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<?xml version="1.0"?>
<article>
<articleinfo>
<title>DebianReference/Preface</title>
</articleinfo>
<para/>
<section>
<title>Do not use Edit(GUI) button.</title>
<para> </para>
<para>Copyright 2007, 2008 Osamu Aoki GPL, (Please agree to GPL, GPL2, and any version of GPL which is compatible with DSFG if you update any part of wiki page) </para>
<para>Generated HTML is at "<ulink url="http://people.debian.org/~osamu/pub/getwiki/html/ch01.en.html">Debian Reference: Chapter 1. Preface</ulink>". </para>
<para>I welcome your contributions to update this wiki page. You must follow these rules: </para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>Do not use Edit(GUI) button of <ulink url="/MoinMoin">MoinMoin</ulink>. </para>
</listitem>
<listitem>You can update anytime for: <itemizedlist><listitem>grammar errors </listitem><listitem>spelling errors </listitem><listitem>moved URL location </listitem><listitem>package name transition adjustment (emacs23 etc.) </listitem><listitem>clearly broken script. </listitem></itemizedlist></listitem>
<listitem>Before updating this wiki content: <itemizedlist><listitem><para>Read "<ulink url="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianReference/Test">Guide for contributing to Debian Reference</ulink>". </para></listitem></itemizedlist></listitem>
</itemizedlist>
<para/>
</section>
<section>
<title>Preface</title>
<para>This <ulink url="http://people.debian.org/~osamu/pub/getwiki/html/index.en.html">Debian Reference (version 2)</ulink> (@@@build-date@@@) is intended to provide a broad overview of Debian system administration as a post-installation user guide. </para>
<para>The target reader is someone who is willing to learn shell scripts but who is not ready to read all the C sources to figure out how the GNU/Linux system works. </para>
<para/>
<section>
<title>Disclaimer</title>
<para/>
<para/>
<para/>
<para/>
<para/>
<para/>
<para>All warranties are disclaimed. All trademarks are property of their respective trademark owners. </para>
<para>The Debian system itself is a moving target. This makes its documentation difficult to be current and correct. Although the current unstable version of Debian system was used as the basis for writing this, some contents may be already outdated by the time you read this. </para>
<para>Please treat this document as the secondary reference. This document does not replace any authoritative guides. The author and contributors do not take responsibility for consequences of errors, omissions or ambiguity in this document. </para>
<para/>
</section>
<section>
<title>What is Debian</title>
<para>The <ulink url="http://www.debian.org">Debian Project</ulink> is an association of individuals who have made common cause to create a free operating system. It's distribution is characterized by: </para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>Commitment to the software freedom: <ulink url="http://www.debian.org/social_contract">Debian Social Contract and Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG)</ulink>. </para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Internet based distributed volunteer effort: <ulink url="http://www.debian.org">http://www.debian.org</ulink> </para>
</listitem>
<listitem>Large number of pre-compiled high quality softwares. </listitem>
<listitem>Focus on stability and security with easy access to the security updates. </listitem>
<listitem>Focus on smooth upgrade to latest softwares with unstable and testing archives. </listitem>
<listitem>Large number of supported hardware architectures. </listitem>
</itemizedlist>
<para>Free Software pieces in Debian come from <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU">GNU</ulink>, <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux">Linux</ulink>, <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Software_Distribution">BSD</ulink>, <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_System">X</ulink>, <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_DB">Berkeley DB</ulink>, <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Systems_Consortium">ISC</ulink>, <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Software_Foundation">Apache</ulink>, <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghostscript">Ghostscript</ulink>, <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Unix_Printing_System">Common Unix Printing System </ulink>, <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samba_(software)">Samba</ulink>, <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME">GNOME</ulink>, <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KDE">KDE</ulink>, <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla">Mozilla</ulink>, <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenOffice.org">OpenOffice.org</ulink>, <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vim_(text_editor)">Vim</ulink>, <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeX">TeX</ulink>, <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaTeX">LaTeX</ulink>, <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook">DocBook</ulink>, <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perl">Perl</ulink>, <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python_(programming_language)">Python</ulink>, <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tcl">Tcl</ulink>, <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_(programming_language)">Java</ulink>, <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_(programming_language)">Ruby</ulink>, <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PHP">PHP</ulink>, <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MySQL">MySQL</ulink> and many more independent free software projects. Debian integrates this diversity of Free Software into one system. </para>
<para/>
</section>
<section>
<title>About this document</title>
<para/>
<section>
<title>Guiding rules</title>
<para>Following guiding rules were followed while compiling this document: </para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>don't explain in details what is well documented elsewhere (in the judgment of the author) </listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Provide overview and skip corner cases (<emphasis role="strong">Big Picture</emphasis>) </para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Keep It Short and Simple. (<emphasis role="strong">KISS</emphasis>) </para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Focus on non-GUI tools and consoles. (Use <emphasis role="strong">shell examples</emphasis>) </para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Do not reinvent the wheel. (Use pointers to <emphasis role="strong">the existing references</emphasis>) </para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Be objective. (Use <ulink url="http://popcon.debian.org/">popcon</ulink> etc.) </para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
<para>I tried to elucidate hierarchical aspects and lower levels of the system. </para>
<para/>
<para/>
<para/>
<para/>
<para/>
</section>
<section>
<title>Prerequisites</title>
