Debian's Excitement In The 2010s From Big Releases To Systemd Usage To Powering SteamOS

Written by Michael Larabel in Operating Systems on 27 December 2019 at 06:40 AM EST. 2 Comments
OPERATING SYSTEMS
As we enter 2020, Debian remains one of the oldest Linux distributions out there and over the 2010s continued advancing quite well for being volunteer-led and competing with the corporate heavyweights like Ubuntu, Red Hat, and SUSE. Debian in the 2010s found itself being used as the basis for Valve's SteamOS, continuing to be integral to the success of Ubuntu, it ultimately decided to make use of systemd, there were various desktop changes, and multiple successful releases of Debian GNU/Linux to celebrate.

Before hitting 2020, here is a look back at some of the most popular articles on Phoronix over the past ten years.

Debian's Anti-Harassment Team Is Removing A Package Over Its Name
The latest notes from the Debian anti-harassment team on Wednesday caught my attention when reading, "We were requested to advice on the appropriateness of a certain package in the Debian archive. Our decision resulted in the package pending removal from the archive." Curiosity got the best of me... What package was deemed too inappropriate for the Debian archive?

Debian Now Defaults To Xfce Desktop
In a commit made for Debian's forthcoming 7.0 Wheezy release, Xfce is now the default desktop choice.

Valve Is Making All Their Games Free To Debian Developers
Valve will be making all of their games -- past, present, and future -- available for free to Debian Linux developers.

Debian To Switch To Systemd Or Upstart
Debian developers have been in a very polarized discussion recently about replacing their default SysVinit system with a more modern init system; namely, Debian developers are evaluating whether to use systemd or Upstart.

Debian 8.0 To Be Frozen, Features Announced
The Debian Release Team has announced the Debian 8.0 "Jessie" freeze date along with the proposed release goals for this next major update to the Debian Linux distribution that also continues to maintain a FreeBSD kernel option. The Debian 8.0 news came just a short time after releasing Debian 7.2. Debian Jessie will look to expand upon systemd support and LLVM's Clang as a secondary compiler option to GCC.

Ubuntu & Debian Abandon Intel X.Org Driver For Most Hardware, Moves To Modesetting DDX
Ubuntu and Debian (and thus other Debian-based distributions too) have abandoned the xf86-video-intel X.Org driver for all recent generations of Intel graphics hardware and instead makes use of the xf86-video-modesetting generic driver in its place.

Debian Still Debating Systemd vs. Upstart Init System
The Debian technical committee hasn't yet decided what will be the default init system for the 8.0 "Jessie" release, but it still is a heated debate as some of the committee members are starting to publicly cast their views.

Debian 7.0 "Wheezy" Officially Released
As anticipated, Debian 7.0 "Wheezy" has been officially released this weekend.

Debian 9.0 "Stretch" Might Not Have UEFI Secure Boot Support
Debian 9.0 "Stretch" has seen UEFI Secure Boot support no longer being considered a release blocker but is now just a stretch goal for this upcoming release.

Systemd Is The Future Of Debian
Since this weekend we have known that systemd was winning the Debian init system battle, but now it's official: systemd has prevailed over Upstart in Debian.

Debian Switches Back To GNOME As Its Default Desktop
While Debian defaulted to the Xfce desktop in the past after switching from GNOME, the default Debian desktop is back to being with GNOME.

MicroXwin Creators Have A PC That Runs Debian & Android Together
The company behind MicroXwin, a kernel-based X Windows implementation that claims to be the smallest and fastest X implementation, has come up with a unified Linux distribution that runs Android and Debian/Ubuntu applications simultaneously.

New Details Emerge About Debian Founder Ian Murdock's Death
At the end of last year was the untimely passing of Ian Murdock, the founder of Debian who went on to work for Sun Microsystems during the Project Indiana days and then was employed by Docker. Details of Ian's passing have remained quite scarce besides it being reported as a suicide following a sporadic Twitter rant just before his death. New details have now come to light.

Debian Trying Out Xfce Over GNOME By Default
While Debian GNU/kFreeBSD has used Xfce as its default desktop environment and prior to 7.0 Wheezy they experimented with Xfce by default for Debian GNU/Linux, it's being tried out once again.

Mir Made Good Progress Over The Holidays With Porting To Debian & Alpine, ARM Mali
Canonical's Mir display server is off to a good start for 2019 with a lot of work and pet projects being worked on over the holidays by the developers involved.

Debian 9.0 Stretch Is Now Frozen
Debian 9.0 "Stretch" is now frozen for its anticipated release later this year.

A Major Music Company Now Backs Systemd In Debian
Yesterday on Phoronix I mentioned Debian looked to be leaning in favor of using systemd over Upstart for its default init system given the latest comments by the technical committee members. The latest support for systemd in Debian comes from a streaming music company that's a major user of Debian GNU/Linux.

Devuan: Debian Without Systemd
Last month we wrote about a group of administrations planning to fork Debian GNU/Linux over not liking its direction due to adopting systemd over Upstart or SysVInit. The Debian administrators have made good on their word and announced the Devuan fork of Debian.

Debian 7.0 GNU/Linux vs. GNU/kFreeBSD Benchmarks
Up this morning are benchmarks comparing the performance of Debian GNU/Linux 7.0 to Debian GNU/kFreeBSD 7.0, the version of the Debian operating system that ships the GNU user-land but replaces the Linux kernel from that of FreeBSD 9.0.

New Features Coming For Debian 7.0 "Wheezy"
With the recent release of Debian 7.0 Installer Release Candidate, the final release of Debian 7.0 "Wheezy" is effectively on approach. For those not up to speed on this major Linux distribution update, here's a list of some of the top features.

Debian 10 "Buster" Has Around 150 Release Critical Bugs At The Moment
Debian developer Jonathan Wiltshire who is part of the project's release team issued a Buster freeze status update on Sunday concerning the readiness of Debian 10.

Debian Stretch Enters Its Soft Freeze, Full Freeze In One Month
The soft freeze is now upon us for Debian 9.0 "Stretch" while the full freeze will happen in February.

Debian 10 "Buster" Should Be Out Around Mid-2019, Debian 12 Is "Bookworm"
The Debian release team has put out their latest information concerning the upcoming Debian 10 "Buster" release.

Debian Switches Back To GNOME From Xfce
Debian will no longer be defaulting to the Xfce desktop but they have returned to using the GNOME desktop as the default.

Debian Issues Statement Over Arrested Russian Developer
Debian developer Dmitry Bogatov was arrested by Russian authorities for running a Tor exit node and accused of supporting terrorism.
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About The Author
Michael Larabel

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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