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+<html>
+
+<head>
+
+<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
+
+<title>The Debian GNU/Linux FAQ - Software available in the Debian system</title>
+
+</head>
+
+<body>
+
+<p><a name="ch-software"></a></p>
+<hr>
+
+<p>
+[ <a href="ch-compat.en.html">previous</a> ]
+[ <a href="index.en.html#contents">Contents</a> ]
+[ <a href="ch-basic_defs.en.html">1</a> ]
+[ <a href="ch-getting.en.html">2</a> ]
+[ <a href="ch-compat.en.html">3</a> ]
+[ 4 ]
+[ <a href="ch-ftparchives.en.html">5</a> ]
+[ <a href="ch-pkg_basics.en.html">6</a> ]
+[ <a href="ch-pkgtools.en.html">7</a> ]
+[ <a href="ch-uptodate.en.html">8</a> ]
+[ <a href="ch-kernel.en.html">9</a> ]
+[ <a href="ch-customizing.en.html">10</a> ]
+[ <a href="ch-support.en.html">11</a> ]
+[ <a href="ch-contributing.en.html">12</a> ]
+[ <a href="ch-redistrib.en.html">13</a> ]
+[ <a href="ch-nexttime.en.html">14</a> ]
+[ <a href="ch-faqinfo.en.html">15</a> ]
+[ <a href="ch-ftparchives.en.html">next</a> ]
+</p>
+
+<hr>
+
+<h1>
+The Debian GNU/Linux FAQ
+<br>Chapter 4 - Software available in the Debian system
+</h1>
+
+<hr>
+
+<h2><a name="s-apps"></a>4.1 What types of applications and development software are available for Debian GNU/Linux?</h2>
+
+<p>
+Like most Linux distributions, Debian GNU/Linux provides:
+</p>
+<ul>
+<li>
+<p>
+the major GNU applications for software development, file manipulation, and
+text processing, including gcc, g++, make, texinfo, Emacs, the Bash shell and
+numerous upgraded Unix utilities,
+</p>
+</li>
+</ul>
+<ul>
+<li>
+<p>
+Perl, Python, Tcl/Tk and various related programs, modules and libraries for
+each of them,
+</p>
+</li>
+</ul>
+<ul>
+<li>
+<p>
+TeX (LaTeX) and Lyx, dvips, Ghostscript,
+</p>
+</li>
+</ul>
+<ul>
+<li>
+<p>
+the X Window System, which provides a networked graphical user interface for
+Linux, and countless X applications including GNOME and KDE as well as the GIMP
+GNU Image Manipulation Program,
+</p>
+</li>
+</ul>
+<ul>
+<li>
+<p>
+a full suite of networking applications, including servers for Internet
+protocols such as HTTP (WWW), FTP, NNTP (news), SMTP and POP (mail) and name
+server; relational databases like PostgreSQL, MySQL; also provided are web
+browsers including the various Mozilla producs,
+</p>
+</li>
+</ul>
+<ul>
+<li>
+<p>
+a complete set of office applications, including the OpenOffice.org
+productivity suite, Gnumeric and other spreadsheets, WYSIWYG editors,
+calendars.
+</p>
+</li>
+</ul>
+
+<p>
+More than 18138 packages, ranging from news servers and readers to sound
+support, FAX programs, database and spreadsheet programs, image processing
+programs, communications, net, and mail utilities, Web servers, and even
+ham-radio programs are included in the distribution. Another 444 software
+suites are available as Debian packages, but are not formally part of Debian
+due to license restrictions.
+</p>
+
+<hr>
+
+<h2><a name="s-softwareauthors"></a>4.2 Who wrote all that software?</h2>
+
+<p>
+For each package the <em>authors</em> of the program(s) are credited in the
+file <samp>/usr/share/doc/PACKAGE/copyright</samp>, where PACKAGE is to be
+substituted with the package's name.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<em>Maintainers</em> who package this software for the Debian GNU/Linux system
+are listed in the Debian control file (see <a
+href="ch-pkg_basics.en.html#s-controlfile">What is a Debian control file?,
+Section 6.4</a>) that comes with each package. The Debian changelog, in
+<samp>/usr/share/doc/PACKAGE/changelog.Debian.gz</samp>, mentions the people
+who've worked on the Debian packaging too.
