Debian continues participating in Outreachy, and we're excited to announce that Debian has selected two interns for the Outreachy December 2024 - March 2025 round.

Patrick Noblet Appiah will work on Automatic Indi-3rd-party driver update, mentored by Thorsten Alteholz.

Divine Attah-Ohiemi will work on Making the Debian main website more attractive by switching to HuGo as site generator, mentored by Carsten Schoenert, Subin Siby and Thomas Lange.

Congratulations and welcome Patrick Noblet Appiah and Divine Attah-Ohiemi!

From the official website: Outreachy provides three-month internships for people from groups traditionally underrepresented in tech. Interns work remotely with mentors from Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) communities on projects ranging from programming, user experience, documentation, illustration and graphical design, to data science.

The Outreachy programme is possible in Debian thanks to the efforts of Debian developers and contributors who dedicate their free time to mentor students and outreach tasks, and the Software Freedom Conservancy's administrative support, as well as the continued support of Debian's donors, who provide funding for the internships.

Join us and help extend Debian! You can follow the work of the Outreachy interns reading their blogs (they are syndicated in Planet Debian), and chat with us in the #debian-outreach IRC channel and mailing list.

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

• Joachim Bauch (fancycode)
• Alexander Kjäll (capitol)
• Jan Mojžíš (janmojzis)
• Xiao Sheng Wen (atzlinux)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

• Alberto Bertogli
• Alexis Murzeau
• David Heilderberg
• Xiyue Deng
• Kathara Sasikumar
• Philippe Swartvagher

Congratulations!

You may have seen this toot announcing OpenStreetMap's migration to Debian on their infrastructure.

🚀 After 18 years on Ubuntu, we've upgraded the @openstreetmap servers to Debian 12 (Bookworm). 🌍 openstreetmap.org is now faster using Ruby 3.1. Onward to new mapping adventures! Thank you to the team for the smooth transition. #OpenStreetMap #Debian 🤓

We spoke with Grant Slater, the Senior Site Reliability Engineer for the OpenStreetMap Foundation. Grant shares:

Why did you choose Debian?

There is a large overlap between OpenStreetMap mappers and the Debian community. Debian also has excellent coverage of OpenStreetMap tools and utilities, which helped with the decision to switch to Debian.

The Debian package maintainers do an excellent job of maintaining their packages - e.g.: osm2pgsql, osmium-tool etc.

Part of our reason to move to Debian was to get closer to the maintainers of the packages that we depend on. Debian maintainers appear to be heavily invested in the software packages that they support and we see critical bugs get fixed.

What drove this decision to migrate?

OpenStreetMap.org is primarily run on actual physical hardware that our team manages. We attempt to squeeze as much performance from our systems as possible, with some services being particularly I/O bound. We ran into some severe I/O performance issues with kernels ~6.0 to < ~6.6 on systems with NVMe storage. This pushed us onto newer mainline kernels, which led us toward Debian. On Debian 12 we could simply install the backport kernel and the performance issues were solved.

How was the transition managed?

Thankfully we manage our server setup nearly completely with code. We also use Test Kitchen with inspec to test this infrastructure code. Tests run locally using Podman or Docker containers, but also run as part of our git code pipeline.

We added Debian as a test target platform and fixed up the infrastructure code until all the tests passed. The changes required were relatively small, simple package name or config filename changes mostly.

What was your timeline of transition?

In August 2024 we moved the www.openstreetmap.org Ruby on Rails servers across to Debian. We haven't yet finished moving everything across to Debian, but we will upgrade the rest when it makes sense. Some systems may wait until the next hardware upgrade cycle.

Our focus is to build a stable and reliable platform for OpenStreetMap mappers.

How has the transition from another Linux distribution to Debian gone?

We are still in the process of fully migrating between Linux distributions, but we can share that we recently moved our frontend servers to Debian 12 (from Ubuntu 22.04) which bumped the Ruby version from 3.0 to 3.1 which allowed us to also upgrade the version of Ruby on Rails that we use for www.openstreetmap.org.

