## Debian Reference Card

### The 101 most important things when using Debian

###

### W. Martin Borgert

Debian
`<debacle@debian.org>`

Copyright © 2004, 2005, 2008, 2010 W. Martin Borgert

Copyright © 2016, 2019, 2023 Holger Wansing

This document may be used under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 3 or higher. The license text can be found at https://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html and `/usr/share/common-licenses/GPL-3`.

Abstract

The idea of this reference card is to provide new users of Debian GNU/Linux with the most important commands. Basic (or better) knowledge of computers, files, directories and the command line is required. Some acronyms related to Debian GNU/Linux can be found here.

## Availability

The source code of this card is available via the Debian Salsa service in DocBook/XML format. You may access the repository via the web interface. Or check out the latest version using this command:

    git clone https://salsa.debian.org/ddp-team/refcard.git

The actual reference card in English, for printing in international paper format is here. For other languages and US letter size, see below.

Language | Print | Title | Last Translator | Status
--- | --- | --- | --- | ---
Bulgarian (bg) | A4 | Debian Справочник - Най-полезните 101 съвета за работа с Debian | Kamen Naydenov <pau4o@kamennn.eu> | 193 ok.
Catalan (ca) | A4 | Targeta de referència per al Debian - Les 101 coses més importants per l'ús del Debian | Innocent De Marchi <tangram.peces@gmail.com> | 193 ok.
Czech (cs) | A4 | Debian referenční karta - 101 nejdůležitějších věcí při používání Debianu | Branislav Makúch <makuch@dsroot.org> | 191 ok, 1 fuzzy, 1 todo.
Danish (da) | A4 | Debian-referencekort - De 101 vigtigste ting når man bruger Debian | Joe Hansen <joedalton2@yahoo.dk> | 190 ok, 2 fuzzy, 1 todo.
German (de) | A4 | Debian Referenzkarte - Die 101 wichtigsten Dinge bei der Nutzung von Debian | Holger Wansing <hwansing@mailbox.org> | 193 ok.
Greek (el) | A4 | Κάρτα Αναφοράς για το Debian - Tα 101 πιο σημαντικά πράγματα όταν χρησιμοποιείτε το Debian | Iliana Panagopoulou <hpanago@gmail.com> | 182 ok, 9 fuzzy, 2 todo.
English (en) | A4 Lt | Debian Reference Card - The 101 most important things when using Debian | n/a | n/a
Spanish (es) | A4 Lt | Tarjeta de referencia para Debian - Las 101 cosas más importantes para el uso de Debian | Octavio Alvarez <alvarezp@gmail.com> | 182 ok, 9 fuzzy, 2 todo.
Basque (eu) | A4 | Debian erreferentzi txartela - Debian erabiltzeko 101 gomendio garrantzitsuenak | dooteo <dooteo@zundan.com> | 182 ok, 9 fuzzy, 2 todo.
Finnish (fi) | A4 | Debian-pikaohje - 101 tärkeintä muistettavaa Debianin käyttäjälle | Juhani Numminen <juhaninumminen0@gmail.com> | 190 ok, 2 fuzzy, 1 todo.
French (fr) | A4 Lt | Carte de Référence Debian - Les 101 informations les plus importantes pour utiliser Debian | Baptiste Jammet <baptiste@mailoo.org> | 193 ok.
Galician (gl) | A4 | Tarxeta de referencia para Debian - As 101 cousas máis útiles ao traballar con Debian | R. Ávila Coya <ravila@edu.xunta.es> | 173 ok, 13 fuzzy, 7 todo.
Hindi (hi) | A4 | Debian Reference Card - The 101 most important things when using Debian | Rajiv Ranjan <rajivhey@gmail.com> | 179 ok, 12 fuzzy, 2 todo.
Hungarian (hu) | A4 | Debian Referencia Kártya - The 101 most important things when using Debian | Miklos Quartus <lista@miklos.info> | 181 ok, 10 fuzzy, 2 todo.
Bahasa Indonesia (id) | A4 | Kartu Referensi Debian - 101 hal terpenting saat menggunakan Debian | Kemas Antonius <kyantonius@gmail.com> | 193 ok.
Italian (it) | A4 | Scheda di riferimento per Debian - Le 101 cose più importanti da sapere per usare Debian | Beatrice Torracca <beatricet@libero.it> | 193 ok.
Japanese (ja) | A4 | Debian リファレンスカード - Debian を使うための 101 の重要事項 | victory <victory.deb@gmail.com> | 191 ok, 1 fuzzy, 1 todo.
Lithuanian (lt) | A4 | Debian Reference Card - The 101 most important things when using Debian | Kęstutis Biliūnas <kebil@kaunas.init.lt> | 113 ok, 41 fuzzy, 39 todo.
Malay (ms) | A4 | Kad Rujukan Debian - 101 perkara paling penting waktu menggunakan Debian | Umarzuki bin Mochlis Moktar <umar@umarzuki.org> | 115 ok, 10 fuzzy, 68 todo.
Norwegian Bokmål (nb) | A4 | Debian referansekort - De 101 viktigste tingene når man bruker Debian | Hans F. Nordhaug <hans@nordhaug.priv.no> | 190 ok, 2 fuzzy, 1 todo.
Dutch (nl) | A4 | Debian Naslagkaart - De 101 belangrijkste dingen wanneer u Debian gebruikt | Frans Spiesschaert <Frans.Spiesschaert@yucom.be> | 193 ok.
Polish (pl) | A4 | Debian Karta Referencyjna - 101 najważniejszych rzeczy potrzebnych przy używaniu systemu Debian | Miroslaw Gabrus <mirekgab@wp.pl> | 182 ok, 9 fuzzy, 2 todo.
Portugese, as spoken in Brazil (pt_BR) | A4 | Cartão de Referência Debian - As 101 coisas mais importantes ao usar o Debian | Adriano Rafael Gomes <adrianorg@debian.org> | 193 ok.
Portugese, as spoken in Portugal (pt) | A4 | Cartão de Referência Debian - As 101 coisas mais importantes ao utilizar Debian | Miguel Figueiredo <elmig@debianpt.org> | 193 ok.
Romanian (ro) | A4 | Debian Reference Card - The 101 most important things when using Debian | Ionel Mugurel Ciobîcă <I.M.Ciobica@gmail.com> | 170 ok, 15 fuzzy, 8 todo.
Russian (ru) | A4 | Памятка по Debian - 101 полезный совет при работе с Debian | Yuri Kozlov <yuray@komyakino.ru> | 190 ok, 2 fuzzy, 1 todo.
Serbian (sr) | A4 | Debian референтна карта - 101 најважнија ствар када користите Debian | Dragan Filipovic <filipovic@tutanota.com> | 190 ok, 2 fuzzy, 1 todo.
Slovak (sk) | A4 | Referenčná karta Debian - The 101 most important things when using Debian | ctenar <x> | 181 ok, 10 fuzzy, 2 todo.
Swedish (sv) | A4 | Referenskort för Debian - De 101 viktigaste sakerna för att använda Debian | Andreas Rönnquist <gusnan@debian.org> | 193 ok.
Turkish (tr) | A4 | Debian Başvuru Kartı - The 101 most important things when using Debian | Selçuk Mıynat <selcukmiynat@gmail.com> | 173 ok, 14 fuzzy, 6 todo.
Ukrainian (uk) | A4 | Пам'ятка Debian - 101 найбільш важлива річ при використанні Debian | Asal Mirzaieva <asalle.kim@gmail.com> | 182 ok, 9 fuzzy, 2 todo.
Vietnamese (vi) | A4 | Bảng tham khảo Debian - 101 thứ quan trọng nhất khi sử dụng Debian | Trần Ngọc Quân <vnwildman@gmail.com> | 191 ok, 1 fuzzy, 1 todo.
Chinese, as spoken in China (zh_CN) | A4 | Debian 参考卡片 - 101 个 Debian 使用要诀 | 肖盛文 <atzlinux@sina.com> | 190 ok, 1 fuzzy, 2 todo.
Traditional Chinese (zh_TW) | A4 | Debian 參考卡片 - 使用 Debian 時最基本又重要的知識 | Shen-Ta Hsieh <ibmibmibm.tw@gmail.com> | 191 ok, 1 fuzzy, 1 todo.

