Brand-new Linux release, which I'm calling the Debian Linux Release (1993)
wiki.debian.org
wiki.debian.org
Debian changed all that. Local, top quality documentation. A community. Packages that had been hand crafted to work like the rest of the system. The friction disappeared and let me move freely around the OS discovering things. Imagine walking around LA and then someone gives you a car and a map — that was the kind of difference in quality of experience it gave me.
potato worked. woody felt like the future. I ran it for years on my iBook G3 (which one of the DDs helped me set up.) To this day, “sarge” still feels like the ultimate next gen, so it’s funny to see it is actually pretty old. To me, sarge means “futuristic out of touch thing” because I waited for it for so long.
Thank you all so much.
(my old memory may be failing: it may have been 1.2 then 1.3 and not 1.1 then 1.2)
It was hard to get Linux distro for some of us back then: dial-up at best and otherwise we'd buy magazines or books that'd come with a Linux CD.
I've basically been using Debian and derivatives since forever. Did a short stint with Red Hat and Fedora back in the days but came back to Debian.
Before Debian I was using Slackware.
And as you said: thanks so much to everyone who worked on Debian!
Debian just felt so much more "right" to me than Redhat did back then, and I never really went back to the Redhat side of the fence. This was despite Debian having way less third party support for anything back then - it wasn't really until Ubuntu took off that Debian (by extension) felt secure. Up until then, I always had a nagging feeling that the Redhat ecosystem would completely take over, and I would yet again have picked/preferred the wrong horse in the technology world.
A big thank you to all the Debian devs/maintainers over the years.
Back then data sharing was so good. Despite the now present security threats in a more weaponized net, this even beats the most convenient drag&drop sharing site.
> Debian will contain the most up-to-date of everything.
Ironic that today it is the dependable system. Still flexible enough for development, but I guess priorities have changed.
Debian is my favorite distro, it just always works for me. The author seemed to have a tragic life and made many stops at different companies, would have been interesting to hear his reaction to the development of Debian. I don't know if he was still an active developer, Debian had many, many project leaders as far as I know.
According to Wikipedia he died in 2015:
When Debian's APT network package manager happened, that was pretty new and unusual. Imagine hearing about a package, typing a shell command, and Debian probably had the package, and it was installing. (When I was using Red Hat before Debian, there was a set of Web sites that I'd have to use to find packages, in a way that now seems naive and reckless: "https://www.neilvandyke.org/lab-linux-1999/#software".)
The package ecosystem is more mature now, and it turns out that Debian Stable almost always has what I need, so I still get the APT experience. (I even got the closed Nvidia CUDA stack from Debian Stable `non-free` repos, the other day, and it just worked. Maybe a little too easily and well, but that's another matter.)
At times it's missing something I want but usually Debian stable is all I need. I don't use unstable or backports: typically I either use Debian stable or I compile from source (like Emacs).
Last little hiccup recently is the lack of support for JPEG XL in the latest ImageMagick shipped with Debian stable (if I'm not mistaken), so I'd need to compile it from source (haven't done it yet but it's on my todo list: I want to recompile "losslessly" all my JPG to JPEG XL).
I think a lot of people who came to Linux later don't fully realise how revolutionary apt was back then.
I can still remember the pain of manually downloading rpms only to find it needed another one installed first or wasn't version compatible with something else etc.
They tried, I guess.
I recently had to reinstall Win11. I don't use it, but I needed to keep it around.
Windows Update does not update packages from the Windows Store, or vice versa.
Aside from the dozens of external driver packages you need, and even using Ninite to get a basic set of working apps, you still need 2 totally separate tools to update Windows.
It says a lot about how bad Linux on the desktop still is today that some poor misled fools still think that Win11 plus WSL2 is a better Linux than Linux.
Can Windows install the Visual C++ runtimes yet?
To this day, I still don’t quite get why so much of #linux was still using Red Hat at the time. Nat, miguel, the GNOME guys; the kernel guys; the storage guys.
Oh I remember rpmfind.net (which still exists!)
Testing is pretty stable for something named "testing" and unstable is remarkably stable for something called stable. Well, except that one month every 2 years after release where all that was frozen for release gets unfrozen..
And it being stable is not only important feature. The upgrades just work, better than in any other distro I tested (unless you make frankendebian but even then surprisingly often it also "just works". Slap unattended-upgrades package with some settings and you can basically forget it if it is just some service
How many people installed debian stable and bounced off because all the packages were quite old?
Maybe just call it "next" instead of testing ?
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softlanding_Linux_System
Edit: corrected history of their relationship
I don't know that dpkg was the first such upgrade system but it definitely still is one of the best. And continues to be, many later imitators are not nearly as effective. A key part of that is all the work done in packaging so that the packages are maintainable and upgradeable, of course.
