The History of Debian, Part 1
The History of Debian, Part 1
Formation and the first six years
Ian Ashley Murdock was born on the 28th of April in 1973 in Konstanz, West Germany. His parents were both from southern Indiana, but Murdock’s father, Lawrence, was in Germany at the time doing some postdoctoral research. Murdock and his family returned to Indiana in 1975, and Murdock then spent his youth in Lafayette Indiana as his father became a professor of entomology at Purdue.
Sometime around 1982, Murdock’s father bought an Apple II+ to replace his typewriter at his office. Leaving the office one Friday with the machine in the car, he stopped at a ComputerLand and picked up a copy of a Space Invaders clone. He thought his son might enjoy some time with computer, and he was correct. That weekend largely consisted of young Ian Murdock playing with the Apple II+. Following this first experience with a computer, Murdock went to work with his father whenever possible to get a little more time with the computer. While the earliest days with this machine saw him playing games, his interest quickly expanded to programming due to type-in BASIC games.
Murdock was starting to spend nearly all of his free time hanging around his father’s lab at the university, and he happened to meet one of his father’s graduate students, Lee Sudlow. Sudlow was helping Murdock’s father with various experiments and using the computer to do so. Murdock could often be found hovering over Sudlow’s shoulder as the scientist wrote programs for various calculations and simulations. For young Ian, this was an almost mystical glimpse into what a computer could really accomplish. Lawrence Murdock was pleased to see his son taking an interest in something scientific and bought an Apple IIe for the home. While BASIC was certainly his first computer language, Murdock soon began learning 6502 assembly language.
Then, as with many talented young people, the teenage years hit. The Apple IIe found its way into a closet as gasoline and perfume became a bit more interesting. Murdock graduated from Harrison High School in 1991, and he then enrolled at Purdue in the Krannert School of Management.
Students at Purdue in this time were required to take a course in either COBOL or FORTRAN. Murdock chose COBOL as he felt it was the more business oriented of the two choices. In the winter of 1992, this brought him into contact with a Sun workstation. In their usage for the class, these Sun workstations acted as terminals to an IBM 3090 running COBOL. With the completion of the course, Murdock’s account on the IBM was terminated, but as a student at the university, he was entitled to an account on either the IBM or a Sequent Symmetry minicomputer. He applied for an account on one of the Sequent machines at the school, and was granted one with 500k of storage (a limit that Murdock quickly found ways to circumvent). For the rest of that winter, Murdock spent most of his time in the basement of the math building at a Z-29 terminal exploring the UNIX system to which he now had access, and suffering through envy of the sysops who had privileged access as superuser of the Sequent machines. Murdock also changed his major to computer science.
Before long, the Z-29s weren’t enough to sate Murdock’s curiosity. He and his friend Jason Balicki started walking the campus after dark, entering all the buildings, and looking for any door that they felt might lead to computer systems. They eventually discovered that the best machines were in the engineering administration building. Here, they found X terminals with grayscale, graphical interfaces to not just the Sequent minicomputers, but also to other UNIX machines across the campus. Allegedly, these machines were restricted to engineering students, but this wasn’t a restriction that was technologically enforced in any manner, and the two young men dutifully ignored the rules.
The pair soon tired of using X terminals. They moved on to the labs containing Sun workstations with high resolution color displays and SunOS, which Jason informed Ian was the best UNIX there was. These machines were better secured than any other they’d encountered, and the duo soon moved back to using the X terminals.
Whenever not on campus, Murdock was dialing in from a 286 PC-compatible at his home over a 2400 baud modem. Yet, there was one thing he lacked, X. In January of 1993, he was on usenet looking for a PC-compatible X server, and he stumbled upon something much better, Linux. The only issue he faced is that Linux required a 386. Murdock started saving money to buy a 386 machine, but he kept exploring in the interim. A few weeks after discovering Linux, he posted to Purdue’s computer usenet group to see if anyone was running the OS. The response he received was from Mike Dickey who invited Murdock to come see the setup. Murdock was inspired and purchased a box of thirty floppies and began downloading SLS at the lab in the Krannert building. He still lacked a 386 when he finally completed the download, but he and Jason found an unlocked computer lab in the middle of one February night, and the installed Linux on one the PCs.
