Linux has been garnering strength for the last few years, and its growing popularity drives more and more users to make the jump. The first step on that path is to pick a distribution. This is an important decision, because each distribution has its own peculiarities, and future migration costs can be avoided if the right choice is made from the start.
Debian GNU/Linux is a “generic” Linux distribution that fits most users. The purpose of this book is to show its many aspects so you can make an informed decision when choosing.
Linux has gathered a fair amount of media coverage, which mostly benefits the distributions supported by a real marketing department — in other words, to company-backed distributions (Ubuntu, Red Hat, Suse, Mandriva, and so on). But Debian is far from being a marginal distribution; according to a German study made in early 2009, Debian is the most widely used distribution on servers (with nearly half of the responding companies having at least one Debian server), and the second most widely deployed on desktops (right behind Ubuntu, which is a Debian derivative).
The purpose of this book is to help you discover this distribution. We hope to share the experience we've gathered since we joined the project as developers and contributors in 1998 (Raphaël) and 2000 (Roland). With any luck, our enthusiasm will be communicative, and maybe you'll join us sometime…
The first edition of this book (in 2004) served to fill a gaping hole: it was the first French-language book that focused exclusively on Debian. At that time, many other books were written on the topic both for French-speaking and English-speaking readers. Unfortunately almost none of them got updated, and today we again find ourselves in a situation where there are very few good books on Debian. We truly hope that this first English edition will fill this gap and help many users.
