On Mon, 24 Aug 1998, Thomas Malloy wrote: > [...] > I thought DEBIAN was a distribution of linux, which runs on various > hardware platforms.
As you will know, Linux is two things at the same time. On one side, it is the name people usually call "the complete OS", on the other side, it is just a Unix-like kernel. From this point of view, Debian is more a big collection of Debian packages than "a distribution of Linux". The FSF people wanted a packaging system for the GNU operating system. They first planned to use rpm, but after we talked with them, they decided to use dpkg. To avoid unneeded duplication of efforts, it was decided to use the Debian source packages as a base, making it to be, in fact, some kind of "Debian GNU/Hurd" (there are some important differences, for example, we don't have a sysvinit-like boot system). Since they are Debian packages, and Debian has collaborated with other free software projects in the past, the logical place for these "hurd-i386" packages is in the Debian FTP hierarchy, as if it were just another architecture. Hope this answer your question. Thanks. -- "d693efbf1e22707739c131efa5315a8f" (a truly random sig)