We also changed our chef code for managing the network interfaces from using netplan (default in Ubuntu, made by Canonical) to directly using systemd-networkd to manage the network interfaces, to allow commonality between how we manage the interfaces in Ubuntu and our upcoming Debian systems. Over the years we've standardised our networking setup to use 802.3ad bonded interfaces for redundancy, with VLANs to segment traffic; this setup worked well with systemd-networkd.

We use netboot.xyz for PXE networking booting OS installers for our systems and use IPMI for the out-of-band management. We remotely re-installed a test server to Debian 12, and fixed a few minor issues missed by our chef tests. We were pleasantly surprised how smoothly the migration to Debian went.

In a few limited cases we've used Debian Backports for a few packages where we've absolutely had to have a newer feature. The Debian package maintainers are fantastic.

What definitely helped us is our code is libre/free/open-source, with most of the core OpenStreetMap software like osm2pgsql already in Debian and well packaged.

In some cases we do run pre-release or custom patches of OpenStreetMap software; with Ubuntu we used launchpad.net's Personal Package Archives (PPA) to build and host deb repositories for these custom packages. We were initially perplexed by the myriad of options in Debian (see this list - eeek!), but received some helpful guidance from a Debian contributor and we now manage our own deb repository using aptly. For the moment we're currently building deb packages locally and pushing to aptly; ideally we'd like to replace this with a git driven pipeline for building the custom packages in the future.

Thank you for taking the time to share your experience with us.

Thank you to all the awesome people who make Debian!

We are overjoyed to share this in-use case which demonstrates our commitment to stability, development, and long term support. Debian offers users, companies, and organisations the ability to plan, scope, develop, and maintain at their own pace using a rock solid stable Linux distribution with responsive developers.

Does your organisation use Debian in some capacity? We would love to hear about it and your use of 'The Universal Operating System'. Reach out to us at Press@debian.org - we would be happy to add your organisation to our 'Who's Using Debian?' page and to share your story!

About Debian

The Debian Project is an association of individuals who have made common cause to create a free operating system. This operating system that we have created is called Debian. Installers and images, such as live systems, offline installers for systems without a network connection, installers for other CPU architectures, or cloud instances, can be found at Getting Debian.

Dear Debian community,

this is Bits from DPL for October. In addition to a summary of my recent activities, I aim to include newsworthy developments within Debian that might be of interest to the broader community. I believe this provides valuable insights and foster a sense of connection across our diverse projects. Also, I welcome your feedback on the format and focus of these Bits, as community input helps shape their value.

Ada Lovelace Day 2024

As outlined in my platform, I'm committed to increasing the diversity of Debian developers. I hope the recent article celebrating Ada Lovelace Day 2024–featuring interviews with women in Debian–will serve as an inspiring motivation for more women to join our community.

MiniDebConf Cambridge

This was my first time attending the MiniDebConf in Cambridge, hosted at the ARM building. I thoroughly enjoyed the welcoming atmosphere of both MiniDebCamp and MiniDebConf. It was wonderful to reconnect with people who hadn't made it to the last two DebConfs, and, as always, there was plenty of hacking, insightful discussions, and valuable learning.

If you missed the recent MiniDebConf, there's a great opportunity to attend the next one in Toulouse. It was recently decided to include a MiniDebCamp beforehand as well.

FTPmaster accepts MRs for DAK

At the recent MiniDebConf in Cambridge, I discussed potential enhancements for DAK to make life easier for both FTP Team members and developers. For those interested, the document "Hacking on DAK" provides guidance on setting up a local DAK instance and developing patches, which can be submitted as MRs.

As a perfectly random example of such improvements some older MR, "Add commands to accept/reject updates from a policy queue" might give you some inspiration.

At MiniDebConf, we compiled an initial list of features that could benefit both the FTP Team and the developer community. While I had preliminary discussions with the FTP Team about these items, not all ideas had consensus. I aim to open a detailed, public discussion to gather broader feedback and reach a consensus on which features to prioritize.