When Murdock finally did get a 386, he installed SLS, and shortly thereafter he installed Slackware. He wasn’t just enraptured by the UNIX-like system at his disposal, but also by the way in which it was created with hundreds of people hacking away and swapping code in a decentralized fashion. He realized that this open source development model could be used to make an entire system and not just a kernel, and this inspired a system that he set about to create, the Debian Linux Release. The name is a portmanteau of Debra and Ian, the name of his girlfriend at the time and his own name.
Debian was started on the 16th of August in 1993. As with most Linux announcements in the first half of the 1990s, the project was first made public on usenet.
From: Ian A Murdock (imurdock@shell.portal.com) Date: August 16, 1993 6:09:59 PST Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.development Subject: New release under development; suggestions requested Fellow Linuxers, This is just to announce the imminent completion of a brand-new Linux release, which I'm calling the Debian Linux Release. This is a release that I have put together basically from scratch; in other words, I didn't simply make some changes to SLS and call it a new release. I was inspired to put together this release after running SLS and generally being dissatisfied with much of it, and after much altering of SLS I decided that it would be easier to start from scratch. The base system is now virtually complete (though I'm still looking around to make sure that I grabbed the most recent sources for everything), and I'd like to get some feedback before I add the "fancy" stuff. Please note that this release is not yet completed and may not be for several more weeks; however, I thought I'd post now to perhaps draw a few people out of the woodwork. Specifically, I'm looking for: 1) someone who will eventually be willing to allow me to upload the release to their anonymous ftp-site. Please contact me. Be warned that it will be rather large :) 2) comments, suggestions, advice, etc. from the Linux community. This is your chance to suggest specific packages, series, or anything you'd like to see part of the final release. Don't assume that because a package is in SLS that it will necessarily be included in the Debian release! Things like ls and cat are a given, but if there's anything that's in SLS that you couldn't live without please let me know! I'd also like suggestions for specific features for the release. For example, a friend of mine here suggested that undesired packages should be selected BEFORE the installation procedure begins so the installer doesn't have to babysit the installation. Suggestions along that line are also welcomed. What will make this release better than SLS? This: 1) Debian will be sleeker and slimmer. No more multiple binaries and manpages. 2) Debian will contain the most up-to-date of everything. The system will be easy to keep up-to-date with a 'upgrading' script in the base system which will allow complete integration of upgrade packages. 3) Debian will contain a installation procedure that doesn't need to be babysat; simply install the basedisk, copy the distribution disks to the harddrive, answer some question about what packages you want or don't want installed, and let the machine install the release while you do more interesting things. 4) Debian will contain a system setup procedure that will attempt to setup and configure everything from fstab to Xconfig. 5) Debian will contain a menu system that WORKS... menu-driven package installation and upgrading utility, menu-driven system setup, menu-driven help system, and menu-driven system administration. 6) Debian will make Linux easier for users who don't have access to the Internet. Currently, users are stuck with whatever comes with SLS. Non-Internet users will have the option of receiving periodic upgrade packages to apply to their system. They will also have the option of selecting from a huge library of additional packages that will not be included in the base system. This library will contain packages like the S3 X-server, nethack and Seyon; basically packages that you and I can ftp but non-netters cannot access. 7) Debian will be extensively documented (more than just a few READMEs). 8) As I put together Debian, I am keeping a meticulous record of where I got everything. This will allow the end-user to not only know where to get the source, but whether or not the most recent version is a part of Debian. This record will help to keep the Debian release as up-to-date as possible. 9) Lots more, but I'll detail later... Anyway, I'll provide more specifics in a week or so after I receive enough replies. Please, all replies by mail. I'll post a followup. If you wish to discuss this in the newsgroup, please don't turn it into a flamewar. :) Until later, Ian -- Ian Murdock Internet: imur...@shell.portal.com The Linux Warehouse Please mail me for more information on the status of the Debian Linux Release
Despite Murdock’s statement that this wouldn’t be an SLS fork, the project’s development did start with Slackware, and around that time, he and Patrick Volkerding had some lengthy discussions regarding the merger of the Slackware and Debian projects. Volkerding ultimately declined, and Murdock continued down his own path. Of this, Volkerding said:
Ian and I spoke on the phone at length around the time of the manifesto. He had wanted me to give up Slackware and join Debian Project, and was going to give me a vote in the development (like anyone else who wanted to join). I am not going to claim that Debian is a Slackware fork, but in August of 1993 that's pretty much what Ian had on his computer. I'm not sure that I actually saw a copy of Debian proper until around 1995.
