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Linux has been garnering strength for a number of years now, and its still growing popularity drives more and more users to make the jump. The first step on that path is to pick a distribution. This is an important decision, because each distribution has its own peculiarities, and future migration costs can be avoided if the right choice is made from the start.

TILLBAKA TILL GRUNDERNA Linux-distribution, Linux-kärna

Strikt talat är Linux endast en kärna, kärndelen i en bit programvara som sitter mellan hårdvaran och programmen.
A “Linux distribution” is a full operating system; it usually includes the Linux kernel, an installer program, and most importantly, applications and other software required to turn a computer into a tool that is actually useful.
Debian GNU/Linux är en ”allmän” Linux-distribution som passar de flesta användare. Syftet med denna bok är att visa dess många sidor så att du kan ta ett välinformerat beslut när du väljer.

1. Varför denna bok?

KULTUR Kommersiella distributioner

De flesta Linux-distributioner backas av ett kommersiellt företag som utvecklar dem och säljer dem under något slags kommersiellt arrangemang. Exempel på detta är Ubuntu, i huvudsak utvecklat av Canonical Ltd.; Red Hat Enterprise Linux av Red Hat, Inc., dotterbolag till IBM; och SUSE Linux som underhålls och utvecklas kommersiellt av SUSE Software Solutions Germany GmbH, dotterbolag till EQT Partners.
I andra änden av spektrat finns Debian och dess likar samt Apache Software Foundation (som står som värd för utvecklingen av webbservern Apache). Debian är framför allt ett projekt i världen av Fri Programvara, implementerat av frivilliga som arbetar tillsammans via internet. Medan vissa av dem arbetar på Debian som en del av deras betalda jobb på diverse företag är projektet som helhet inte fäst vid något särskilt företag, inte heller har något enskilt företag mer att säga till om vad det gäller projektets affärer än vad helt frivilliga bidragsgivare har.
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.
→ https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/os-linux/all/all
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.