EDIT: dselect was developed at the same time as dpkg and was initially considered a part of it, so in that sense it was possible to upgrade a system by using just dpkg: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dselect
Ultimately, the conclusion I drew from my research was that Bogus Linux[2] (which is still available, but no longer maintained) was the first distribution with a fully functional, system-wide binary package manager, but that Perl might have a had a functional package manager limited to Perl libraries in development or even in use by some in 1993 too.
[1]: https://framatube.org/w/uubjKne6swPQpJWiQLfqxd
[2]: https://bogus.org/
I assume the general idea is older, going back to at least the 70s and minicomputers or the like.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/oldlinuxdistributionarchive...
That of course if packages are done well, but Debian organization process so far have been very good on quality. Different song with 3rd party packages of course...
Started with Mandrake (now Mandriva), Red Hat 6 (NOT RHEL) that I got with some book, then Storm Linux that eventually got me into Debian.
The thing worth nothing back then is that if you wanted to say, install a package with dependencies, you could do that in installer of Red Hat or Mandrake, but tools in the OS didn't allow for that, yum only happened in 2002. So the first shock with Debian derivative was that I could just tell it to install package and it will find the deps. And it could uninstall those deps too! And UPGRADE WORKED!
After Mandrake/Red Hat it was like a miracle. I also liked the fact Debian kept it "as vanilla as possible while still playing nice with rest of the packages, instead of... whatever the fuck RHEL was doing (without exaggeration we thousands lines of code of fixes for stuff in RHEL5/6... that just went away when we moved to Debian as there it worked).
Wonderful distro, can't recommend it enough, especially on servers, slap unattended-upgrades on it and can basically forget it's there.
Hasn't aged too well, I suppose.
Arch only has rolling release mode so everyone is using the latest (thus any potential issue in Arch will affect bigger % of Arch users) while Debian has stable and testing and I was wondering if that'd make Sid less stable for practical use (since "it's not stable").
I don't want to start a distro war here, just wondering about some anecdata of actual distro users.
And packages are tested across releases, enabling one to dist-upgrade to a new version of the system easily. I think it's piuparts that does this job of testing packages among themselves too.
In preparation for a new stable release, it goes through what is effectively a package freeze. Maintainers are discouraged from updating packages in Sid in order to focus on the new release. So almost no new updates are uploaded to the repositories until Stable is finally out.
Between testing/sid/experimental you also got the choice of running "somewhat stable" vs "bleeding edge"; I'd usually stick to testing (except around the freeze leading up to a release).
For most software, the testing version gives you relatively latest stuff. But that doesn't mean every software can advertise itself as being up-to-date.
For debian specifically, I don't think they recommend using the testing version unless you're a Debian contributor/tester.
I've tried using Sid (desktop) in the past, but ran into several version issues while installing through apt. Didn't try much to debug, and switched to stable. Been a happy user since!
* Experimental
* Unstable/Sid
* Testing
It all depends on what your definition of up to date is.
https://www.cs.purdue.edu/news/articles/2003/debian-birthday...
And now it's 25 years later.
> Yes, that’s an actual scanned printout of the Debian announcement. I received such an overwhelming number of responses I had to print them out to avoid filling my 500 kilobyte (!) disk quota on the student Sequent Symmetry.
It took me a moment to realize he meant a version of X for S3 cards. In the meantime, my brain was trying to imagine an X server running from an AWS bucket...
twitch
clocks so bad the screen would swim at 1024x768.
As for those old "Win modems" back in the day...that's a different story.
I don't recall using this first release, I was probably still on SLS or something then, and I believe I briefly played with RedHat... But I did use it maybe a year or two later, and haven't stopped (okay, sometimes I use Ubuntu, shh).
APT didn't appear until Debian 2.1 "Slink" in 1999.
I remember Debian coming out then too, but forever reason I went with Slackware (I think) as my very first install. My brain is all fuzzy now.
I just need something that will run Docker and will support my NUC's hardware well. Does anyone have any recommendations?
Debian won't have snaps unless you install them, and they're including firmware blobs in the default release now. If you really need a recenter Docker, you can install it from the Docker website instead of apt.
Debian stable will just keep on ticking and refuse to surprise you.
Debian is currently on version 12, named Bookworm. If you install the stable version (the default option, which is similar to an Ubuntu LTS; I highly recommend it unless you know you need otherwise, and it's easy to change to testing or unstable in an existing install) it'll EOL in June 2026.
EDIT: One last question, does this include something like Ubuntu's fwmgr? After my Samsung SSD shipping with a critical bug that fwupd silently upgraded me away from, that's something I'm really looking for in an OS.
LVFS[1] firmware updates are also available through GUI applications (GNOME Software and KDE Discover) provided by desktop environments.
I haven't looked back since; Debian's been my desktop since 2011 :)
No plan survives contact with the enemy.
police reported finding him dead of suicide the day after he pledged to spend his life opposing police brutality like what he'd just experienced
(after, it must be said, threatening suicide that day as well)
I noticed it's more common to get that retort if the victim is black and/or poor.
If the victim is a middle class white American, you don't hear that.