The manifesto to which Patrick was referring is the Debian Manifesto written by Murdock. This essentially sets up Debian as the opposite of distributions of the time, and also as the opposite of many still to come. In this regard, the manifesto opens by stating that Debian is developed openly, and it then proceeds to state that it is non-commercial with distribution to be eventually handled by the Free Software Foundation and the Debian Linux Association for very little over cost. As for why Debian exists, Murdock stated the extremely poor quality of leading distributions such as SLS and the rather misleading marketing they employ. Murdock closes the manifesto with how Debian intends to solve the issues surrounding current distributions speaking specifically to the advantage that open development brings more minds to problems leading to more rapid and higher quality bugfixing.
Murdock was a driven man. Starting in earnest in August of 1993, he iterated his software until he reached 0.90 and made the first public beta release of Debian on the 26th of January in 1994. This was followed by 0.91 on the 29th of January.
This is the first public release of the Debian Linux distribution, version 0.91 BETA. It can be found at sunsite.unc.edu in the directory `/pub/Linux/distributions/debian'. It is also mirrored at a number of sites around the world. Please connect to the site nearest you: (Last updated: Mon Jan 31 10:11:59 EST 1994) Country Name Directory ------- ---- --------- Austria flinux.tu-graz.ac.at /pub/mirror/debian France ftp.ibp.fr /pub/linux/distributions/debian Germany ftp.gwdg.de /pub/linux/install/debian The Netherlands ftp.nl.net /pub/os/Linux/distr/Debian South Africa ftp.sun.ac.za /pub/linux/distributions/Debian Taiwan NCTUCCCA.edu.tw /Operating-Systems/Linux/Debian U.K. src.doc.ic.ac.uk /packages/Linux/other/debian U.S. cps201.cps.cmich.edu /pub/linux/packages/debian Bug Reporting ============= Please mail bug reports, comments and suggestions to <debian-bugs@pixar.com>. [ NOTE to BETA testers: this is intended for those not on the debian-devel list. If you are, then don't bother with debian-bugs. It's simply a way for end-users to easily reports bugs to us. ] Mailing lists ============= There are several mailing lists devoted to the Debian Linux distribution: * debian-announce@pixar.com A moderated mailing list for important Debian Linux announcements (new releases, bug fixes, etc.) * debian-devel@pixar.com A _closed_ mailing list for use only by Debian Linux developers and BETA testers * debian-user@pixar.com An open forum for users of Debian Linux These lists are managed by Bruce Perens <bruce@pixar.com>. Bruce is also the moderator of debian-announce. Special thanks to Bruce for setting these lists up for us. From Bruce, here's how these lists can be joined: > The first two lists are open admission. You join them by sending e-mail > to LISTSERV@pixar.com with these two commands in the body of the message: > > subscribe debian-announce YOUR-ENGLISH-NAME > subscribe debian-user YOUR-ENGLISH-NAME > help > > You can leave out the command for any list you aren't interested in. For > instance, Ian Murdock sent these e-mail commands to LISTSERV@pixar.com to > join the lists: > > subscribe debian-announce Ian Murdock > subscribe debian-user Ian Murdock > help > > The debian-devel list is closed-admission. You join this by sending > mail to bruce@pixar.com with a sentence or so explaining that you are > developing software or that you will continue to beta-test the Debian > releases. > > The list server will say that you can only post from the address you > subscribed from. That feature is disabled, you can post from any address. Changes from 0.90 to 0.91 ========================= Please see the file `CHANGES-0.91' for details.
