Alternatives to Debian

The Debian distribution is a very influential Linux distribution. It is available since the 1990s and the successful derivative Ubuntu is using Debian packages as the base. I'm sorry to explain, that the Debian ecosystem is no longer stable but it has developed into a failed Linux distribution. Instead of explaining the problems of Debian itself it make sense to describe the situation in the year 2020 if somebody likes to install a webserver. The interesting point is, that a webserver doesn't mean, that somebody booting up a pentium I PC which contains of a CD-rom drive and a magnetic harddrive. Secondly it doesn't mean, that somebody is using an SSD drive in a modern rack mounted server, but it means, that somebody pulls an operating system into a docker container and deploys this into the cloud.[1]

A docker container is a virtualized server. It reduces the costs and has became the defacto standard for all the webservers. In theory, it's possible to install a debian operating system in a docker container but in reality lightweight distrubutions like Alpine Linux were used for this purpose. Alpine Linux is a relative new development. It was first published in 2010 but has become very successful. It's not based on Debian and not on Fedora, but it was developed with a different purpose in mind.

What we can say for sure is, that Debian can't compete with Alpine Linux. Only another Docker-friendly Linux distribution can compete with Alpine Linux. But if Debian is no longer relevant for a text-only webserver, which purpose is fulfilled by the project? Right, it has become obsolete. If the idea is to provide not a cloud webserver but a desktop operating system there are many alternatives to Debian. One is Clear Linux. Clear Linux is very different from classical desktop operating systems. It is working with a combination of highly optimized binary files plus an incremental update mechanism. Similiar to Alpine LInux it's a very new development not available in the past.

We can say in general that the computing industry has changed a lot over the times. Innovations like github, Stackoverflow and Google Scholar were not available 20 years ago. The disadvantage of this development is, that projects from the past will become obsolete. They are not serving the needs of today's programmers anymore. Debian is one example for an outdated project. Similar to Windows XP and Google+ the service has lost it's influence. The Ubuntu operating system which includes the well written Wiki was perhaps the greatest milestone in the long history of Debian. Bye.

[1] Zerouali, Ahmed, et al. "On the relation between outdated docker containers, severity vulnerabilities, and bugs." 2019 IEEE 26th International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering (SANER). IEEE, 2019.