Apps Available for Debian

You’ve got to be wondering by now what kind of applications are available for the Debian distribution. If the install is as contentious as it seems to be, what’s available to make it a more tolerable Linux distribution? Well, the answer is lots or little. Consistent with what you’ve already read about Debian, the package selection is entirely up to you.

As you saw in the installation tutorial yesterday, I started the install on my system without so much as an X Window server. In a sense, that forced me to concentrate on the core components of the system - the kernel and the base install. And, while you may equate the phrase “base install” with GUI apps and such, it’s really not that at all. The base install is the fundamental set of tools necessary to run and administer your Debian system from a console window only. The base install consists of such tools as password and user administration, file searching and manipulation utilities, etc. In Debian, the base install is, fundamentally, the set of tools created by Richard Stallman and the Gnu project. It’s these tools, married to the kernel created by Linus Torvalds, that gave birth to what we today know as Linux. It’s also the source of occasional contention between Debian users and other Linux users. Stallman has long contended that Linux would not exist without the Gnu toolkit, upon which Debian is clearly based. Thus, the official moniker “Debian Gnu/Linux” for the Debian distribution.

So, again, the application base under the installation guidelines we’ve outlined is minimal. If you’re planning on installing Debian based on those guidelines, you’ll need to give some thought as to what you consider to be core components for your system. Most, if not all of the applications most consider to be crucial are available through the apt-get system, which gets a bit more discussion in today’s GnomeTWEAK. Using that system, you can also choose from apps considered “stable” or apps considered to be in the development stage under the stringent Debian guidelines. The base of available applications for Debian rivals that of any of the commercial distributions, so the chances are good that if you want to install it, you can.

Finally, if you’re unsure about the availability of an application, you can check the list of packages in the current “stable” distribution. All are available via apt-get.

Consistent with the philosophy of Debian, the application base is whatever you choose to make it. Ultimately, it’s really the type of choice liberation Linux users truly live for.

Tony
Steidler-Dennison