세부적인 기술에 대해서 알아보기 전에, 데비안 프로젝트가 무엇인지, 그리고 목적, 의미, 활동에 대해서 알아봅시다.
데비안은 GNU/Linux 계열입니다. GNU/Linux 계열에 대해서는
1.5절. “The Role of Distributions”에 대해서 자세히 보실 수 있습니다. 우선 데비안에 대해 간단히 말하자면, 하나의 완전한 운영체제이며, 설치와 관리를 위한 프로그램들이 포함되어 있고, 리눅스 커널과 자유 소프트웨어(GNU 프로젝트) 기반으로 만들어졌습니다.
When he created Debian, in 1993, under the leadership of the Free Software Foundation (
FSF), Ian Murdock had clear objectives, which he expressed in the
Debian Manifesto. The free operating system that he sought would have to have two principal features. First, quality: Debian would be developed with the greatest care, to be worthy of the Linux kernel. It would also be a non-commercial distribution, sufficiently credible to compete with major commercial distributions. This double ambition would, in his eyes, only be achieved by opening the Debian development process just like that of Linux and the GNU project. Thus, peer review would continuously improve the product.
Debian, remaining true to its initial principles, has had so much success that, today, it has reached a tremendous size. Currently, it officially supports nine hardware release architectures and several variations of each architecture known as “flavors”, and also other kernels like FreeBSD, although the FreeBSD-based ports are not part of the set of officially supported architectures either. Furthermore, with more than 31,000 source packages, the available software can meet almost any need, whether at home or in the enterprise.
The sheer size of the distribution can be inconvenient: it is really unreasonable to distribute 18 DVD-ROMs (only containing the packages qualifying as "Free Software") to install a complete version on a standard PC… This is why Debian is increasingly considered as a “meta-distribution”, from which one extracts more specific distributions intended for a particular public: Debian Science for scientific use, Debian Edu for education and pedagogical use in an academic environment, Debian Med for medical applications, Debian Jr. for young children, etc. A more complete list of the sub-projects can be found in
1.3.3.1절. “Existing Debian Sub-Projects and Blends”, dedicated to that purpose.
데비안은 다양한 용도로 개발된 운영체제가 있음에도 불구하고 잘 정돈된 구조를 갖추고 있습니다. 데비안의 모든 버전은 새 배포판의 개발 일정에 맞춰 업데이트 됩니다. 그리고 모두 하나의 데비안으로부터 파생된 버전이기 때문에, 데비안 저장소(Debian repositories)에서 구할 수 있는 프로그램을 통해 쉽게 기능을 확장하거나 개인의 필요에 따라 이용할 수 있습니다.
모든 데비안 툴은 다음과 같은 방식에 따라 작동합니다 : 데비안-CD는 오랜 기간 선택된 패키지만 담은 CD만을 사용할 수 밖에 없었습니다. 데비안-설치 프로그램는 모듈형 설치 프로그램이며, 특수한 목적에 무리없이 쓰일 수 있습니다. APT는 시스템의 안정성을 유지하면서 패키지를 설치할 것입니다.
Debian follows all of the principles of Free Software, and its new versions are not released until they are ready. Developers do not work upon a set schedule and don't have to rush to meet an arbitrary deadline. People frequently complain of the long time between Debian's stable releases, but this caution ensures that Debian's legendary reliability is met: long months of testing are indeed necessary for the full distribution to receive the “stable” label.
Debian will not compromise on quality: all known critical bugs on key packages are resolved in any new version, even if this requires the initially forecast release date to be pushed back. Optional packages whose critical bugs are not fixed, and thus do not meet the quality requirements, are simply dropped from the stable release.
법적으로 데비안 프로젝트는 "American not-for-profit" 자선재단으로부터 관리를 받고 있습니다. 데비안 프로젝트에 약 천명의 데비안 전문 개발자들이 참여하고 있으며, 번역, 버그 제보, 간단한 개발, 등 참여하는 사람들까지 포함하면 매우 많습니다.
To carry its mission to fruition, Debian has a large infrastructure, with many servers connected across the Internet, offered and hosted by many sponsors.
