In 2003, Nat Makarévitch contacted Raphaël because he wanted to publish a book on Debian in the Cahier de l'Admin (Admin's Handbook) collection that he was managing for Eyrolles, a leading French editor of technical books. Raphaël immediately accepted to write it. The first edition came out on 14th October 2004 and was a huge success — it was sold out barely four months later.

Since then, we have released 7 other editions of the French book, one for each subsequent Debian release (except for Debian 9). Roland, who started working on the book as a proofreader, gradually became its co-author.

Μολονότι είμασταν φανερά ικανοποιημένοι με την επιτυχία του βιβλίου, ελπίζαμε οτι η Eyrolles(βιβλιοθήκη μεταφράσεων) θα ετοίμαζε ένα διεθνή μεταφραστικό επεξεργαστή στα Αγγλικά. Λάβαμε πολυάριθμα σχόλια που εξηγούσαν το πώς το βιβλίο βοήθησε πολύ κόσμο να ξεκινήσει με το Debian και μας κίνησε το ενδιαφέρον το βιβλίο να ωφελήσει ακόμα πιο πολλούς παρομοίως.

Alas, no English-speaking editor that we contacted was willing to take the risk of translating and publishing the book. Not put off by this small setback, we negotiated with our French editor Eyrolles and got back the necessary rights to translate the book into English and publish it ourselves. Thanks to a successful crowdfunding campaign, we worked on the translation between December 2011 and May 2012. The “Debian Administrator's Handbook” was born and it was published under a free-software license!

While this was an important milestone, we already knew that the story would not be over for us until we could contribute the French book as an official translation of the English book. This was not possible at that time because the French book was still distributed commercially under a non-free license by Eyrolles.

In 2013, the release of Debian 7 gave us a good opportunity to discuss a new contract with Eyrolles. We convinced them that a license more in line with the Debian values would contribute to the book's success. That wasn't an easy deal to make, and we agreed to set up another crowdfunding campaign to cover some of the costs and reduce the risks involved. The operation was again a huge success and in July 2013, we added a French translation to the Debian Administrator's Handbook.

We would like to thank everybody who contributed to these fund-raising campaigns, either by pledging some money or by passing the word around. We couldn't have done it without you.

To save some paper, 5 years after the fund-raising campaigns and after two subsequent editions, we dropped the list of persons who opted to be rewarded with a mention of their name in the book. But their names are engraved in the acknowledgments of the Wheezy edition of the book:

This book would not be what it is without the contributions of several persons who each played an important role during the translation phase and beyond. We would like to thank Marilyne Brun, who helped us to translate the sample chapter and who worked with us to define some common translation rules. She also revised several chapters that were desperately in need of supplementary work. Thank you to Anthony Baldwin (of Baldwin Linguas) who translated several chapters for us.

Since Roland and I were too busy to update the book for Debian 11, we used the modest income that we get through donations and sales to hire contributors to do the bulk of the work. Thank you very much to Jorge Maldonado Ventura and Daniel Leidert for the hard work they put into this update.

Ωφεληθήκαμε απο την γενναιόδωρη βοήθεια των διορθωτών τυπογραφίου: Daniel Phillips, Gerold Rupprecht, Gordon Dey, Jacob Owens, and Tom Syroid. Αυτοί έκαναν ανασκόπηση αρκετών κεφαλαίων. Σας ευχαριστούμε πάρα πολύ!

Then, once the English version was liberated, of course, we got plenty of feedback and suggestions and fixes from the readers, and even more from the many teams who undertook to translate this book into other languages. Thanks!

We would also like to thank the readers of the French book who provided us some nice quotes to confirm that the book was really worth being translated: thank you Christian Perrier, David Bercot, Étienne Liétart, and Gilles Roussi. Stefano Zacchiroli — who was Debian Project Leader during the crowdfunding campaign — also deserves a big thank you, he kindly endorsed the project with a quote explaining that free (as in freedom) books were more than needed.

Εάν έχεις τη χαρά να διαβάσεις όλ' αυτά απο αντίγραφο βιβλίου(βιβλιοδεσία), τότε πρέπει να ευχαριστήσουμε τους Benoît Guillon, Jean-Côme Charpentier, και Sébastien Mengin οι οποίοι δούλεψαν τον εσωτερικό σχεδιασμό. Ο Benoît ειναι ο upstream συγγραφέας του dblatex - το εργαλείο που χρησιμοποιούμε για την μετατροπή του DocBook σε LaTeX (και μετά σε PDF). Ο Sébastien ειναι ο σχεδιαστής που δημιούργησε την ωραία διαρρύθμιση του βιβλίου και ο Jean-Côme ειναι ο ειδικός στο LaTeX ο οποίος εφάρμοσε αυτό σε ειδικό εργαλείο ώστε να ειναι χρήσιμο για το dblatex. Σας ευχαριστώ φίλοι για την σκληρή δουλειά!

