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<title>The Debian GNU/Linux FAQ - Software available in the Debian system</title>
</head>
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<p><a name="ch-software"></a></p>
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<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 15180 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 450 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 "sections" 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 "ld: cannot find -lfoo" 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>
Since the official Java Development kit and Runtime Environment from Sun
Microsystems is non-free software, even undistributeable by Debian, it cannot
properly be included in Debian. If you want those installed anyway, please
refer to the <code>java-package</code> package in contrib.
</p>
<p>
However, both the JDK and several <em>free</em> implementations of Java
technology are available as Debian packages. 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.
Netscape Navigator, while non-free, is also available as a Debian package and
it can run Java applets.
</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
"release" 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 3.1.3, 25 April 2006<br>
<br>
Authors are listed at <a href="ch-faqinfo.en.html#s-authors">Debian FAQ Authors</a><br>
<br>
</address>
<hr>
</body>
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