Ian Murdock – Creator of Debian & CTO of the Linux Foundation – Has Died


It is with a heavy heart that I inform you that Ian Murdock passed away on Monday night. Not only is this a tragic loss for his family and friends, but a great loss for Linux and the entire Open Source community. I offer my condolences to his loved ones.

For those of you who do not know who Ian Murdock is; Ian Murdock is professionally known for being the creator of Debian, the CTO of the Linux foundation, a Senior Leader of Sun Microsystems, and for his contributions to the Open Source community including projects like Docker.

Without Debian I don’t think Linux gaming would be as popular as it is today. Debian is the backbone for distributions like Ubuntu, Mint, and Steam OS. Debian has made Linux on the desktop what it is today considering it and some of its children are the top 3 most popular Linux Distributions.

As a gamer and a daily user of Linux I owe a lot to Ian Murdock and it greatly saddens me to hear of his passing. For those of you who would like to offer your condolences, please feel free to post a comment here. You may also send an email to in-memoriam-ian@debian.org where your messages will be kept and archived.