On this day 19 years ago, Ian Murdock announced the release of the first version of the popular Debian GNU/Linux distribution . His message was:
Fellow Linuxers,
This is just to announce the imminent completion of a brand-new Linux release, which I'm calling the Debian Linux Release. This is a release that I have put together basically from scratch; in other words, I didn't simply make some changes to SLS and call it a new release. I was inspired to put together this release after running SLS and generally being dissatisfied with much of it, and after much altering of SLS I decided that it would be easier to start from scratch. The base system is now virtually complete (though I'm still looking around to make sure that I grabbed the most recent sources for everything), and I'd like to get some feedback before I add the “fancy” stuff.
Please note that this release is not yet completed and may not be for several more weeks; however, I thought I'd post now to perhaps draw a few people out of the woodwork.
This post serves as a well-deserved tribute and warm congratulations to Ian and all the developers and users of this excellent distribution, which today ceases to be a teenager and comes of age in our hands :'(
May it continue to serve many more years .. Congratulations!
Update: I've realized I put my foot in it and wrote 18, when in reality it's 19 years old.