Is debian an operating system?

[rahnjoseph]

Is debian an operating system because these technical terms proves bouncer to me and can it also works with home broadband.

[oz]

Is debian an operating system because these technical terms proves bouncer to me and can it also works with home broadband.

Hello and welcome!

No, Linux is an operating system and Debian is a Linux distribution. Yes, it should work fine with broadband.

[reed9]

I would actually say that's somewhat a matter of dispute.

As a practical matters, I think it's beneficial to think of each distro as a separate operating system. (And this makes sense if you think of Meego or Google Chrome OS, or Android. Do we not think of these as "operating systems"? Why them and not Fedora or Ubuntu? They are all based on the linux kernel and use many of the same tools and software.)

Linux is more strictly the kernel, with the GNU operating system on top for most distros.

Other operating systems also have a kernel. There's the Windows NT kernel, Mac's XNU kernel, or the as yet unfinished GNU Hurd kernel, for example.

[oz]

Much more on computer operating systems along with a nice listing and comparison of them can be found online at wikipedia:

Operating system - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

List of operating systems - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Comparison of operating systems - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Good luck with your research.

[elija]

I would say that Debian is an operating system with additional software.

[sgosnell]

Technically no, but in the context of the OP's question it is. Quibbling over semantics may be fun, but it's just that. If the OP wants an operating system for a computer, installing Debian will give him one.

[tornow]

What is Debian?

Debian is a free operating system (OS) for your computer. An operating system is the set of basic programs and utilities that make your computer run. Debian uses the Linux kernel (the core of an operating system), but most of the basic OS tools come from the GNU project; hence the name GNU/Linux.

Debian GNU/Linux provides more than a pure OS: it comes with over 25000 packages, precompiled software bundled up in a nice format for easy installation on your machine.

quoted from:
Debian -- The Universal Operating System
Not all Linux distributions point out the importance of the Gnu project that strong.

[cms9000]

I have been using Debian for awhile now. If you are coming from Windows there will be a bit of a learning curve, meaning you just have to adapt to a different style with some things compared to Windows, (if you are new to linux, don't let that scare you.) Once you get familiar with a few things Linux is so much fun, stable, secure.

My understanding is that Linux is a Kernel and an operating system uses that kernel as well as adding other programs/tools, etc. Then it is an operating system.