The changes file reads:
NOTE: Please install 0.91 if you have installed 0.90 or before. The change from absolute to relative pathnames will make it impossible to upgrade in the future with dpkg if you are not running 0.91 or later. Please do not attempt to manually upgrade to 0.91 from any previous version; it simply WILL NOT WORK. Changes from 0.90 to 0.91: * repackaged the distribution using relative pathnames in the packages. * worded the mounting example in dinstall slightly better. * fixed the problem with selecting no swap partition in dsetup. * fixed several minor problems in dpkg, most notably the bug that reset the number of packages installed after each disk. Several additional changes were made to the script, but they were minor, including modifications to deal with relative pathnames, a fix so that package dependencies actually WORK now and better error handling when a filesystem cannot be mounted. * upgraded to Linux kernel 0.99.14w. This fixed the `ftp: setsockopt TOS (ignored)' problem we were having with ftp and rlogin/rsh. * patched dip-3.3.7 to work with recent kernels. Thanks, Christian. * some permission changes: chsh, rlogin and rsh weren't SUID. * upgraded to fixperms 1.0. It now reports incorrect owner/group when appropriate. * a bit more, but I forget exactly what. I must start keeping better notes.
Murdock relates that he was doing the bulk of the work in putting releases together at this time. Other people were helping, but it was a small number. The very early Debian releases wouldn’t be recognizable as such to modern users. Primarily, the technology for which Debian is most famous (dpkg) didn’t yet exist. With these early releases, software for Debian came in source form. The user would download a tar, unpack it, apply Debian’s patches, compile, and install. This isn’t too different from most Linux and UNIX projects of that era, but Murdock was working on a remedy for this tedious process. He then spent the bulk of 1994 trying to better organize the project. The first major win was mentioned in the manifesto; Debian (or more specifically, Ian Murdock) gained sponsorship from the Free Software Foundation. This worked out well for both parties. Stallman stated that the FSF and GNU project were looking for a system that wasn’t tied to a commercial entity, was easy to install, and was was easy to maintain. They were aware that while GNU was ready, Hurd was not. Linux was already being combined with GNU to produce operating systems, and the FSF/GNU wanted something with their stamp on it. At roughly the same time, Debian gained it’s first mascot. The idea was Richard Stallman’s and the drawing was by Etienne Suvasa. It was a baby gnu holding a blanket and sucking its thumb in the fashion of Linus from Peanuts.
While Murdock was still doing quite a bit of development, certain projects were taken into the hands of others. For example, while Murdock was still working on Debian’s package manager, dpkg, the bulk of the work done on that program during 1994 was by Ian Jackson. Jackson’s work led to a renaming of the tool to dpkg-deb with a front-end named dselect. This was done primarily to allow him some flexibility to change things. He wanted to provide some dependency and conflict checking without breaking the tool with which users interacted. Shortly after this, the Debian archive container changed from a Debian specific tool to ar. Debian’s packages could now be unpacked on any UNIX-like system (or even non UNIX like) as long as they had the ar tool.
The next version after 0.91 was 0.93 release 5 in March of 1995. This was the first version to include dpkg. In August, Debian’s first port was started. Hartmut Koptein began a port of Debian to m68k using his Atari Medusa 68040 clocked at 32 MHz. By November, Koptein had the base package set built, and he began uploading his collection of packages (around two hundred or so). 0.93R5 was followed by 0.93 release 6 in November of 1995. This version was the last to use a.out binaries, and it also included dselect. By this time, the Debian project had grown to a team of roughly sixty people. This release of Debian included two hundred fifty six packages, used kernel 1.2.13, and like releases before it, used the boot/root method. It shipped as five floppy disk images. One of these was boot and was used to get the computer up and running. The user would then swap that boot disk for the root disk which contained the operating system from which the installation would be completed.
The root disk’s contents were copied to RAM, the installer was automatically started, and the user would then proceed to swap base disks of which there were three. The installer, while spartan, was an easy enough to use menu system. I do not happen to have any software available that could be run on a Linux system quite this old, but I assure you that the images of the system would be… uninspiring. It’s a text-based UNIX-clone.
