今や Linux は何年にもわたり力を蓄え続け、その高まる人気によってより多くのユーザを魅了しています。Linux 人気の波に乗るための第一歩はディストリビューションを選ぶことです。各ディストリビューションはそれぞれ異なる特徴を持っているため、ディストリビューションを選ぶことは重要です。さらに、最初から適切なディストリビューションを選んでいれば将来の乗り換えコストを避けることができるのです。
Debian GNU/Linux は多くのユーザにぴったりの「汎用的な」Linux ディストリビューションです。本書の目的は、読者の皆様が十分な情報に基づいてディストリビューションを選ぶことができるようにするために、Debian GNU/Linux のさまざまな側面を示すことです。
Linux has gathered a fair amount of media coverage over the years and is immensely growing, driven for example by the spreading use of virtual servers, cloud and embedded systems, and the use of artificial intelligence; it mostly benefits the distributions supported by a real marketing department — in other words, company-backed distributions (Ubuntu, Red Hat, SUSE, and so on). But Debian is far from being a marginal distribution; multiple studies have shown over the years that it is widely used both on servers and on desktops. This is particularly true among web servers where Debian and Ubuntu are the leading Linux distributions.
The purpose of this book is to help you discover this distribution. We hope to share the experience that we have gathered since we joined the project as developers and contributors in 1998 (Raphaël), 2000 (Roland), and 2003 (Daniel). With any luck, our enthusiasm will be contagious, and maybe you will join us sometime…
The first edition of this book (in 2004) served to fill a gaping hole: it was the first French-language book that focused exclusively on Debian. At that time, many other books were written on the topic both for French-speaking and English-speaking readers. Unfortunately, almost none of them got updated, and over the years the situation slipped back to one where there were very few good books on Debian. We hope that this book, which has started a new life with its translation into English (and several translations from English into various other languages), will fill this gap and help many users.