## Print, Fold, and Enjoy

### Warning

The reference card has been designed for printers that are able to print whole pages, without large margins! On my own private printer (HP Inkjet) or other so-called consumer printers you cannot print the card!

First, the paper side with the title and the legal notice (copyleft) are on the back. Fold the right third of the paper to the small mark at the upper margin between the left and middle third. Now fold the left third over the right one. The title page should be in the front, the legal notice on the back. If not, try again.

Of course, you may alter the reference card to your needs and create a customised refcard. You need to install the build dependencies with apt-get build-dep refcard; these are mostly: `docbook-xsl`, `texlive-extra-utils`, `pdftk`, `po4a`, `dblatex`, `poppler-utils`, and `xsltproc`.

## Help!

If you like to translate the reference card into your language, please contact me first, so that duplicated work is prevented.

If you are going to translate the refcard, make sure to

1. use the file `po4a/entries.pot` as template;

2. check out the latest version from the git repository;

3. do not forget to translate the legal notice;

4. use `UTF-8` as encoding.

Use whatever editor you like, but it must work with UTF-8. A nice editor for translations is `poedit`. If you happen to use Emacs (`emacs24`), try `gettext-el`.

### Warning

Because other languages might be more verbose than English (and German is more verbose), the translation might not fit on one sheet! Translators need to re-phrase things! The translation does not need to be 100% exact, it's more important, that everything fits on the card!

The reference card has been designed for international paper format (ISO A4) - the US letter format has less space. This applies to English, French, and Spanish.