After 0.93R6, Murdock left the project. He needed to focus on completing his degree and earning some money. He received his BS in Computer Science in 1996. His first job thereafter was as a staff programmer at the University of Arizona. He and his girlfriend Debra Lynn did eventually marry, and they had three children. They divorced in 2008. Murdock would go on to be the CTO of the Free Standards Group, the chairman of the Linux Standard Base working group, and the CTO of the Linux Foundation. He eventually became the Chief OS Platform Strategist of Sun Microsystems where he started Project Indiana which became OpenSolaris. He then became the VP of Emerging Platforms at Sun, but he resigned this position after Oracle acquired the company. He was then hired by Salesforce as the VP of Platform and Developer Community until he left a few years later to work at Docker, Inc. Sponsorship by the FSF ceased when Murdock left the project. Richard Stallman made an announcement to this effect on the 28th of April in 1996. Bruce Perens responded:
I'd like to supplement the announcement about FSF no longer sponsoring
Debian, if I may.Ian Murdock, who was sponsored by FSF, stepped down from the project
leader position so that he could spend more time on school, work, and
his family. The 60 other Debian developers, who did not have FSF
sponsorship, continue in their roles.The Debian group is in sympathy with FSF's political and philosophical
goals. Our problem was with their technical direction. We've decided to
come to an amicable end to FSF sponsorship so that we can allow all
developers to participate in Debian as _peers_. FSF is invited to
participate on the same basis - at the same level as individuals, schools,
organizations, and companies that have put a lot of work into Debian.Debian remains a non-profit organization dedicated to free software.
Our Linux system is entirely free. Anyone can redistribute it or sell
it on a CD-ROM, and you don't need our permission to do so. Thus, it's
available for FSF to distribute and use as a fund-raiser, etc.
We acknowledge the role of the GNU project in our system and like to
think of Debian as "Son of GNU".We've been beta-testing Debian 1.1 with our active user community for
several weeks. We're about to widen the beta test to the entire Internet.
For information on the beta test, you can subscribe to the mailing
lists by sending the word "subscribe" to the following addresses:debian-anno...@lists.debian.org
Very low-traffic list for major announcements.debian-chan...@lists.debian.org
Debian package change announcements. Can have several messages a day.debian-us...@lists.debian.org
High-traffic list of user questions and answers.I thank FSF and its leaders for dealing with this amicably.
Bruce Perens
Debian Project Leader
From the hosting location for the mailing lists, we can also see that Pixar’s support had ended by this time, and that Bruce Perens had taken over the role as leader. Perens’ involvement in Debian began with his efforts to make Linux for Hams, a distribution that would ship with software useful for amateur radio enthusiasts. When he realized that his primary choice for a base Linux system (Debian) would require some more effort, he dove in and started helping. His early work was in the installation scripts and rescue floppy. This rescue floppy is rather a bigger deal than one might at first imagine. To get an entire UNIX-like system on a single floppy, Perens created BusyBox. This work began in 1995, and Perens found it fit for use by 1996. BusyBox has become a defacto standard userland for embedded Linux systems. His position within the Debian development community grew quickly, and by the time of Murdock’s departure, he’d largely already taken over Murdock’s former role.
At this time, Bruce was working at Pixar while serving as the Debian Project Leader. This connection manifests itself in the code name for the first release made in Perens’ era, Buzz. Starting with version 1.1 and continuing to this day, all Debian releases use Toy Story characters as their code names. Version 1.1 wasn’t significant solely for the start this tradition, but also as the first version to use ELF binaries, and the 2.0 kernel. At this point, Debian contained four hundred seventy four packages. Debian 1.1 Buzz was released on the 17th of June in 1996.
Without the support of the FSF, Perens needed to find a way to fund the project. To this end, he created a US non-profit organization in New York, Software in the Public Interest (SPI), on the 16th of June in 1997. In the spirit of Debian, GNU, and Linux, membership is open to all either by contributing to the free software community or as a fiscal sponsor. While this organization was initially meant to allow Debian to accept monetary donations, it now funds many other projects as well.
