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Send mail to submit@bugs.debian.org, as described below. 

Please don't report several unrelated bugs - especially ones in different packages - in one message. Also, please don't mail your
bug report to any mailing lists or recipients other than submit@bugs (for details of how to do this right, see below). 

Lists of currently-outstanding bugs are available on the World Wide Web and elsewhere - see other documents for details. 

You should put a pseudo-header at the start of the body of the message, with the Package: and Version: lines giving the name
and version of the package which has the bug. (The pseudo-header fields must start at the very start of their lines, and the bug
system does not currently understand them if they're buried in MIMEd or PGPd mail.) (You can get these using dpkg --search
and dpkg --list; see dpkg --help. See below for further requirements. 

There are some pseudo-packages available for putting in the Package line when reporting a bug in something other than an actual
Debian software package. There is a list of these on the bugs WWW pages. 

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Initially, a bug report is submitted by a user as an ordinary mail message to submit@bugs.debian.org. This will then be given a
number, acknowledged to the user, and forwarded to debian-bugs-dist. If the submitter included a Package line listing a package
with a known maintainer the maintainer will get a copy too. 

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Include any detail that seems relevant - you are in very little danger of making your report too long by including too much
information. If they are small please include in your report any files you were using to reproduce the problem (uuencoding them if
they may contain odd characters etc.). 

Of course, like any email, you should include a clear, descriptive Subject line in your main mail header. The subject you give will be
used as the initial bug title in the tracking system, so please try to make it informative ! 

Sometimes it is necessary to send a copy of a bug report to somewhere else besides debian-bugs-dist and the package
maintainer, which is where they are normally sent. 

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The Subject line will have Bug nnn: added, and the Reply-To will be set to include both the submitter of the report and
nnn@bugs.debian.org. 
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The right way to do this is to use the X-Debbugs-CC header. Add a line like this to your message's mail header (not to the pseudo
header with the Package field): 

If a report is of a particularly serious bug, or is merely a feature request that, you can set the severity level of the bug as you report
it. This is not required, however, and the developers will assign an appropriate severity level to your report if you do not. 

To assign a severity level put a Severity: severity line in the pseudo-header, together with Package and Version. The severity
levels available are described in the developers' documentation. 

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If you wish to send a followup message which is not appropriate for debian-bugs-dist you can do so by sending it to
nnn-quiet@bugs or nnn-maintonly@bugs, which only file it (not forwarding it anywhere) and send it on only to the maintainer of
the package in question, respectively. 

\chapter{Goodbye}
Do not use the `reply to all recipients' or `followup' feature of your mailer unless you intend to edit down the recipients
substantially. In particular, don't send a followup message both to nnn@bugs.debian.org and to submit@bugs.debian.org,
because the bug system will then get two copies of it and each one will be forwarded to debian-bugs-dist separately. 

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If a bug report is minor (for example, a documentation typo or other trivial build problem), or you're submitting many reports at
once, send them to maintonly@bugs or quiet@bugs. maintonly will send the report on to the package maintainer (provided you
supply a correct Package line in the pseudo-header and the maintainer is known), and quiet will not forward it anywhere at all but
only file it as a bug (useful if, for example, you are submitting many similar bugs and want to post only a summary). 

If you do this the bug system will set the Reply-To of any forwarded message so that replies will by default be processed in the
same way as the original report. 

If the bug tracking system doesn't know who the maintainer of the relevant package is it'll forward the report to
debian-bugs-dist even if maintonly was used. 

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When sending to maintonly@bugs or nnn-maintonly@bugs you should make sure that the bug report is assigned to the right
package, by putting a correct Package at the top of an original submission of a report, or by using the control@bugs service to
(re)assign the report appropriately first if it isn't correct already. 

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For example: 
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A developer who receives a bug from the tracking system, or sees it on debian-bugs-dist, and takes responsibility for it should
hit Reply in their favourite mailreader, and then edit the To field to say nnn-done@bugs.debian.org instead of nnn@bugs
(nnn-close is provided as an alias for nnn-done). 

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Mailing lists

Much of the the conversation between Debian developers and users is managed through several mailing lists. Debian GNU/Linux
is developed through distributed development all around the world. Therefore email is a preferred way to discuss various items. 