• Accept+Bug report

Sometimes, packages are rejected not because of DFSG-incompatible licenses but due to other issues that could be resolved within an existing package (as discussed in my DebConf23 BoF, "Chatting with ftpmasters"[1]). During the "Meet the ftpteam" BoF (Log/transcription of the BoF can be found here), for the moment until the MR gets accepted, a new option was proposed for FTP Team members reviewing packages in NEW:

Accept + Bug Report

• Binary name changes - for instance if done to experimental not via new

When binary package names change, currently the package must go through the NEW queue, which can delay the availability of updated libraries. Allowing such packages to bypass the queue could expedite this process. A configuration option to enable this bypass specifically for uploads to experimental may be useful, as it avoids requiring additional technical review for experimental uploads.

Previously, I believed the requirement for binary name changes to pass through NEW was due to a missing feature in DAK, possibly addressable via an MR. However, in discussions with the FTP Team, I learned this is a matter of team policy rather than technical limitation. I haven't found this policy documented, so it may be worth having a community discussion to clarify and reach consensus on how we want to handle binary name changes to get the MR sensibly designed.

• Remove dependency tree

When a developer requests the removal of a package – whether entirely or for specific architectures – RM bugs must be filed for the package itself as well as for each package depending on it. It would be beneficial if the dependency tree could be automatically resolved, allowing either:

a) the DAK removal tooling to remove the entire dependency tree
   after prompting the bug report author for confirmation, or

b) the system to auto-generate corresponding bug reports for all
   packages in the dependency tree.

The latter option might be better suited for implementation in an MR for reportbug. However, given the possibility of large-scale removals (for example, targeting specific architectures), having appropriate tooling for this would be very beneficial.

In my opinion the proposed DAK enhancements aim to support both FTP Team members and uploading developers. I'd be very pleased if these ideas spark constructive discussion and inspire volunteers to start working on them--possibly even preparing to join the FTP Team.

On the topic of ftpmasters: an ongoing discussion with SPI lawyers is currently reviewing the non-US agreement established 22 years ago. Ideally, this review will lead to a streamlined workflow for ftpmasters, removing certain hurdles that were originally put in place due to legal requirements, which were updated in 2021.

Contacting teams

My outreach efforts to Debian teams have slowed somewhat recently. However, I want to emphasize that anyone from a packaging team is more than welcome to reach out to me directly. My outreach emails aren't following any specific orders--just my own somewhat naïve view of Debian, which I'm eager to make more informed.

Recently, I received two very informative responses: one from the Qt/KDE Team, which thoughtfully compiled input from several team members into a shared document. The other was from the Rust Team, where I received three quick, helpful replies–one of which included an invitation to their upcoming team meeting.

Interesting readings on our mailing lists

I consider the following threads on our mailing list some interesting reading and would like to add some comments.

Sensible languages for younger contributors

Though the discussion on debian-devel about programming languages took place in September, I recently caught up with it. I strongly believe Debian must continue evolving to stay relevant for the future.

"Everything must change, so that everything can stay the same." -- Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, The Leopard

I encourage constructive discussions on integrating programming languages in our toolchain that support this evolution.

Concerns regarding the "Open Source AI Definition"

A recent thread on the debian-project list discussed the "Open Source AI Definition". This topic will impact Debian in the future, and we need to reach an informed decision. I'd be glad to see more perspectives in the discussions−particularly on finding a sensible consensus, understanding how FTP Team members view their delegated role, and considering whether their delegation might need adjustments for clarity on this issue.

Kind regards Andreas.

Ada Lovelace Day was celebrated on October 8 in 2024, and on this occasion, to celebrate and raise awareness of the contributions of women to the STEM fields we interviewed some of the women in Debian.

Here we share their thoughts, comments, and concerns with the hope of inspiring more women to become part of the Sciences, and of course, to work inside of Debian.

