Debianfamily

Debianfamily is a term used to refer to the ecosystem surrounding the Debian project, including Debian itself and the family of distributions derived from it. These distributions share the Debian package format (deb), use the APT package management system, and generally adhere to Debian's free software policies and guidelines. The concept emphasizes compatibility and common ancestry rather than a single product.

Debian was started in 1993 as a free, community-driven project. Its package repositories, central development infrastructure, and three-tier release model (stable, testing, unstable) provide a base for many derivatives. Derivative distributions, such as Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Kali Linux, Raspbian (Raspberry Pi OS), Parrot OS, and others, take Debian as their starting point, adapt it to different goals, hardware architectures, release cadences, and default desktop environments, and then maintain their own separate ecosystems while retaining access to Debian packages.

In practice, the Debian family is defined by shared tooling and repositories: .deb packages, dpkg, and APT systems; long-term support and security coordination for derivatives rely on Debian's security advisories and, in some cases, on derivative-specific policies. Derivatives often backport features from testing or snapshot new features, while stabilizing for end users with their own release cycles.

The Debian family has a major influence on the Linux ecosystem, offering a robust, versatile base for servers and desktops, a large repository of software, and a collaborative development model that spans multiple distributions and communities.