There are several publicly available mailing lists while there are also some lists which are only open to active developers. Please
don't interpret this as closed development. Everyone is encouraged to help development of Debian and to spread the word of free
software. On the other hand it doesn't make much sense discussing internal topics with non-developers. 

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All original Debian mailing lists run on a special server with a mail transport agent that is optimized for lists. This host is called
lists.debian.org. All submission, subscription and unsubscription messages have to go to this host. 

The language used on all lists is English unless stated otherwise. There are also some user lists for other languages available. 

For information on the mailing lists and how to subscribe to them, see the Subscription Page. For information on unsubscribing, see
the Unsubscription Page. 

You can also view old posts to the mailing lists using the mailing list archives. 

To contact the list maintainer, send E-Mail to listmaster@lists.debian.org. 

There are many other Linux mailing lists, which are not Debian-specific. Please refer to this index. 


Reaching Package Maintainers\footnote{hello}

There are two ways of reaching package maintainers. If you need to contact the maintainer because of a bug, simply file a bug
report (see the Bug Tracking System section below). The maintainer will get a copy of the bug report. 

If you simply want to communicate with the maintainer, then you can use the special mail aliases set up for each package. Any
mail sent to <package name>@packages.debian.org will be forwarded to the maintainer responsible for that package. 


The Bug Tracking System

The Debian GNU/Linux distribution has a bug tracking system which details bugs reported by users and developers. Each bug is
given a number, and is kept on file until it is marked as having been dealt with. 

To report a bug, you can use one of the bug pages listed below, or you can use the Debian package 'bug' to automatically file a bug
report. 

Information on submitting bugs, viewing the currently active bugs, and the bug tracking system in general can be retrieved from the
current web site or from one of these mirrors: 

Consultants

Debian is free software and offers free help through mailing lists. Some people either don't have the time or have specialized needs
and are willing to hire someone to maintain or add additional functionality to their Debian system. See the consultants page for a
list of people/companies. 


On-line Real Time Help Using IRC

IRC (Internet Relay Chat) is a way to chat with people from all over the world in real time. An IRC channel dedicated to Debian
can be found on irc.debian.org. To connect, you need an IRC client. Some of the most popular clients are ircII, BitchX, tkirc,
X-Chat and Zircon, all of which have been packaged for Debian. Once you have the client installed, you need to tell it to connect
to server irc.debian.org by typing "/server irc.debian.org"; and when connected, join channel debian by typing
"/join debian" (X-Chat and Zircon are different. They use an intuitive graphical interface). At this point you will find yourself
among the friendly crowd of debian inhabitants. You can also check out the list of frequent users. 


WHAT is Debian?

Debian is a free, or Open Source, operating system (OS) for your computer. An operating system is the set of basic programs and
utilities that make your computer run. At the core of an operating system is the kernel. The kernel is the most fundamental program
on the computer and does all the basic housekeeping and lets you start other programs. Debian is kernel independent. It currently
uses the Linux kernel but work is in progress to provide Debian for other kernels, using the Hurd. 

Linux is a completely free piece of software started by Linus Torvalds and supported by (probably over 1000) programmers
worldwide. 

The Hurd is a collection of servers that run on top of a microkernel (such as Mach) to implement different features. The Hurd is
free software produced by the GNU project. 

A large part of the basic tools that fill out the operating system come from the GNU project; hence the names: GNU/Linux and
GNU/Hurd. These tools are also free. Of course, the thing that people want is application software: programs to help them get
what they want to do done, from editing documents to running a business to playing games to writing more software. Debian comes
with over 2250 packages (precompiled software bundled up in a nice format for easy installation on your machine) -- all of it free. 

It's a bit like a tower. At the base is the kernel. On top of that are all the basic tools. Next is all the software that you run on the
computer. At the top of the tower is Debian -- carefully organizing and fitting everything together so it all works together. 

It's all free?