<para>You are required to seek help from (in approximate order of importance, starting with the most important sources): </para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>the Debian site at <ulink url="http://www.debian.org">http://www.debian.org</ulink> for the general information, </para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>the documentation under the <code>/usr/share/doc/<package_name></code> directory, </para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>the Unix style <emphasis role="strong">manpage</emphasis>: "<code>dpkg -L <package_name> |grep '/man/man.*/'</code>", </para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>the GNU style <emphasis role="strong">info page</emphasis>: "<code>dpkg -L <package_name> |grep '/info/'</code>", </para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>the bug report: <ulink url="http://bugs.debian.org/">http://bugs.debian.org/<package_name></ulink>, </para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>the Debian Wiki at <ulink url="http://wiki.debian.org/">http://wiki.debian.org/</ulink> for the moving and specific topics, </para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>the HOWTOs from The Linux Documentation Project (TLDP) at <ulink url="http://tldp.org/">http://tldp.org/</ulink> , </para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>the Single UNIX Specification from the Open Group's The UNIX System Home Page at <ulink url="http://www.unix.org/">http://www.unix.org/</ulink> , and </para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>the free encyclopedia from Wikipedia at <ulink url="http://wikipedia.org/">http://wikipedia.org/</ulink>. </para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
<para><inlinemediaobject><imageobject><imagedata width="15" fileref="/htdocs/rightsidebar/img/idea.png" depth="15"/></imageobject><textobject><phrase>(!)</phrase></textobject></inlinemediaobject> For detailed documentation, you may need to install the corresponding documentation package named with "<code>-doc</code>" as its suffix. </para>
<para/>
</section>
<section>
<title>Conventions</title>
<para>This document refers to some command names followed by the number in parenthesis , such as <code>bash</code>(1). This means that you are encouraged to obtain information from the manpage by typing the following on the shell command prompt: </para>
<screen><![CDATA[$ man 1 bash
]]></screen>
<para>This document provides information through the following simplified presentation style with <code>bash</code>(1) shell command examples and bullets: </para>
<para/>
<screen><![CDATA[# <command in root account>
$ <command in user account>
]]></screen>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para><description of action> </para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
<para>These shell prompts distinguish account used and correspond to <code>PS1='\$'</code> and <code>PS2=' '</code> environment variables. These values are chosen for the sake of readability of this document and are not typical on actual installed system. </para>
<para><inlinemediaobject><imageobject><imagedata width="15" fileref="/htdocs/rightsidebar/img/idea.png" depth="15"/></imageobject><textobject><phrase>(!)</phrase></textobject></inlinemediaobject> See the meaning of the <code>PS1</code> and <code>PS2</code> environment variables in the manpage of <code>bash</code>(1) command. </para>
<para/>
</section>
<section>
<title>The popcon</title>
<para>The <ulink url="http://popcon.debian.org/">popcon</ulink> data was presented as the objective measure for the popularity of each package. It was downloaded on @@@pop-date@@@ and contains the total submission of @@@pop-submissions@@@ reports over @@@pop-packages@@@ binary packages and @@@pop-architectures@@@ architectures. </para>
<para><inlinemediaobject><imageobject><imagedata width="15" fileref="/htdocs/rightsidebar/img/idea.png" depth="15"/></imageobject><textobject><phrase>(!)</phrase></textobject></inlinemediaobject> Please note that the @@@arch@@@ unstable archive contains only @@@all-packages@@@ packages currently. The popcon data contains reports from many old system installations. </para>
<para/>
<para>The popcon number preceded with "V:" for "votes" is calculated by 100 * (the popcon submissions for the package executed recently on the PC)/(the total popcon submissions). </para>
<para>The popcon number preceded with "I:" for "installs" is calculated by 100 * (the popcon submissions for the package installed on the PC)/(the total popcon submissions). </para>
<para><inlinemediaobject><imageobject><imagedata width="15" fileref="/htdocs/rightsidebar/img/idea.png" depth="15"/></imageobject><textobject><phrase>(!)</phrase></textobject></inlinemediaobject> The popcon figures should not be considered as absolute measures of the importance of packages. There are many factors which can skew statistics. For example, some system participating popcon may have mounted directories such as <code>/bin</code> with "noatime" option for system performance improvement and effectively disabled "vote" from such system. </para>
<para/>
</section>
<section>
<title>The package size</title>
<para>The package size data was also presented as the objective measure for each package. It is based on the "Installed-Size:" reported by "<code>apt-cache show</code> " command (currently on @@@arch@@@ architecture for the <code>unstable</code> release). The reported size is in KB (unit for 1024 bytes). </para>
<para><inlinemediaobject><imageobject><imagedata width="15" fileref="/htdocs/rightsidebar/img/idea.png" depth="15"/></imageobject><textobject><phrase>(!)</phrase></textobject></inlinemediaobject> A package with a small numerical package size may indicate that the package in the <code>unstable</code> release has a dummy package which installs other packages with significant contents by the dependency. The dummy package enables a smooth transition or split of the package. </para>
<para/>
</section>
<section>
<title>Bug reports</title>
<para>Please file bug reports on "debian-reference" package using <code>reportbug</code>(1) if you find any issues. For simple spell errors and grammar corrections, you may alternatively edit the source text available as Debian Reference wiki page at <ulink url="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianReference">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianReference</ulink> and tell me to update the document. </para>
<para/>
</section>
</section>
<section>
<title>Some quotes for new users</title>
<para>Here are some interesting quotes from the Debian mailing list which may help enlighten new users: </para>
<para/>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>"This is Unix. It gives you enough rope to hang yourself." --- Miquel van Smoorenburg <miquels at cistron.nl> </para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>"Unix IS user friendly... It's just selective about who its friends are." --- Tollef Fog Heen <tollef at add.no> </para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
<para/>
<para/>
<para/>
<para/>
<para/>
</section>
</section>
</article>
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