This article was simulcasted to the debian-women mail list.

Beatrice Torracca

1. Who are you?

I am Beatrice, I am Italian. Internet technology and everything computer-related is just a hobby for me, not my line of work or the subject of my academic studies. I have too many interests and too little time. I would like to do lots of things and at the same time I am too Oblomovian to do any.

2. How did you get introduced to Debian?

As a user I started using newsgroups when I had my first dialup connection and there was always talk about this strange thing called Linux. Since moving from DR DOS to Windows was a shock for me, feeling like I lost the control of my machine, I tried Linux with Debian Potato and I never strayed away from Debian since then for my personal equipment.

3. How long have you been into Debian?

Define "into". As a user... since Potato, too many years to count. As a contributor, a similar amount of time, since early 2000 I think. My first archived email about contributing to the translation of the description of Debian packages dates 2001.

4. Are you using Debian in your daily life? If yes, how?

Yes!! I use testing. I have it on my desktop PC at home and I have it on my laptop. The desktop is where I have a local IMAP server that fetches all the mails of my email accounts, and where I sync and back up all my data. On both I do day-to-day stuff (from email to online banking, from shopping to taxes), all forms of entertainment, a bit of work if I have to work from home (GNU R for statistics, LibreOffice... the usual suspects). At work I am required to have another OS, sadly, but I am working on setting up a Debian Live system to use there too. Plus if at work we start doing bioinformatics there might be a Linux machine in our future... I will of course suggest and hope for a Debian system.

5. Do you have any suggestions to improve women's participation in Debian?

This is a tough one. I am not sure. Maybe, more visibility for the women already in the Debian Project, and make the newcomers feel seen, valued and welcomed. A respectful and safe environment is key too, of course, but I think Debian made huge progress in that aspect with the Code of Conduct. I am a big fan of promoting diversity and inclusion; there is always room for improvement.

Ileana Dumitrescu (ildumi)

1. Who are you?

I am just a girl in the world who likes cats and packaging Free Software.

2. How did you get introduced to Debian?

I was tinkering with a computer running Debian a few years ago, and I decided to learn more about Free Software. After a search or two, I found Debian Women.

3. How long have you been into Debian?

I started looking into contributing to Debian in 2021. After contacting Debian Women, I received a lot of information and helpful advice on different ways I could contribute, and I decided package maintenance was the best fit for me. I eventually became a Debian Maintainer in 2023, and I continue to maintain a few packages in my spare time.

4. Are you using Debian in your daily life? If yes, how?

Yes, it is my favourite GNU/Linux operating system! I use it for email, chatting, browsing, packaging, etc.

5. Do you have any suggestions to improve women's participation in Debian?

The mailing list for Debian Women may attract more participation if it is utilized more. It is where I started, and I imagine participation would increase if it is more engaging.

Kathara Sasikumar (kathara)

1. Who are you?

I'm Kathara Sasikumar, 22 years old and a recent Debian user turned Maintainer from India. I try to become a creative person through sketching or playing guitar chords, but it doesn't work! xD

2. How did you get introduced to Debian?

When I first started college, I was that overly enthusiastic student who signed up for every club and volunteered for anything that crossed my path just like every other fresher.

But then, the pandemic hit, and like many, I hit a low point. COVID depression was real, and I was feeling pretty down. Around this time, the FOSS Club at my college suddenly became more active. My friends, knowing I had a love for free software, pushed me to join the club. They thought it might help me lift my spirits and get out of the slump I was in.

At first, I joined only out of peer pressure, but once I got involved, the club really took off. FOSS Club became more and more active during the pandemic, and I found myself spending more and more time with it.

A year later, we had the opportunity to host a MiniDebConf at our college. Where I got to meet a lot of Debian developers and maintainers, attending their talks and talking with them gave me a wider perspective on Debian, and I loved the Debian philosophy.

At that time, I had been distro hopping but never quite settled down. I occasionally used Debian but never stuck around. However, after the MiniDebConf, I found myself using Debian more consistently, and it truly connected with me. The community was incredibly warm and welcoming, which made all the difference.

