Debian
Debian is a free operating system. Debian works exceptionally well as a server; Debian GNU/Linux is the operating system underneath nethack.alt.org. Debian also powers some desktops, though many users have Ubuntu, a variant of Debian that makes frequent releases of the most important software.
Debian GNU/Linux is exceptional because it supports 11 processor architectures and has greater than 18 thousand packages. No other distribution of GNU and Linux is more comprehensive; perhaps only NetBSD can claim to support more processor architectures than Debian.
Debian also does a great job of providing current versions of packages (in the "unstable" repository, because Debian sometimes waits almost three years between releases). This is not an issue with NetHack, because 3.4.3 has been current for a very long time. However, Debian "unstable" already contains version 0.0.7E7F3 of SLASH'EM.
The NetHack package has several patches included, for example menucolors, and is maintained by Joshua "joshk" Kwan.
Perhaps a fortune cookie could read:
- They say that Debian and Gentoo are the best at providing current versions of packages.
They have Debian GNU/kFreeBSD and Debian GNU/Hurd too.