## Acronyms related to Debian

English and Vietnamese explanations

## Thanks

Michael Wiedmann helped a lot with the db2latex-xsl toolchain.

The following people helped by correcting my so-called English, by adding important commands, by advertising the card, by giving valuable hints, or just by motivating me: Adrian Dagurashibanipal von Bidder, Andreas Tille, Chris Walker, Eduard Bloch, Holger Blaschka, Oliver Kurth, Philip Miller, Rahmat M. Samik-Ibrahim, Ralph Aichinger, Ralph Katz, Rob Bradford, Frank Küster, Wouter Verhelst, Justin B Rye for corrections and useful ideas.

Revision History
Revision 12 -- Debian 12 'Bookworm' -- | 2023-03-22
Update for Bookworm, incl. translations.
Revision 11 -- Debian 11 'Bullseye' -- | 2021-03-14
Updated refcard for Bullseye; updated translations.
Revision 10 -- Debian 10 'Buster' -- | 2020-01-19
Update refcard for Buster; source repository moved from svn (Alioth) to git (Salsa); remove dependency to xmlroff (unfortunately ar, he and ml cannot be built now anymore); remove dependency to dia (added a static refcard.png file to the repository instead); remove dependency to pdfjoin; updated translations; new translation for Korean.
Revision 9.0 - Debian 9 'Stretch' -- | 2016-07-09
Change versioning scheme; updated content matching Stretch; drop Apache/Samba/m-a/make-kpkg content; translation updates, added Serbian translation.
Revision 5.0.9 | 2013-10-10
New and updated translations.
Revision 5.0.8 | 2012-07-10
New and updated translations.
Revision 5.0.7 | 2010-12-13
New and updated translations.
Revision 5.0.6 | 2010-12-09
New and updated translations.
Revision 5.0.5 | 2010-04-30
New and updated translations.
Revision 5.0.4 | 2008-11-05
New and updated translations.
Revision 5.0.3 | 2008-10-05
New and updated translations.
Revision 5.0.2 | 2008-09-18
New and updated translations.
Revision 5.0.1 | 2008-08-01
Use dblatex as alternative renderer.
Revision 5.0-0.1 | 2008-07-13
Removed some obsolete entries, added one for the wiki.
Revision 3.2-0.1 | 2008-01-25
Changed the layout engine from db2latex-xsl to xmlroff for the sake of RTL languages. Changed the translation mechanism to po4a to make translators live easier. Packaging. License changed to GPL 3.
Revision 3.1-0.2 | 2005-09-03
Enabled more translations. Added international titles to web page. Using texlive instead of tetex, not sure which one I will use in the future. Two new keywords to translate: Version and Made by!
Revision 3.1-0.1 | 2005-08-23
Changed all files to UTF-8 encoding. Use subversion instead of CVS.
Revision 3.1 | 2005-06-19
Bumped version number to Debian release number to confuse everybody. Added folding advice. Commented out unimportant entries, where necessary.
Revision 1.0.5 | 2005-05-23
Added CVS checkout commands to refcard web page, thanks to Geert Stappers (stappers AT stappers.nl).
Revision 1.0.4 | 2004-09-14
Polish translation added.
Revision 1.0.3 | 2004-09-02
Finnish and Hungarian translations added.
Revision 1.0.2 | 2004-08-27
Ukrainian translation added.
Revision 1.0.1 | 2004-08-22
Some new translations available (Catalan, Danish) or under construction (Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, Slovak, Turkish, Ukrainian). Once again, Michael Wiedmann (mw AT miwie.in-berlin.de) found a lot of important tricks to make things work. Thanks!
Revision 1.0 | 2004-06-14
Split translatable contents from boilerplate, easing life of translators and me.
Revision 0.9 | 2004-04-29
Not yet released, but preliminary translations for French and Portuguese are here!
Revision 0.8 | 2004-04-27
Not yet released, but preliminary translations into Dutch and Spanish are here!
Revision 0.7 | 2004-04-18
More changes and additions!
Revision 0.6 | 2004-04-17
Got a German translation from Alexander Schmehl (alexander AT schmehl.info). Because my original version changed in the mean time, I had to rework it a little bit. Finally added auto-apt.
Revision 0.5 | 2004-04-16
More minor changes. Restructured some sections, to make the card more comprehensive.
Revision 0.4 | 2004-04-16
Minor changes.
Revision 0.3 | 2004-04-15
Many changes. Added a fold mark between pages two and three, hopefully at the right position. The basic idea is taken from leaflet.cls by Jürgen Schlegelmilch (schlegel AT informatik.uni-rostock.de).
Revision 0.2 | 2004-04-12
Some more commands, files, hints. Fixes in the XSL lead to better PDF.
Revision 0.1 | 2004-04-10
Initial version, based on the APT and Dpkg Quick Reference Sheet by Matthew Danish (mdanish AT andrew.cmu.edu). Some layout ideas are taken from the BSD leaflet by Oliver Fromme (olli AT fromme.com), and other public sources.