the name of his then girlfriend (and now wife), Debora, with his own (Deb+Ian), the union of which gave birth to Debian.

Fun Facts

• All versions of Debian are named after characters from the film Toy Story
• There are always four versions 
• Least stable version of Debian is named after Sid, the emotionally unstable neighbor kid in Toy Story who enjoyed destroying toys

Here's wishing another 15 years!

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Software, linux, open-source, birthday, debian