3. How long have you been into Debian?

Now, I've been using Debian as my daily driver for about a year.

4. Are you using Debian in your daily life? If yes, how?

It has become my primary distro, and I use it every day for continuous learning and working on various software projects with free and open-source tools. Plus, I've recently become a Debian Maintainer (DM) and have taken on the responsibility of maintaining a few packages. I'm looking forward to contributing more to the Debian community 🙂

Rhonda D'Vine (rhonda)

1. Who are you?

My name is Rhonda, my pronouns are she/her, or per/pers. I'm 51 years old, working in IT.

2. How did you get introduced to Debian?

I was already looking into Linux because of university, first it was SuSE. And people played around with gtk. But when they packaged GNOME and it just didn't even install I looked for alternatives. A working colleague from back then gave me a CD of Debian. Though I couldn't install from it because Slink didn't recognize the pcmcia drive. I had to install it via floppy disks, but apart from that it was quite well done. And the early GNOME was working, so I never looked back. 🙂

3. How long have you been into Debian?

Even before I was more involved, a colleague asked me whether I could help with translating the release documentation. That was my first contribution to Debian, for the slink release in early 1999. And I was using some other software before on my SuSE systems, and I wanted to continue to use them on Debian obviously. So that's how I got involved with packaging in Debian. But I continued to help with translation work, for a long period of time I was almost the only person active for the German part of the website.

4. Are you using Debian in your daily life? If yes, how?

Being involved with Debian was a big part of the reason I got into my jobs since a long time now. I always worked with maintaining Debian (or Ubuntu) systems. Privately I run Debian on my laptop, with occasionally switching to Windows in dual boot when (rarely) needed.

5. Do you have any suggestions to improve women's participation in Debian?

There are factors that we can't influence, like that a lot of women are pushed into care work because patriarchal structures work that way, and don't have the time nor energy to invest a lot into other things. But we could learn to appreciate smaller contributions better, and not focus so much on the quantity of contributions. When we look at longer discussions on mailing lists, those that write more mails actually don't contribute more to the discussion, they often repeat themselves without adding more substance. Through working on our own discussion patterns this could create a more welcoming environment for a lot of people.

Sophie Brun (sophieb)

1. Who are you?

I'm a 44 years old French woman. I'm married and I have 2 sons.

2. How did you get introduced to Debian?

In 2004 my boyfriend (now my husband) installed Debian on my personal computer to introduce me to Debian. I knew almost nothing about Open Source. During my engineering studies, a professor mentioned the existence of Linux, Red Hat in particular, but without giving any details.

I learnt Debian by using and reading (in advance) The Debian Administrator's Handbook.

3. How long have you been into Debian?

I've been a user since 2004. But I only started contributing to Debian in 2015: I had quit my job and I wanted to work on something more meaningful. That's why I joined my husband in Freexian, his company. Unlike most people I think, I started contributing to Debian for my work. I only became a DD in 2021 under gentle social pressure and when I felt confident enough.

4. Are you using Debian in your daily life? If yes, how?

Of course I use Debian in my professional life for almost all the tasks: from administrative tasks to Debian packaging.

I also use Debian in my personal life. I have very basic needs: Firefox, LibreOffice, GnuCash and Rhythmbox are the main applications I need.

Sruthi Chandran (srud)

1. Who are you?

A feminist, a librarian turned Free Software advocate and a Debian Developer. Part of Debian Outreach team and DebConf Committee.

2. How did you get introduced to Debian?

I got introduced to the free software world and Debian through my husband. I attended many Debian events with him. During one such event, out of curiosity, I participated in a Debian packaging workshop. Just after that I visited a Tibetan community in India and they mentioned that there was no proper Tibetan font in GNU/Linux. Tibetan font was my first package in Debian.

3. How long have you been into Debian?

I have been contributing to Debian since 2016 and Debian Developer since 2019.

