Debian is 33, Haiku is 25, and neither is standing still
This week marks anniversaries for two long-running operating system projects: Debian, which turned 33, and Haiku OS, which turned 25. Debian, founded by Ian Murdock in 1993, remains one of the world's most widely used Linux distributions, while Haiku continues to carry forward the legacy of the discontinued BeOS, demonstrating that both open-source efforts remain active and technically ambitious decades after their founding.
Debian is not the oldest maintained Linux distribution — that title belongs to Slackware, roughly a month older — but it has seen steady releases, including Debian 12 in June 2023 and Debian 13 a year later. Haiku, meanwhile, has never reached a 1.0 release despite 25 years of development, but is nearing a "beta6" milestone with a release branch expected imminently. The project continues to make technical strides, including a PowerPC port demonstrated with AI assistance in July and a preliminary Arm64 port shown in May, alongside related efforts such as Cosmoe and VitruvianOS, which aim to bring BeOS-style interfaces to other platforms.
- Debian turns 33, remains a dominant Linux distribution
- Haiku OS turns 25, still no 1.0 release yet
- Haiku nears "beta6" with new PowerPC and Arm64 ports
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Debian is a free operating system built around the Linux kernel, maintained by a worldwide community of contributors. It is also the basis for many other systems, including Ubuntu, so its development affects a broad part of the open-source software world.
Haiku is a separate open-source operating system inspired by BeOS, a system known for its multimedia features that was discontinued in the 2000s. Haiku is developed by volunteers and aims to preserve some of BeOS’s design and feel while building a modern system.
The projects have different histories and goals, but both show how community-led software can continue to develop over many years. Debian is widely used, while Haiku remains a smaller project pursuing support for newer hardware and platforms.