Talk:Debian

Software by the Debian project

Being a Linux distribution Debian consists almost entirely of free and open-source software written by 3rd parties. But some software is being developed by Debian, e.g. deb (file format), the Debian installer, Advanced Packaging Tool, and maybe some other stuff. Not sure whether this Debian-own software should get an own section. User:ScotXW^t@lk 18:41, 29 August 2016

No longer free software/open source?

It includes non-free firmware in the installer. Is this already mentioned? Alohaidled (talk) 12:21, 1 November 2022 (UTC)

I do not know if these links

https://www.gnu.org/distros/common-distros.html

https://web.archive.org/web/20231102171742/https://www.gnu.org/distros/common-distros.html

https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2022/10/msg00001.html

https://web.archive.org/web/20231102171923/https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2022/10/msg00001.html

are already mentioned in the article or now, but some information may also need to be changed to reflect the changes in the policy of Debian.

I hope I'm using the talk page correctly.

I do not yet know where I should place this information about the policy change in Debian.

Other users may know where the best place in this article is to place the references.

I think near the top changing

"Since its founding,"

to

"Since its founding till 2022,"

And putting the links in a "ref" may be a way to show the change.

Though there may be a better way to link to the change.

Other Cody (talk) 21:19, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

I'm sorry but that's not a proper synthesis. Debian distributed an install image with proprietary firmware long before 2022, and the FSF's disavowal of Debian also existed long before that date. "Since its founding" may not be accurate, but "until 2022" is definitely incorrect. inclusivedisjunction (talk) 11:38, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

I've updated it to a better synthesis that talks about how Debian generally follows FOSS principles but includes some proprietary software. Dexcube (talk) 03:35, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Debian Logo

The article claims that the "genie bottle" was originally part of the logo and fell out of use. That seems to me to be either misleading or simply incorrect. When the logo was originally designed, there were two versions, one for public use and one for official use. The public use one was the one with the bottle, and the official one was the swirl only. Shortly after that logo design won the competition, it was decided to swap the meaning of both logos (one of the reasons being that is was weird that the official only use logo was a subset of the public one). The official logo guidelines[1] still show that the bottle version still exists and is reserved for official use.

So it's not that the bottle version "was effectively superseded", it simply was not the correct logo to use anymore. Joghurt42 (talk) 11:03, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

No longer GNU/Linux?

It seems Debian no longer officially goes by the GNU/Linux name, and has not for quite some time - https://www.debian.org/releases/ Lists 5.0 and before as being "Debian GNU/Linux", but later releases only refer to it as "Debian".

Other pages on debian.org have also dropped GNU completely, e.g. https://www.debian.org/intro/why_debian (no matches for GNU), compared to https://web.archive.org/web/20170609170537/http://www.debian.org/intro/why_debian.

I therefore propose changing the lede to something along the lines of "Debian (/ˈdɛbiən/) is a free and open source Linux distribution, ...." Quizwammer (talk) 20:21, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

I have now made this change Quizwammer (talk) 19:49, 30 April 2025 (UTC)