You may be wondering: why would people spend hours of their own time to write software, carefully package it, and then give it all
away? The answers are as varied as the people who contribute. Some people like to help others. Many write programs to learn
more about computers. More and more people are looking for ways to avoid the inflated price of commercial software. A growing
crowd contribute as a thank you for all the great free software they've received from others. Many in academia create free
software to help get the results of their research into wider use. Businesses help maintain free software so they can have a say in
how it develops -- there's no quicker way to get a new feature than to implement it yourself! Of course, a lot of us just find it great
fun. 

Debian is so committed to free software that we thought it would be useful if it was formalized in a document of some sort. Thus,
our Social Contract was born. 

Although Debian believes in free software, there are cases where people want or need to put commercial software on their
machine. Whenever possible Debian will support this. There are even a growing number of packages whose sole job is to install
commercial software into a Debian system. 
Free? But the CDs cost money.

You might be asking: If the software is free, then why do I have to pay for a CD? First, you don't have to buy a CD. If you can
download off the net, then you can get Debian for no cost. Second, when buying a disk you are paying for someone's time, capital
outlay to make the disks, and risk (in case they don't sell them all). Third, free is used in the sense of freedom not free of cost
(although this generally brings the price down to the cost of the media). For more information take a look at Debian's Free
Software Guidelines or the Free Software Foundation's site. 
Most software costs over 100 dollars. How can you give it away?

A better question is how do software companies get away with charging so much? Software is not like making a car. Once you've
made one copy of your software, the production costs to make a million more are tiny (there's a good reason Microsoft has so
many billions in the bank). 
Look at it another way: if you had an endless supply of sand in your backyard, you might be willing to give sand away. It would be
foolish, though, to pay for a truck to take it to others. You would make them come and get it themselves (equivalent to downloading
off the net) or they can pay someone else to deliver it to their door (equivalent to buying a CD). This is exactly how Debian
operates and why most of the CDs are so cheap (less than 5 U.S. for 2 CDs). 

Although Debian is non-profit, we do have expenses. Please buy from one of the CD manufacturers that donate a portion of your
purchase to Debian. 
What hardware is supported?

Almost all common hardware is supported. If you would like to be sure that everything you have is supported, check out the Linux
Hardware Compatibility HOWTO. 
There are a few companies that make support difficult by not releasing specifications for their hardware. Even if you have a
commercial driver, you can run into problems if the company later goes out of business or stops support of the hardware you have.
To ensure that you don't run into such problems, check out our Open Hardware Specification. 

What architectures are supported?
The list of architectures that Debian supports is constantly growing. For a complete list, see the release information section of the
web site. 
I'm looking for more information.
You may want to check out our FAQ. 

I'm still not convinced
Not to worry. As hard disk space has become cheap, most people have at least 500MB of extra space. Debian can be easily
installed on this extra space and can coexist with your existing OS. If you need more space, you can simply delete one of the OSes
(and after you see the power of Linux, we are sure it won't be Debian). 
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As trying a new operating systems will take some of your valuable time, it is understandable that you may have reservations. For
this reason we compiled a list of pros and cons of Debian. This should help you decide whether you think it's worth it. We Hope
you'll appreciate our honesty and frankness. 

Great. How do I get Debian
Either buy a CD or download it using ftp. Then check out our install documentation. If you haven't yet, you may want to first look at
the Linux Hardware Compatibility HOWTO. Don't forget to take a look through the packages we offer (hopefully you won't be
intimidated by the sheer number). 

How do I get support?
Well if you really need to pay someone, there are businesses that will install and/or maintain your machine for you. If you are
willing to do a little reading, though, you can do everything yourself. Should something you can't figure out come up, simply try our
mailing lists, in particular debian-user. Fast, friendly, free answers. You can't get better service than that. 

For users of IRC, there is a channel, debian, dedicated to Debian, at irc.debian.org . 
Who are you all anyway?
Debian is produced by roughly 500 developers spread around the world who volunteer in their spare time. Few of the developers
have actually met in person. Communication is done primarily through e-mail and the debian IRC channel on irc.debian.org. 

How'd it all get started?
You can find a detailed history of Debian here. 
Since many people have asked, Debian is pronounced 'deb ee n'. It comes from the names of the creator of Debian, Ian Murdock,
and his wife, Debra. 

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