+</p>
+
+<hr>
+
+<h2><a name="s-pkglist"></a>4.3 How can I get a current list of programs that have been packaged for Debian?</h2>
+
+<p>
+A complete list is available from any of the <code><a
+href="http://www.debian.org/distrib/ftplist">Debian mirrors</a></code>, in the
+file <samp>indices/Maintainers</samp>. That file includes the package names
+and the names and e-mails of their respective maintainers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The <code><a href="http://packages.debian.org/">WWW interface to the Debian
+packages</a></code> conveniently summarizes the packages in each of about
+twenty &quot;sections&quot; of the Debian archive.
+</p>
+
+<hr>
+
+<h2><a name="s-missing"></a>4.4 What is missing from Debian GNU/Linux?</h2>
+
+<p>
+A list of packages which are still needed to be packaged for Debian exists, the
+<code><a href="http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/">Work-Needing and Prospective
+Packages list</a></code>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For more details about adding the missing things, see <a
+href="ch-contributing.en.html#s-contrib">How can I become a Debian software
+developer?, Section 12.1</a>.
+</p>
+
+<hr>
+
+<h2><a name="s-no-devs"></a>4.5 Why do I get &quot;ld: cannot find -lfoo&quot; messages when compiling programs? Why aren't there any libfoo.so files in Debian library packages?</h2>
+
+<p>
+Debian Policy requires that such symbolic links (to libfoo.so.x.y.z or similar)
+are placed in separate, development packages. Those packages are usually named
+libfoo-dev or libfooX-dev (presuming the library package is named libfooX, and
+X is a whole number).
+</p>
+
+<hr>
+
+<h2><a name="s-java"></a>4.6 (How) Does Debian support Java?</h2>
+
+<p>
+Several <em>free</em> implementations of Java technology are available as
+Debian packages, providing both Java Development Kits as well as Runtime
+Environments. You can write, debug and run Java programs using Debian.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Running a Java applet requires a web browser with the capability to recognize
+and execute them. Several web browsers available in Debian, such as Mozilla or
+Konqueror, support Java plug-ins that enable running Java applets within them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Please refer to the <code><a
+href="http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-java-faq/">Debian Java
+FAQ</a></code> for more information.
+</p>
+
+<hr>
+
+<h2><a name="s-isitdebian"></a>4.7 How can I check that I am using a Debian system, and what version is it?</h2>
+
+<p>
+In order to make sure that your system has been installed from the real Debian
+base disks check for the existence of <samp>/etc/debian_version</samp> file,
+which contains a single one-line entry giving the version number of the
+release, as defined by the package <samp>base-files</samp>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The existence of the program <samp>dpkg</samp> shows that you should be able to
+install Debian packages on your system, but as the program has been ported to
+many other operating systems and architectures, this is no longer a reliable
+method of determining is a system Debian GNU/Linux.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Users should be aware, however, that the Debian system consists of many parts,
+each of which can be updated (almost) independently. Each Debian
+&quot;release&quot; contains well defined and unchanging contents. Updates are
+separately available. For a one-line description of the installation status of
+package <samp>foo</samp>, use the command <samp>dpkg --list foo</samp>. To
+view versions of all installed packages, run:
+</p>
+
+<pre>
+ dpkg -l
+</pre>
+
+<p>
+For a more verbose description, use:
+</p>
+
+<pre>
+ dpkg --status foo
+</pre>
+
+<hr>
+
+<h2><a name="s-nonenglish"></a>4.8 How does Debian support non-English languages?</h2>
+<ul>
+<li>
+<p>
+Debian GNU/Linux is distributed with keymaps for nearly two dozen keyboards,
+and with utilities (in the <samp>kbd</samp> package) to install, view, and
+modify the tables.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The installation prompts the user to specify the keyboard he will use.
+</p>
+</li>
+</ul>
+<ul>
+<li>
+<p>
+Vast majority of the software we packaged supports entering non-US-ASCII
+characters used in other Latin languages (e.g. ISO-8859-1 or ISO-8859-2), and
+a number of programs support multi-byte languages such as Japanese or Chinese.
+</p>
+</li>
+</ul>
+<ul>
+<li>
+<p>
+Currently, support for German-, Spanish-, Finnish-, French-, Hungarian-,
+Italian-, Japanese-, Korean- and Polish-language manual pages is provided
+through the <samp>manpages-LANG</samp> packages (where LANG is the two-letter
+ISO country code). To access an NLS manual page, the user must set the shell
+LC_MESSAGES variable to the appropriate string.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For example, in the case of the Italian-language manual pages, LC_MESSAGES
+needs to be set to 'italian'. The <code>man</code> program will then search
+for Italian manual pages under <samp>/usr/share/man/it/</samp>.
