Klaus Zimmermann's Corner

Happy 29th Birthday, Debian!

Today August 16 marks the 29th anniversary of the Debian project. Congratulations to all of the involved!

Happy 29th Birthday, Debian!
Artwork by Juliette Taka

It's interesting to see that Debian is almost as old as the Linux kernel itself. I already knew it was one of the oldest distributions still around (perhaps Slackware is older, I guess?), but I didn't realize it was that close to the kernel.

Debian has and always will have a special place in my heart because even though it wasn't my first Linux distro, it was my first "big-boy" distro that I switched to when I finally mustered enough courage to hop away from the Ubuntu safety net - way back when Jessie (8) was released. And since then, I learned quite a lot.

Though no longer my main, daily-driver OS, I still use Debian to this day in some of my machines that I liberated and, more recently, in my Raspbery Pi desktop (where i think it's hands down the #1 OS for that platform). Hence, I'm very thankful for the community for keeping this distro still running to this day.

So, before the day closes with me forgetting it: Happy Birthday, Debian!