14 DAY TRIAL // The Debian project has just celebrated its 21st birthday, making it one of the oldest open source projects in existence.
Debian is one of the most used Linux distributions in the world, even if it might not seem like it. It's not the friendliest operating system out there, but it's good and stable enough and many other projects use it as their base.
Everyone has heard of Ubuntu, but not all of its users know that in fact it's based on Debian. Now, Valve has also decided to build their own distro called SteamOS and it's also making use of Debian. Actually, there are dozens of operating systems out there that chose Debian and they did it for a good reason.
Debian is now 21 years old and even the most conservative countries would allow it to drink somewhere in a pub. The developers had some great news this year for its users. The most interesting one is probably about the new LTS policy adopted by the project.
The developers are now working to provide six years of support for Debian Wheezy, and it's possible that the upcoming Jessie release will enjoy the same treatment.
Let’s hope that we'll be able to do the same kind of announcement 21 years from now.