+</p>
+</li>
+</ul>
+
+<hr>
+
+<h2><a name="s-usexports"></a>4.9 What about the US export regulation limitations?</h2>
+
+<p>
+US laws placed restrictions on the export of defense articles, which includes
+some types of cryptographic software. PGP and ssh, among others, fall into
+this category. For the <em>sarge</em> release packages in this archive were
+moved to the main archive (or to <em>non-free</em>, if applicable) due to the
+US relaxing its regulations on the export of cryptography.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To prevent anyone from taking unnecessary legal risks, certain Debian GNU/Linux
+packages were only available from a non-US site <code><a
+href="ftp://non-US.debian.org/debian-non-US/">ftp://non-US.debian.org/debian-non-US/</a></code>,
+with numerous mirror sites all of which are also outside of the US, see
+<code><a
+href="ftp://non-US.debian.org/debian-non-US/README.non-US">ftp://non-US.debian.org/debian-non-US/README.non-US</a></code>
+for a full list. These sites still exist (for the benefit of users of
+<em>woody</em>) but its contents are no longer supported and are considered
+obsolete. Please remove any mentions to non-US from your sources in your
+<code>/etc/apt/sources.list</code> configuration file.
+</p>
+
+<hr>
+
+<h2><a name="s-pine"></a>4.10 Where is pine?</h2>
+
+<p>
+Due to its restrictive license, it's in the non-free area. Moreover, since
+license does not even allow modified binaries to be distributed, you have to
+compile it yourself from the source and the Debian patches.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The source package name is <code>pine</code>. You can use the
+<code>pine-tracker</code> package to be notified about when you need to
+upgrade.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Note that there are many replacements for both pine and pico, such as
+<code>mutt</code> and <code>nano</code>, that are located in the main section.
+</p>
+
+<hr>
+
+<h2><a name="s-qmail"></a>4.11 Where is qmail/ezmlm/djbdns?</h2>
+
+<p>
+Dan J. Bernstein distributes <code><a href="http://cr.yp.to/software.html">all
+software he has written</a></code> with a restrictive license, consequently,
+it's in the non-free area. Since the license he uses does not allow modified
+binaries to be distributed, you have to compile it yourself from the source and
+the Debian patches to obtain a binary package you can install in your Debian
+GNU/Linux system.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The source package names are <code>qmail-src</code>, <code>ezmlm-src</code> and
+<code>djbdns-installer</code>, respectively.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For <code>qmail</code> you need to install <code>qmail-src</code> first and
+then run <code>build-qmail</code> to build the Debian package. You also need
+to do install the <code>ucspi-tcp-src</code> package to get ucspi-tcp, which
+<code>qmail</code> depends on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dan J. Bernstein maintains a <code><a
+href="http://cr.yp.to/distributors.html">FAQ from distributors</a></code> page
+if you are interested in reading his reasons (one of which is <code><a
+href="http://cr.yp.to/compatibility.html">Cross-platform
+compatibility</a></code>)
+</p>
+
+<hr>
+
+<p>
+[ <a href="ch-compat.en.html">previous</a> ]
+[ <a href="index.en.html#contents">Contents</a> ]
+[ <a href="ch-basic_defs.en.html">1</a> ]
+[ <a href="ch-getting.en.html">2</a> ]
+[ <a href="ch-compat.en.html">3</a> ]
+[ 4 ]
+[ <a href="ch-ftparchives.en.html">5</a> ]
+[ <a href="ch-pkg_basics.en.html">6</a> ]
+[ <a href="ch-pkgtools.en.html">7</a> ]
+[ <a href="ch-uptodate.en.html">8</a> ]
+[ <a href="ch-kernel.en.html">9</a> ]
+[ <a href="ch-customizing.en.html">10</a> ]
+[ <a href="ch-support.en.html">11</a> ]
+[ <a href="ch-contributing.en.html">12</a> ]
+[ <a href="ch-redistrib.en.html">13</a> ]
+[ <a href="ch-nexttime.en.html">14</a> ]
+[ <a href="ch-faqinfo.en.html">15</a> ]
+[ <a href="ch-ftparchives.en.html">next</a> ]
+</p>
+
+<hr>
+
+<p>
+The Debian GNU/Linux FAQ
+</p>
+
+<address>
+version 3.1.5, 17 January 2007<br>
+<br>
+Authors are listed at <a href="ch-faqinfo.en.html#s-authors">Debian FAQ Authors</a><br>
+<br>
+</address>
+<hr>
+
+</body>
+
+</html>
+