OLinux: Here, in Brazil, there is a project called Debian BR . This is a project that is translating the Debian content to portuguese. Do you know that? If yes, what do you think about it? If not, you are invited to visit the Debian BR web site at debian-br.sourceforge.net. Do you know other projects like this in other coutries?

Ben Collins: I had not heard of it before. I think it is an excellent thing, much like the JP and similar projects. The more people we can get Debian to, the better. I'll have a look at the website, and I wish the best of luck to the project for it's efforts.

OLinux: Do you consider Debian the leading GNU/Linux distribution in the world?

Ben Collins: On many basis, yes. However, I measure Debian on what's important to me, and am well aware that it lacks in areas that are important to others. A reoccuring topic is our installer. I'm happy to report that a new modular installer is being worked on, and it so far appears to exceed, or will exceed, all of the goals that the group set for itself. It will probably not be done in time for woody, though.

OLinux: How is Debian relation with the GNOME Foundation? And with the KDE league?

Ben Collins: I'm not able to answer this question. I do know that we have some developers that work closely with both projects, and that GNOME and KDE are both fully integrated within our distribution.

OLinux: What are the advantages and what differentiates Debian, besides being a no commecial ditribution, from other popular distributions as SuSE or RedHat?

Ben Collins: I think we have three major strengths. One is our development model. No other distribution has all of it's developers available first hand to take bug reports and suggestions from it's userbase.

No other distribution has as extensive a set of policies that allows it to distribute as many packages as we do, all integrated into our distribution, with easy installation.

No other distribution offers the ease of upgrades that we do. There have been reports of people being able to effortlessly upgrade from as far back as Debian 1.3 (bo) to the current stable 2.2 (potato) (note, this is a libc5 to libc6 upgrade path). Debian not only supports, but guarantees upgradability. It is one of our primary goals.

OLinux: How do you describe Debian Project achievements and what are the prospects and goals for the next years?

Ben Collins: The fact that Debian is still around, and is still growing is a major achievement. We have not lost site of our primary goals; to produce a free and stable distritbution. Over the next few years I hope to see Debian prosper from commercial acceptance via companies like Progeny. I'm hoping that vendors will see us as a more viable solution for desktops and pre-installed systems.

OLinux: Give us some predictions about the growth of the GNU/Linux operating system for the next 2, 5 and 10 years.

Ben Collins: That's hard to predict. Unfortunately, as free as it may be, GNU/Linux is directly affected by the economy. The current trend of Internet companies starting to fail, will likely scare away of a lot of the venture capital that has flooded Linux in the past years. Hopefully this will be a good thing, and the Linux companies will have to start working to make their money, and not ride the wave of hype. I would guess that over the next 2 years, Linux's hype will settle down, and people will start taking it more seriously (not just those in-the-know).

In 5 years, I suspect that GNU/Linux will be as common as MacOS, Solaris and Windows in the home. In 10 years, who knows. That's like an eternity to the technical world, so Linux may be obsolete by then.

OLinux: What are the improvements that GNU/Linux needs to be more deployed in by the corporate market?

Ben Collins: An accepted, easy to use interface. KDE and GNOME are working toward this with great strides. But even with a good interface, getting accepted and being "common" take far longer than a development cycle.

OLinux: Debian is definetly the best Linux distro, but its hardware configuration inteface and its installer are not so friendly. Is the Debian Project going to focus on a best interaction with the final user or it still a distribuition for the systems administrators only?

Ben Collins: Yes, the debian-installer group is working very hard on this. We do not want to remain a niche distribution only used by administrators and hard core hackers.