Debian Pure Blend

A Debian Pure Blend is a project completely inside of Debian targeting a server or a desktop installation in very broad and general terms.

A Debian Pure Blend aims to cover interests of specialised users,[1][2] who might be children, lawyers, medical staff, visually impaired people, certain academic fields, etc. The common goal of those is to make installation and administration of computers for their target users as easy as possible, and to serve in the role as the missing link between software developers and users well.

Idea

The ideas behind Debian Pure Blends are

  • providing an out-of-the-box working solution (i.e. some useful collection of software from the Debian pool for the designated target group of specialists) for end-users
  • providing a frame in which specialists can better channelize their efforts of sustaining a software ecosystem for their field

The Debian 8 "Jessie" release comprehends about 43,000 software packages. Without knowing a certain software by name, it is highly unlikely to stumble over it by pure chance, especially due to the odd naming.

Technical

GNU/Linux distribution that is configured to support a particular target group out-of-the-box. All changes and improvements are integrated to the official Debian repositories. A Debian Pure Blend can contain multiple flavors (or profiles) (e.g., Debian Edu has flavors for main-server, workstation, and thin-client-server).

Technically a Debian Pure Blend builds a set of metapackages and provides an overview about the packages which are included and which are on the todo list for further inclusion. Both pages are rendered from the information inside the tasks files in an SVN.

Most of the distributions based on Debian, like for example Knoppix or Sacix, are not Debian Pure Blends, and Ubuntu is not even binary compatible with Debian. Linux Mint Debian Edition is binary compatible with Debian, but is also not a Debian Pure Blend.

Existing Debian Pure Blends

  • Debian Junior: Debian for children "from 1 to 99"
  • Debian-Med: Debian in Health Care
  • Debian Edu: Debian for Education
  • Debian GIS: Debian with many geographic information system-Packages, e.g. GRASS GIS, QGIS, GPSPrune, QLandkarteGT, et al.
  • Debian Astro: Debian for professional and amateur astronomers
  • DebiChem: Debian for chemists
  • Hamradio: Debian for radio amateurs
  • Debian Accessibility
  • Debian Science
  • Debian Accessibility Project

See also

References

  1. ↑ Nestor, Marius (22 May 2016). "Debian GNU/Linux 9 "Stretch" Installer Now Lets Users Enable Debian Pure Blends".
  2. ↑ Gibbs, Mark (3 October 2014). "Better Know an OS: Debian GNU/Linux". www.networkworld.com.
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