Two distinguished distributions are celebrating birthdays this week. The openSUSE project celebrates 8 years of open Linux development and distribution. At the same time, Debian is gearing up for their birthday celebration at DebConf13 on August 16. Both projects provide invaluable and incalculable contributions to the Open Software sphere and the world economy.
Happy Eighth Birthday openSUSE!
The openSUSE project became official on August 9, 2005 inviting contributors to join their new open Linux distribution project. It wasn’t long after the formation of the project before SUSE Linux 10.0 made its appearance on October 6, 2005 – slowing mirrors to a crawl worldwide. Before 10.3, the name of the free distribution was renamed to openSUSE.
openSUSE enjoyed soaring popularity for several years before a deal with Microsoft put a big damper on it. openSUSE stayed the course and is today one of the most downloaded and reviewed distributions listed on Distrowatch.com. Personally, it’s one of my favorite projects and distributions. I’ve been hooked from the start.
Happy Birthday openSUSE, and many many more.
Debian to Celebrate 20 Years at DebConf13
In other birthday news, Debian published an announcement this morning inviting all to its big birthday party in Switzerland on August 16. This celebration coincides with DebConf13, which just happens to be taking place in Switzerland this year. The announcement says:
During the Debian Birthday, the Debian conference will open its doors to anyone interested in finding out more about Debian and Free Software, inviting enthusiasts, users, and developers to a half day of talks relating to Free Software, the Debian Project, and the Debian operating system.
Debian was announced in 1993 by Ian Murdock named after himself and his wife, Debbie. I first tested the Debian desktop around 3.x Sarge and found it not the big difficult maze many described it as, but a bit boring for my tastes. I love Debian nevertheless, because boring is exactly what I want for my servers. So, this project means a lot to me personally as well as professionally. Debian is the basis for many many other projects today and I’d hate to try and imagine a world without it. Happy Birthday Debian, and thanks for all the fish!