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- The
Debian GNU/Linux distribution
has a strong focus on security and stability,
which is an evident precondition for medical care tasks.
- The powerful packaging tools allow sophisticated depends -
conflicts - replaces combinations to make sure that all
components will work together.
- Debian has strong quality assurance for the packages. One
key feature of this quality management is the
Bug Tracking System which
is open for everybody to report bugs and search for certain
known problems.
- Debian is carefully tested. Each package has to undergo an
evaluation process in the so called
unstable
distribution. Once a package has not shown any important
problem for a certain time period it goes into the
testing
distribution. This distribution is the release
candidate for the future stable
distribution which is
released only when all release critical bugs are
resolved. This careful testing process is the reason why
Debian has a longer release cycle than other distributions.
However, in terms of stability this is an advantage.
- Each package has to comply with strict rules, the so-called
policy. The advantage of these rules is that they guarantee
that different packages work together smoothly.
- Support of
11 hardware architectures (auto builders:
alpha,
arm,
hppa,
i386,
ia64,
m68k,
mips,
mipsel,
powerpc,
s390,
sparc)
- Debian is developed by about 1000 volunteers. That means that
every developer is free to maintain programs he is interested
in or he needs for his special tasks in real life. That's
why Debian is able to cover different fields of
specializations — its developers just want to solve
their own special problems. This broad focus is different from
commercial distributions which just try to cover mainstream
tasks.
- Moreover Debian developers need not care about the advice
of a boss. All developers can have the same influence on
development — they just have to do it if they want a
certain feature realized. We call it Do-O-Cracy and it
ensures that a developer can realize his vision of a perfect
operating system for the intended purpose. If the purpose is
medical care he might like to join the Debian-Med effort.
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