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Debian 0.01 through 0.90 (August-December 1993)
Debian 0.91 (January 1994): This release had a simple package system which could install and uninstall packages. The project had grown to several dozen people at this point.
Debian 0.93R5 (March 1995): Responsibility for each package was clearly
assigned to a developer by this point, and the package manager
(dpkg) was used to install packages after the installation of a
base system.
Debian 0.93R6 (November 1995): dselect appears. This was the last
Debian release using the a.out binary format; there were about 60 developers.
The first master.debian.org server was built by Bdale Garbee and hosted by HP
in parallel with the 0.93R6 release. The deployment of an explicit master
server on which Debian developers would construct each release led directly to
the formation of the Debian mirror network, and indirectly to the development
of many of the policies and procedures used to manage the project today.
Debian 1.0 was never released: Accidently InfoMagic, a CD vendor, shipped the development release of Debian and entitled it 1.0. On December 11th 1995, Debian and InfoMagic jointly announced that this release was screwed. Bruce Perens explains that the data placed on the "InfoMagic Linux Developer's Resource 5-CD Set November 1995" as "Debian 1.0" is not the Debian 1.0 release, but an early development version which is only partially in the ELF format, will probably not boot or run correctly, and does not represent the quality of a released Debian system. To prevent confusion between the premature CD version and the actual Debian release, the Debian Project has renamed its next release to "Debian 1.1". The premature Debian 1.0 on CD is deprecated and should not be used.
Debian 1.1 Buzz (June 17th, 1996): This was the first Debian release with a code name. It was taken, like all others so far, from a character in the movie Toy Story... in this case, Buzz Lightyear. By this time, Bruce Perens had taken over leadership of the Project from Ian Murdock, and Bruce was working at Pixar, the company that produced the movie. This release was fully ELF, used Linux kernel 2.0, and contained 474 packages.
Debian 1.2 Rex (December 12th, 1996): Named for the plastic dinosaur in the movie. This release consisted of 848 packages maintained by 120 developers
Debian 1.3 Bo (June 5th, 1997): Named for Bo Peep, the shepherdess. This release consisted of 974 packages maintained by 200 developers.
Debian 2.0 Hamm (July 24th, 1998): Named for the piggy-bank in the movie. This was the first multi-architecture release of Debian, adding support for the Motorola 68000 series architectures. With Ian Jackson as Project Leader, this release made the transition to libc6, and consisted of over 1500 packages maintained by over 400 developers.
Debian 2.1 Slink (March 9th, 1999): Named for the slinky-dog in the
movie. Two more architectures were added, Alpha and SPARC. With Wichert
Akkerman as Project Leader, this release consisted of about 2250 packages and
required 2 CDs in the official set. The key technical innovation was the
introduction of apt, a new package management interface. Widely emulated, apt
addressed issues resulting from Debian's continuing growth, and established a
new paradigm for package acquisition and installation on Open Source operating
systems.
Debian 2.2 Potato (15 August 2000): Named for "Mr Potato
Head" in the movie. This release added support for the PowerPC and ARM architectures. With
Wichert still serving as Project Leader, this release consisted of more than
3900 binary packages derived from over 2600 source packages maintained by more
than 450 Debian developers.
Debian 3.0 Woody (19 July 2002): Named for the main character in the
movie: "Woody" the cowboy. Even more architectures were added in
this release: IA-64, HP PA-RISC, MIPS (big endian), MIPS (little endian) and
S/390. This is
also the first release to include cryptographic software due to the
restrictions for exportation being lightened in the US, and also the
first one to include KDE, now that the license issues with QT were resolved.
With Bdale Garbee recently appointed Project Leader, and more than 900 Debian
developers, this release contained around 8,500 binary packages and 7 binary
CDs in the official set.
Debian 3.1 Sarge (6 June 2005): named for the sergeant of the Green
Plastic Army Men. No new architectures were added to the release, although an
unofficial AMD64 port was published at the same time and distributed through
the new Alioth project hosting
site. This release features a new installer:
debian-installer, a modular piece of software that feature automatic
hardware detection, unattended installation features and was released fully
translated to over thirty languages. It was also the first release to include
a full ofimatic suite: OpenOffice.org. Branden Robinson had just been
appointed Project Leader. This release was made by more than nine hundred
Debian developers, and contained around 15,400 binary packages and 14 binary
CDs in the official set.
Debian 4.0 Etch (8 April 2007): named for the sketch toy in the movie.
One architecture was added in this release: AMD64, and official
support for m68k
was dropped. This release continued using the debian-installer, but
featuring in this release a graphical installer, cryptographic verification of
downloaded packages, more flexible partitioning (with support for encrypted
partitions), simplified mail configuration, a more flexible desktop selection,
simplified but improved localization and new modes, including a rescue
mode. New installations would not need to reboot through the installation
process as the previous two phases of installation were now integrated. This
new installer provided support for scripts using composed characters and
complex languages in its graphical version, increasing the number of available
translations to over fifty. Sam Hocever was appointed Project Leader the very
same day, and the project included more than one thousand and thirty Debian
developers. The release contained around 18,000 binary packages over 20 binary
CDs (3 DVDs) in the official set. There were also two binary CDs available to
install the system in alternate desktop environments different to the default
one.
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A Brief History of Debian
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