Debian, also known as Debian GNU/Linux, is a Linux distribution composed of free and open-source software and proprietary software developed by the community-supported Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993. The first version of Debian (0.01) was released on September 15, 1993, and its first stable version (1.1) was released on June 17, 1996. The Debian Stable branch is the most popular edition for personal computers and servers. Debian is also the basis for many other distributions that have different purposes, like Proxmox for servers, Ubuntu or Linux Mint for desktops, Kali for penetration testing or Pardus and Astra for government use.
A Linux distribution is an operating system made from a software collection that includes the Linux kernel and often a package management system. Linux users usually obtain their operating system by downloading one of the Linux distributions, which are available for a wide variety of systems ranging from embedded devices and personal computers to powerful supercomputers.
Advanced package tool, or APT, is a free-software user interface that works with core libraries to handle the installation and removal of software on Debian, and Debian-based Linux distributions. APT simplifies the process of managing software on Unix-like computer systems by automating the retrieval, configuration and installation of software packages, either from precompiled files or by compiling source code.
Unix security refers to the means of securing a Unix or Unix-like operating system. A secure environment is achieved not only by the design concepts of these operating systems, but also through vigilant user and administrative practices.
The Linux Standard Base (LSB) was a joint project by several Linux distributions under the organizational structure of the Linux Foundation to standardize the software system structure, including the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard. LSB was based on the POSIX specification, the Single UNIX Specification (SUS), and several other open standards, but extended them in certain areas.
Network utilities are software utilities designed to analyze and configure various aspects of computer networks. The majority of them originated on Unix systems, but several later ports to other operating systems exist.
Ubuntu is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed mostly of free and open-source software. Ubuntu is officially released in multiple editions: Desktop, Server, and Core for Internet of things devices and robots. The operating system is developed by the British company Canonical, and a community of other developers, under a meritocratic governance model. As of October 2023, the most-recent release is 23.10, and the current long-term support release is 22.04.
Technical variations of Linux distributions include support for different hardware devices and systems or software package configurations. Organizational differences may be motivated by historical reasons. Other criteria include security, including how quickly security upgrades are available; ease of package management; and number of packages available.
virt-manager is a desktop virtual machine monitor primarily developed by Red Hat.
PulseAudio is a network-capable sound server program distributed via the freedesktop.org project. It runs mainly on Linux, including Windows Subsystem for Linux on Microsoft Windows and Termux on Android; various BSD distributions such as FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and macOS; as well as Illumos distributions and the Solaris operating system. It serves as a middleware in between applications and hardware and handles raw PCM audio streams.
HAL is a software subsystem for UNIX-like operating systems providing hardware abstraction.
Linux Mint is a community-driven Linux distribution based on Ubuntu, bundled with a variety of free and open-source applications. It can provide full out-of-the-box multimedia support for those who choose to include proprietary software such as multimedia codecs. Compared to Ubuntu, it uses the Cinnamon interface by default, using a different, more traditional layout that can be customized by dragging the applets and creating panels. New applets can also be downloaded.
Wicd, which stands for Wireless Interface Connection Daemon, is an open-source software utility to manage both wireless and wired networks for Linux. The project started in late 2006 with the creation of Connection Manager, which eventually became Wicd. Wicd aims to provide a simple interface to connect to networks with a wide variety of settings.
The TurnKey Linux Virtual Appliance Library is a free open-source software project which develops a range of Debian-based pre-packaged server software appliances. Turnkey appliances can be deployed as a virtual machine, in cloud computing services such as Amazon Web Services or installed in physical computers.
ngrep is a network packet analyzer written by Jordan Ritter. It has a command-line interface, and relies upon the pcap library and the GNU regex library.
systemd is a software suite that provides an array of system components for Linux operating systems. The main aim is to unify service configuration and behavior across Linux distributions. Its primary component is a "system and service manager" – an init system used to bootstrap user space and manage user processes. It also provides replacements for various daemons and utilities, including device management, login management, network connection management, and event logging. The name systemd adheres to the Unix convention of naming daemons by appending the letter d. It also plays on the term "System D", which refers to a person's ability to adapt quickly and improvise to solve problems.
Justniffer is a TCP packet sniffer. It can log network traffic in a 'standard' or in a customized way. It can also log response times, useful for tracking network services performances . The output format of the traffic can be easily customized. An example written in Python stores the transferred contents in an output directory separated by domains. This means that the transferred files like html, css, javascript, images, sounds, etc. can be saved to a directory.
firewalld is a firewall management tool for Linux operating systems. It provides firewall features by acting as a front-end for the Linux kernel's netfilter framework. firewalld's current default backend is nftables. Prior to v0.6.0, iptables was the default backend. Through its abstractions, firewalld acts as an alternative to nft and iptables command line programs. The name firewalld adheres to the Unix convention of naming system daemons by appending the letter "d".
Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is a feature of Windows that allows developers to run a Linux environment without the need for a separate virtual machine or dual booting. There are two versions of WSL: WSL 1 and WSL 2. WSL 1 was first released on August 2, 2016, and acts as a compatibility layer for running Linux binary executables by implementing Linux system calls on the Windows kernel. It is available on Windows 10, Windows 10 LTSB/LTSC, Windows 11, Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2019 and Windows Server 2022.
Zstandard is a lossless data compression algorithm developed by Yann Collet at Facebook. Zstd is the corresponding reference implementation in C, released as open-source software on 31 August 2016.