Debian version 1.2 Rex was release on the 12th of December in 1996. It included eight hundred forty eight packages, kernel version 2.0.27, and included the work of one hundred twenty software developers. Rex was followed by version 1.3 Bo on the 5th of June in 1997. Bo was made of nine hundred seventy four packages, of the work of two hundred developers, and supported i386, m68k, Alpha, and SPARC as unofficial ports. Bo could be installed directly from CD-ROM (actually two CDs), and it included XFree86. This release also saw Debian’s branch system take shape. In Debian, there are three main branches for the project. The stable branch is that which each major release falls under. The unstable branch (known as Sid) is where active development takes place. Between these is the testing branch where packages from Sid are merged into what becomes the next stable release. Formerly stable releases that are no longer current are referred to as old stable, and eventually as old old stable, and then they are eventually archived.
On the 5th of July in 1997, Debian adopted its Social Contract and its Free Software Guidelines. The Social Contract stated that Debian would remain free software. While allowing users to develop and use non-free software, Debian would never require its use or development. It stated that Debian would contribute upstream (this means to authors of software included in Debian releases), that it would keep its bug reporting database open for public view, that it would keep users and free software the central priority of Debian, and that it would support those who wish to use non-Debian-official and/or non-free software by providing contrib and non-free repositories for that purpose. The Free Software Guidelines stated that any included software in Debian may not restrict any user from selling or giving away that software and that it may not require a royalty or other fee. It further stated that the source code for any software must be included and that the software’s license must allow distribution as source and binary, that it must allow derived works, that the license must not discriminate against anyone, that the license may not discriminate against any purpose for the software’s use, that the license may not be specific to Debian, that the license may not restrict software included alongside it, and it finally provided examples of software licenses that met these guidelines: GPL, BSD, Artistic.
On the 18th of March in 1998, Bruce Perens left the Debian project:
There was some question on this list yesterday regarding whether I would leave Debian. It is indeed true. I will remain as president of SPI and will redirect SPI's mission to be for all free software rather than just for Debian. I'm sorry it had to be this way, but I feel that my mission to bring free software to the masses really isn't compatible with Debian any longer, and that I should be working with one of the more mainstream Linux distributions.
Ian Jackson became the Debian Project Leader after Bruce Perens. Apparently, shortly after becoming DPL, he became a board member and the VP of SPI. Then in February of 1998, Perens and Eric S. Raymond founded the Open Source Initiative which aimed to give a pragmatic focus to free and open source software. This then precipitated a series of resignations at SPI which included treasurer Tim Sailer, president Bruce Perens, and secretary Ian Murdock. Ian Jackson then became the president of SPI.
The next Debian release was version 2.0 Hamm on the 24th of July in 1998 with around fifteen hundred packages and built with kernel 2.0.34. This release made m68k an official and supported port while Alpha, SPARC, and PowerPC were available in Sid. Version 2 saw Debian make the switch glibc 2. This release also saw Debian begin experimental work a non-Linux based version, Debian GNU/Hurd. Hurd is a set of servers implementing things like file systems, network protocols, and access control (among many other things) on the GNU Mach microkernel. Hurd is intended to be the kernel for GNU in lieu of Linux. At this time, Debian had just over four hundred contributors.
On the 2nd of December in 1998, Debian ratified its Constitution which outlined a democratic process for the appointment of leaders and the operation of the decision making process within the project. With the first election for project leader, Wichert Akkerman succeeded Jackson.
The next version of Debian was released on the 9th of March in 1999 as 2.1 Slink. This release was built of two thousand two hundred fifty packages running on kernel 2.0.34. Slink was available for i386, m68k, Alpha, and SPARC. This release re-organized the Debian packages for X making things easier to maintain. Slink required two CDs, and importantly, this release also included apt. The Advanced Packaging Tool (apt) was the replacement for the dselect frontend for dpkg, and it was originally started by Brian White with developer coordination taking place over IRC. Apt, as far as I can tell, was the first Linux package manager to automate the retrieval, installation, update, compilation, and configuration of software packages including any required dependencies.
Following the Linus-styled gnu, Debian had moved to using a logo using DEBIAN GNU/LINUX in all caps:
This was followed by a heavily stylized penguin with blue eyes:
Around the time of the 2.1 release, Debian adopted the Debian swirl logo which it continues to use today:
Over the years, Debian has become the most commonly used distribution from which to build derivative distributions. The first of these appeared around this time: Libranet, Corel, Stormix.