Although Murdock's parents were both from Southern Indiana,[2] he was born in Konstanz, West Germany, on April 28, 1973, where his father was pursuing postdoctoral research.

The family returned to the United States in 1975, and Murdock grew up in Lafayette, Indiana, beginning in 1977 when his father became a professor of entomology at Purdue University.

Murdock conceived Debian as a Linux distribution that embraced open design, contributions, and support from the free software community.

Murdock left the Linux Foundation to join Sun Microsystems in March 2007[7] to lead Project Indiana, which he described as "taking the lesson that Linux has brought to the operating system and providing that for Solaris", making a full OpenSolaris distribution with GNOME and userland tools from GNU plus a network-based package management system.

[25][26] The autopsy report noted extensive bruise marks found on Murdock's body, and a medical history of alcohol abuse and psychological disorders; namely Asperger syndrome.