Distribution quotes of the week [LWN.net]

NOBODY expects the Debian acquisition!

Debian's reached the age of 22
I wish I could be there with you
In Heidelberg, fair German city
To share, in person, this my ditty

...

Free software, arguments, warmth, good cheer
Too soon all over 'til next year
All of the best are there / on 'Net
Here's hope that it's the best Debconf yet

-- Andrew Cater

Once I got over the thrill of being the “superuser,” the unspeakable power I had previously seen only behind plate glass, I became enraptured not so much by Linux itself as by the process in which it had been created—hundreds of people hacking away at their own little corner of the system and using the Internet to swap code, slowly but surely making the system better with each change—and set out to make my own contribution to the growing community, a new distribution called Debian that would be easier to use and more robust because it would be built and maintained collaboratively by its users, much like Linux.

-- Ian Murdock

We do work that is important and often unpaid. We tend to have deep technical skills but exercise them in huge communities where interpersonal issues become magnified. We are activists and artists and architects all at once. We're changing the world in ways that are often unnoticed not only by the public, but by ourselves. This is true of the entire FOSS world, but it seems especially true of Gentoo.

-- Rich Freeman

to post comments

Distribution quotes of the week

Posted Aug 28, 2015 0:19 UTC (Fri) by gerdesj (subscriber, #5446) [Link] (3 responses)

-ian said:

"Inspired, I bought a box of thirty floppy diskettes and began the slow process of downloading Linux to the floppies from a PC lab in the Krannert building, though it would be another month before I could afford an actual computer on which to install it. Finally, I could wait no longer, and Jason and I found an unlocked computer lab in one of the dorms containing a single PC, and in the middle of the night one evening in February, we proceeded to install Linux on that lab PC. I still occasionally wonder what the unfortunate student first to the lab the next morning must have thought."

I have a similar story but it involves a company's PC a year or two later than Mr M's experience. Anyone else?

Distribution quotes of the week

Posted Aug 28, 2015 13:13 UTC (Fri) by madscientist (subscriber, #16861) [Link] (2 responses)

Sure, I had very similar experiences to Ian in many ways, including learning to program by typing in BASIC games from books into a mainframe computer, until my father bought a TRS-80 Model I.

And I also initially got my installs of Linux via 30+ floppies. In my case I downloaded and copied them at work where I was using a SunOS workstation. This led to the only time I've ever made a mistake that completely trashed an entire system requiring it to be reloaded from scratch: instead of dd'ing to /dev/fd0 I accidentally dd'd to /dev/sd0 ... !

Distribution quotes of the week

Posted Aug 28, 2015 21:03 UTC (Fri) by gerdesj (subscriber, #5446) [Link] (1 responses)

"instead of dd'ing to /dev/fd0 I accidentally dd'd to /dev/sd0 ... !"

A classic! but at least it was an early lesson. I know someone who discovered that .. is a directory entry in the days before rm ignored them. I myself made an application share for 4000 people vanish for a while (thank $DEITY for Novell's salvage and the fastest script I ever wrote to get recursion)

There's a lot to be said for a GUI when formatting USB sticks and writing ISOs and such. However I'd be willing to bet that 100% bar a rounding error of readers here use the command line for that. It's just so quick and convenient and you have the history buffer etc and the frisson of excitement as you hit enter wondering if your eyes deceived you and like your anecdote, consign your hard disc's content to oblivion.

Did you suddenly get a desire to learn all about backup systems shortly after that episode 8)

Distribution quotes of the week

Posted Aug 28, 2015 22:41 UTC (Fri) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

Here's another one: http://liw.fi/linux-anecdotes/

> At one point, Linus had implemented device files in /dev, and wanted to dial up the university computer and debug his terminal emulation code again. So he starts his terminal emulator program and tells it to use /dev/hda. That should have been /dev/ttyS1. Oops. Now his master boot record started with "ATDT" and the university modem pool phone number. I think he implemented permission checking the following day.