Τέλος, ευχαριστώ τον Thierry Stempfel για τις ωραίες φωτογραφίες που εισάγουν κάθε κεφάλαιο και ευχαριστώ τον Doru Patrascu για το ωραίο εξώφυλλο.

Ever since the book has been freed, many volunteers have been busy translating it to numerous languages, such as Arabic, Brazilian Portuguese, German, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Norwegian Bokmål, etc. Discover the full list of translations on the book's website: https://debian-handbook.info/get/#other

We would like to thank all the translators and translation reviewers. Your work is highly appreciated because it brings Debian into the hands of millions of persons who cannot read English.

First off, I would like to thank Nat Makarévitch, who offered me the possibility to write this book and who provided strong guidance during the year it took to get it done. Thank you also to the fine team at Eyrolles, and Muriel Shan Sei Fan in particular. She has been very patient with me, and I learned a lot with her.

The period of the Ulule campaigns were very demanding for me but I would like to thank everybody who helped to make them a success, and in particular the Ulule team who reacted very quickly to my many requests. Thank you also to everybody who promoted the operations. I don't have any exhaustive list (and if I had, it would probably be too long), but I would like to thank a few people who were in touch with me: Joey-Elijah Sneddon and Benjamin Humphrey of OMG! Ubuntu, Florent Zara of LinuxFr.org, Manu of Korben.info, Frédéric Couchet of April.org, Jake Edge of Linux Weekly News, Clement Lefebvre of Linux Mint, Ladislav Bodnar of Distrowatch, Steve Kemp of Debian-Administration.org, Christian Pfeiffer Jensen of Debian-News.net, Artem Nosulchik of LinuxScrew.com, Stephan Ramoin of Gandi.net, Matthew Bloch of Bytemark.co.uk, the team at Divergence FM, Rikki Kite of Linux New Media, Jono Bacon, the marketing team at Eyrolles, and numerous others that I have forgotten (sorry about that).

I would like to address a special thanks to Roland Mas, my co-author. We have been collaborating on this book since the start, and he has always been up to the challenge. And I must say that completing the Debian Administrator's Handbook has been a lot of work…

Last but not least, thank you to my wife, Sophie. She has been very supportive of my work on this book and on Debian in general. There have been too many days (and nights) when I left her alone with our 2 sons to make some progress on the book. I am grateful for her support and know how lucky I am to have her.

Λοιπόν, ο Raphaël εξέφρασε ήδη κατά πάρα πολύ τις ευχαριστίες του. Με έμφαση θέλω να εκφράσω την ευγνωμοσύνη μου στους φίλους της Eyrolles, όπου η συνεργασία μαζί τους ήταν ευχάριστη και απλή αλλά και ελπίζω τ' αποτελέσματα των εξαιρετικών των συμβουλών δεν χάθηκε στην μετάφραση.

Είμαι εξαιρετικά ευγνώμων που ο Raphaël ανέλαβε το διαχειριστικό μέρος αυτής της Αγγλικής έκδοσης. Απο την οργάνωση της οικονομικής εκστρατείας μέχρι της τελευταίας λεπτομέρειας διακόσμησης του βιβλίου, δημιουργώντας ένα μεταφρασμένο βιβλίο το οποίο ειναι πολύ πάνω απο μιά απλή μετάφραση κι ένα αποδεικτικό κείμενο και ναι ο Raphaël το έκανε (αναθέτοντας κι επιβλέποντας) τα πάντα. Λοιπόν τον ευχαριστώ.

Ευχαριστώ επίσης όλους εκείνους που λίγο-πολύ ευθέως συνείσφεραν για το βιβλίο, παρέχοντας διευκρινήσεις η εξηγήσεις η μεταφραστικές συμβουλές. Υπάρχουν πολλοί που πρέπει ν' αναφερθούν αλλα περισσότεροι συνήθως μπορούν να βρεθούν μέσα απο τα διάφορα #debian-* IRC κανάλια.

Βέβαια υπάρχει σίγουρα μια κάποια "επικάλυψη" ανθρώπων, αλλά ειδικά ευχαριστώ στους ανθρώπους που λειτουργούν με Debian. Δεν θα υπήρχε το βιβλίο χωρίς αυτούς και είμαι έκπληκτος το πως η Debian παραγωγή με όλα τα παράγωγα το κάνει διαθέσιμο στον καθένα και σε όλα.

Περισσότερα προσωπικά ευχαριστώ στους φίλους και πελάτες για την κατανόησή τους για την μη υπευθυνότητά μου διότι με απασχολούσε η δουλειά του βιβλίου και την αδιάκοπη υποστήριξή τους και ενθάρρυνσή τους. Ξέρετε ποιοί είστε; ευχαριστώ.

And finally; I am sure they would be surprised by being mentioned here, but I would like to extend my gratitude to Terry Pratchett, Jasper Fforde, Tom Holt, William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, and of course the late Douglas Adams. The countless hours I spent enjoying their books are directly responsible for my being able to take part in translating one first and writing new parts later.