Plainclothes officers acted like thugs/thieves, and then beat him up, and nearly murdered him. After that they charged him with an array of federal criminal offenses (including resisting arrest, assaulting them (the police), etc). This went all the way to a federal jury trial (which defendants rarely win), which he did win. The amount of emotional psychological trauma this must have caused is inexcusable. There's more details here: https://ij.org/case/king-v-brownback/ – quote:
> Worse still, Kent County, Michigan, prosecutors refused to drop the charges. Instead, after James rejected a plea offer, prosecutors subjected him to a criminal trial. Thankfully, a jury acquitted James of all charges. If James had been convicted or pleaded guilty, he could have faced decades in prison, and it would have been nearly impossible for him to sue the officers and hold them to account for their actions that violated his constitutional rights.
Autopsy reveals Debian founder committed suicide (theregister.co.uk) [July 7, 2016] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12050263
From the first comment [0] on that discussion: "They found chlordiazepoxide, diazepam, temazepam, and oxazepam in his bloodstream, which could have had some terrible interactions with alcohol. This sounds more to me like a drug overdose that caused a psychological episode than just the alcohol-fueled suicide they make it out to be."
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12050481
"Chlordiazepoxide, trade name Librium among others, is a sedative and hypnotic medication of the benzodiazepine class" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlordiazepoxide
"Diazepam, first marketed as Valium, is a medicine of the benzodiazepine family that acts as an anxiolytic." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diazepam
"Temazepam (sold under the brand names Restoril among others) is a medication of the benzodiazepine class which is generally used to treat severe or debilitating insomnia." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temazepam
"Oxazepam is a short-to-intermediate-acting benzodiazepine." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxazepam
That's four benzo's. The whole class of drug is known to be degenerative: they perfectly treat anxiety for 2-3 weeks, then you need to up the dose just to feel normal. Looks like Ian was on a benzo spiral.
The anxiety tragedy is that there used to be a very safe GABA supplement, GHB, in supplement stores, but this supplement got scheduled because it's also useful as a date-rape drug. GABA itself doesn't cross the blood-brain barrier, but GHB does. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma-Hydroxybutyric_acid
Allopathic psychiatry is an obsolete tragedy: https://www.madinamerica.com/2022/02/malignant-gooderism/
(minor edits)
psychiatric drugs can have surprising effects, but generally the terrible interaction benzodiazepines have with alcohol is that they send people into a potentially fatal coma, rather than causing suicide attempts or psychotic episodes
the hangover, though...
withdrawal from ghb doesn't sound like a picnic either, often including delirium
that blog post is pretty appalling; the author admits to intentionally submitting his 'friend' to alcohol withdrawal. doesn't he know delirium tremens routinely causes permanent brain damage
My friend ran out of alcohol - we were not aware of how much she was drinking. She lived with her mother at the time - her mother & aunt called the mental health crisis team on the first day of alcohol withdrawal. She was taken to the hospital. I think she was likely tranquilized with haloperidol. This is not an appropriate treatment for alcohol withdrawal, but it's reasonable under the psychiatric standard of care.
The physiology of psychosis is now fully described, so there's no need to use haloperidol as a palliative 'anti-psychotic' anymore.
Someone responded to my comment yesterday [0] to mention pimavanserin, an antipsychotic that works as an anti-serotonin drug (rather than an anti-dopamine drug).
[0] my comment from yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37136792
delirium tremens can induce psychosis but while that's pretty unfun it's usually less crucial to interrupt the psychosis than the neural damage
The essential feature of alcoholism is that the sufferers have broken metabolisms, and they find alcohol provides the calories they need to run their brains and bodies: https://twitter.com/JamesKnochel/status/1667570759034888192
Carbohydrates and protein provide 4 calories/gram, fats provide 9 calories/gram. Alcohol provides 7 calories/gram. Alcoholics train their nervous system to run on acetate, one of the breakdown products of ethanol: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14085230
Rather than tranquilizing patients with haldol, how can the withdrawal patient's nervous system be fed?
A social worker I knew said one way to help with alcohol withdrawal is to provide a lot of sugar. The potassium in orange juice allows the body to use the sugar without having to release insulin. Other juices have less potassium, but would also be good.
I'm aware of some other gentle interventions too. Anything's better than inducing agony with haloperidol.
(of course, as i said above, psychiatric drugs can have a lot of surprising effects)
i'm skeptical of the metabolic claims in your comment
> if you read the autopsy report there are a variety of injuries that you'd have to try pretty hard to inflict on yourself, but are absolutely consistent with being beaten and thrown to the ground, and then having someone dead-drop knee-first into your back.
And having a significant amount of alcohol + anti-depression/anti-anxiety drugs in his system.
And a day after he was arrested (twice) for drunkenly banging on a neighbor's door.
Perfectly illustrates how even serving tiny static files really is hard these days.
>?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=Debian-announcement-1993.txt
Perhaps that's why. There's some dynamic script duplicating the functionality of HTTP GET.