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The Debian GNU/Linux FAQ
Chapter 4 Software available in the Debian system

4.1 What types of applications and development software are available for Debian GNU/Linux?

Like most Linux distributions, Debian GNU/Linux provides:

the major GNU applications for software development, file manipulation, and text processing, including gcc, g++, make, texinfo, Emacs, the Bash shell and numerous upgraded Unix utilities,

Perl, Python, Tcl/Tk and various related programs, modules and libraries for each of them,

TeX (LaTeX) and Lyx, dvips, Ghostscript,

the X Window System, which provides a networked graphical user interface for Linux, and countless X applications including GNOME,

a full suite of networking applications, including servers for Internet protocols such as HTTP (WWW), FTP, NNTP (news), SMTP and POP (mail) and name server; also provided are web browsers, and development tools.

More than 3750 packages, ranging from news servers and readers to sound support, FAX programs, database and spreadsheet programs, image processing programs, communications, net, and mail utilities, Web servers, and even ham-radio programs are included in the distribution. Another 450 software suites are available as Debian packages, but are not formally part of Debian due to license restrictions.

4.2 Who wrote all that software?

For each package the authors of the program(s) are credited in the file /usr/doc/PACKAGE/copyright, where PACKAGE is to be substituted with the package's name.

Maintainers who package this software for the Debian GNU/Linux system are listed in the Debian control file (see What is a Debian control file?, Section 6.4) that comes with each package.

4.3 How can I get a current list of programs that have been packaged for the Debian project?

A complete list is available from any of the Debian mirrors.

The file indices/Packages-Master-i386.gz provides a list, including short descriptions, of all packages that are available for computers with ix86 (and compatible) chips. There are similar files, at indices/Packages-Master-ARCH.gz, where ARCH is to be substituted by the appropriate architecture, that provide a similar list of packages that are available for such computers/architectures.

The WWW interface to the Debian packages conveniently summarizes the packages in each of about twenty "sections" of the Debian archive.

4.4 Why aren't there any libfoo.so files in Debian library packages?

Debian Policy requires that such symbolic links (to libfoo.so.x.y.z or similar) are placed in separate, development packages. Those packages are usually named libfoo-dev or libfooX-dev (presuming the library package is named libfooX, and X is a whole number).

4.5 What is missing from Debian GNU/Linux?