FreedomBox is a Debian pure blend that reduces the effort needed to run and maintain a small personal server. Being a “pure blend” means that all of the software packages which are used in FreedomBox are included in Debian. Most of these packages are not specific to FreedomBox: they are common things such as Apache web server, firewalld, slapd (LDAP server), etc. But there are a few packages which are specific to FreedomBox: they are named freedombox, freedombox-doc-en, freedombox-doc-es, freedom-maker, fbx-all and fbx-tasks.
freedombox is the core package. You could say, if freedombox is installed, then your system is a FreedomBox (or a derivative). It has dependencies on all of the packages that are needed to get a FreedomBox up and running, such as the previously mentioned Apache, firewalld, and slapd. It also provides a web interface for the initial setup, configuration, and installing apps. (The web interface service is called “Plinth” and is written in Python using Django framework.) The source package of freedombox also builds freedombox-doc-en and freedombox-doc-es. These packages install the FreedomBox manuals for English and Spanish, respectively.
freedom-maker is a tool that is used to build FreedomBox disk images. An image can be copied to a storage device such as a Solid State Disk (SSD), eMMC (internal flash memory chip), or a microSD card. Each image is meant for a particular hardware device (or target device), or a set of devices. In some cases, one image can be used across a wide range of devices. For example, the amd64 image is for all 64-bit x86 architecture machines (including virtual machines). The arm64 image is for all 64-bit ARM machines that support booting a generic image using UEFI.
fbx-all and fbx-tasks are special metapackages, both built from a single source package named debian-fbx. They are related to tasksel, a program that displays a curated list of packages that can be installed, organized by interest area. Debian blends typically provide task files to list their relevant applications in tasksel. fbx-tasks only installs the tasks for FreedomBox (without actually installing FreedomBox). fbx-all goes one step further and also installs freedombox itself. In general, FreedomBox users won’t need to interact with these two packages.
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