Debian is my Distro

Second-hand Debian Smoke was actually proven to be good for your health.


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Hi. I'm Matt. I'm a Systems Administrator and Debian is my distro.

Just like the the Marlboro Man has his choice cigarette there's no other Linux Distro for me. That's right! I said it! Bring on the pitch forks, show me your Distro affiliation tattoos, and burn down the room! I'm ready. Linux Distro fanboys can be just as ferocious as other their console war cousins or even the iPhone vs Android Zombies. I pledge allegiance to Debian. But it wasn't always that way, and honestly, it was kind of by accident.

Debian wasn't the first Linux Distro I tried though. Dad bought me Red Hat Linux Manhattan back in 1998. This was my first actual splurge into the Linux World and quite frankly, I didn't enjoy it. After I installed it, me, the eighteen year old PC Gamer, saw a boring X-Windows Desktop with a bunch of lame office productivity software installed. "What is this? Windows 3.1, but worse and five years later?" This Operating System served no purpose for me.

I was just like one of those bratty kids in that scene from Back to the Future II where they power up the Wild Gunman Arcade game. "You mean you have to use your hands? That's like a baby's toy!" I was just a naive punk kid, rocking Windows 98, like normal people. I just didn't understand.

What did I not understand you may ask? I had yet to grasp the true significance of open source software. I didn't get that this was a fully functional Operating System originally built by one man, Linus Torvalds, who shared it with the world for virtually free and that others would build upon the original code allowing everyone to view their work, virtually free. I also could not yet comprehend that this very concept of openness and sharing of source code would make the release of Linux one of the most important events in computer history. Wow, what a pinhead I was!


The X-Windows System

I won't be too hard on myself. What teenager would want to use that?


What else about Linux had I yet to understand?

Security - Linux is Secure.
It's Secure and it's secure. Why? Read this However, its not invulnerable. Now Read this Everything is exploitable and hackable. Everything. Sure I just contradicted myself, but I stand by my first statement. Linux is secure. It's more secure than Windows.

Linux is Customizable
Because the Linux Kernel is open source, you can actually pick and choose the drivers you'd like to load. This is called rolling your own kernel. It can be quite a task, but, the few times I've done it, I've enjoyed the end product. I have a minimalist personality, so it I get all tingly inside when I remove unneeded bloat from any system. You can compile exactly and only what is needed for your system to run and nothing more. You can pick and choose which software you want to load as well. You don't have to load a Window Manager and instead go "commando" with a command-line only system. Load the Window Manager later if you like. Speaking of Window Managers, there's like 5011 different ones you can choose from. Check out this Linux.com article listing their 10 best. Ah! the beauty of open source! Choices! Lots and lots of choices! Want to just run a small file server and nothing more? Awesome! Strip that Linux system and run a file server.

Linux is Versatile -
Linux can run on almost any processor and architecture. Here it is running on a damn calculator for Pete's sake. Because everything in Linux is so customizable, you can strip it down, mold it, and shape it to fit just about anywhere. Your home router is most likely running a customized version of Linux underneath the hood. Do you have some old PC lying around that's considered ancient by Microsoft Windows standards? You can bring this baby back from the dead and make it useful again by loading Linux on it. Download a lighter-weight Linux Distro and run a full desktop system again or a file server, or a print server, web server, , media server, NAS, Router, or web filter, The list goes on.

As I was stating, above before I got waaaay off track, I'm a Debian man now. Truthfully, the only reason I can think that Debian is my Distro of choice is because, when I actually did start to take an interest in learning Linux, I downloaded and installed Debian. Why? I dunno, I was just trying something different. I stumbled upon it by accident. Here's an excellent from article Tecmint.com that compares the features of Debian to Redhat another very famous Linux Distro. I like it because it doesn't put the two head to head like a two boxers ready to beat the hell out of each other. It's simply spells out the features of each distro. However, at the end of the article, the author chooses Debian as his distro of choice. To me, he has a great explanation as to why, but I suppose since the author chooses one over the other, one could say that this article has a bias towards Debian. My bad! I learned some things I didn't know about the two and also I may have figured out why I naturally gravitated towards using Debian. You should go there and read the whole thing, but here's a snippet from the article that I found interesting:

Excerpt from techmint.com: "RedHat vs Debian : Administrative Point of View"

1. RedHat is Most Widely used Distribution for servers.
Debian is widely used Distribution next to RedHat.

2. RedHat is Commercial Linux Distribution.
Debian is Non-commercial Linux Distribution.

3. RedHat contains roughly 3000 packages.
Latest Debian Release (Wheezy) contains well over 38000 packages.

It means Debian contains nearly 80% more packages than RedHat and this is the reason Debian contains packages like openoffice, Transmission bittorrent client, mp3 codecs, etc which a RedHat like distribution lacks and is required to be installed manually or from 3rd party repository.

So, what I got from this excellent write-up is that Redhat means business! It''s made for business and it tastes like business. They desire stability and performance. They have many fewer software packages in their repository. Why? Because they've trimmed out all the fat and with it, potential stability problems. "You're not loading a damn mp3 codec on my finely tuned production OS that easily fool! If you wanna muck up my OS, you're gonna have to work for it! Compile that mess from source and find your own dependencies!" --- I can respect that.

Debian means versatility. "You want to run a home theater PC? Cool, I've got a package for that. You want to run a web server as well? Awesome, I've got a package for that. What about a fancy ass Window Manager that makes full use of your shiny new graphics card? I got this." It's not to say that Redhat can't do it all of this in fact I know that it can, It's Linux of course, but it's just not as easy to accomplish. That is by design

So, I naturally, the hobbyist and Do it yourselfer in me, found Debian.

What do I use Debian for? You may be surprised to know that I'm actually not typing this article on Debian, I'm using Windows 10. In fact, Windows 10 is the OS I use daily for everyday PC tasks at work and at home. So where does Debian come in? At home, I have Debian running on several PCs to accomplish neat things. My home theater PC in my living room is running Debian with Kodi. Kodi is an fully featured open source home theater software. Kodi is another article all by itself. I'll get to that later. I've got another box mounted in my network closet that runs my Surveillance camera using Zoneminder. I use it to run a Minecraft server and a pre-production web server. Oh, and a SAMBA/CIFS fileserver.

Debian is my Distro. However, IIf you are linux N00b, I highly recommend you start with Ubuntu Ubuntu is essentially Debian but one of their main goals is to make Linux more accessible to the average computer user. They do this by making it easier to install and use right out of the box. In fact, Ubuntu has made such strides as a full-fledged Linux OS, it's really unfair to state "Ubuntu is essentially Debian" as I did above. Check it out. You can have a full featured desktop PC installed and running with Ubuntu in a matter of hours.

There you have it.

Hey fellow Linux lovers! Tell me about your Distro affiliation in the comments below! I'd love to know how you came to love your chosen Linux flavor.

*I'm a Systems Administrator by day and I'm new to the blogging scene. I quite enjoy it so far! I hope you enjoyed this article, expect more to come! *

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