Written by two Debian developers — Raphaël Hertzog and Roland Mas — the Debian Administrator's Handbook started as a translation of their French best-seller known as Cahier de l'admin Debian (published by Eyrolles). It's a fantastic resource for all users of a Debian-based distribution. Accessible to all, this book teaches the essentials to anyone who wants to become an effective and independant Debian GNU/Linux administrator.

Given that traditional editors did not want to take the risk to make this translation, we decided to do the translation ourselves and to self-publish the result. After a successful crowdfunding campaign, we managed to complete this translation between December 2011 and May 2012.

To live up to our free software ideals, we wanted the book to be freely available (that is under the terms of a license compatible with the Debian Free Software Guidelines of course). There was a condition though: a liberation fund had to be completed to ensure we had a decent compensation for the work that the book represents. This fund reached its target of €25K in April 2012.