4. Are you using Debian in your daily life? If yes, how?

I haven't used any other distro on my laptop since I got introduced to Debian.

5. Do you have any suggestions to improve women's participation in Debian?

I was involved with actively mentoring newcomers to Debian since I started contributing myself. I specially work towards reducing the gender gap inside the Debian and Free Software community in general. In my experience, I believe that visibility of already existing women in the community will encourage more women to participate. Also I think we should reintroduce mentoring through debian-women.

Tássia Camões Araújo (tassia)

1. Who are you?

Tássia Camões Araújo, a Brazilian living in Canada. I'm a passionate learner who tries to push myself out of my comfort zone and always find something new to learn. I also love to mentor people on their learning journey. But I don't consider myself a typical geek. My challenge has always been to not get distracted by the next project before I finish the one I have in my hands. That said, I love being part of a community of geeks and feel empowered by it. I love Debian for its technical excellence, and it's always reassuring to know that someone is taking care of the things I don't like or can't do. When I'm not around computers, one of my favorite things is to feel the wind on my cheeks, usually while skating or riding a bike; I also love music, and I'm always singing a melody in my head.

2. How did you get introduced to Debian?

As a student, I was privileged to be introduced to FLOSS at the same time I was introduced to computer programming. My university could not afford to have labs in the usual proprietary software model, and what seemed like a limitation at the time turned out to be a great learning opportunity for me and my colleagues. I joined this student-led initiative to "liberate" our servers and build LTSP-based labs - where a single powerful computer could power a few dozen diskless thin clients. How revolutionary it was at the time! And what an achievement! From students to students, all using Debian. Most of that group became close friends; I've married one of them, and a few of them also found their way to Debian.

3. How long have you been into Debian?

I first used Debian in 2001, but my first real connection with the community was attending DebConf 2004. Since then, going to DebConfs has become a habit. It is that moment in the year when I reconnect with the global community and my motivation to contribute is boosted. And you know, in 20 years I've seen people become parents, grandparents, children grow up; we've had our own child and had the pleasure of introducing him to the community; we've mourned the loss of friends and healed together. I'd say Debian is like family, but not the kind you get at random once you're born, Debian is my family by choice.

4. Are you using Debian in your daily life? If yes, how?

These days I teach at Vanier College in Montréal. My favorite course to teach is UNIX, which I have the pleasure of teaching mostly using Debian. I try to inspire my students to discover Debian and other FLOSS projects, and we are happy to run a FLOSS club with participation from students, staff and alumni. I love to see these curious young minds put to the service of FLOSS. It is like recruiting soldiers for a good battle, and one that can change their lives, as it certainly did mine.

5. Do you have any suggestions to improve women's participation in Debian?

I think the most effective way to inspire other women is to give visibility to active women in our community. Speaking at conferences, publishing content, being vocal about what we do so that other women can see us and see themselves in those positions in the future. It's not easy, and I don't like being in the spotlight. It took me a long time to get comfortable with public speaking, so I can understand the struggle of those who don't want to expose themselves. But I believe that this space of vulnerability can open the way to new connections. It can inspire trust and ultimately motivate our next generation. It's with this in mind that I publish these lines.

Another point we can't neglect is that in Debian we work on a volunteer basis, and this in itself puts us at a great disadvantage. In our societies, women usually take a heavier load than their partners in terms of caretaking and other invisible tasks, so it is hard to afford the free time needed to volunteer. This is one of the reasons why I bring my son to the conferences I attend, and so far I have received all the support I need to attend DebConfs with him. It is a way to share the caregiving burden with our community - it takes a village to raise a child. Besides allowing us to participate, it also serves to show other women (and men) that you can have a family life and still contribute to Debian.

My feeling is that we are not doing super well in terms of diversity in Debian at the moment, but that should not discourage us at all. That's the way it is now, but that doesn't mean it will always be that way. I feel like we go through cycles. I remember times when we had many more active female contributors, and I'm confident that we can improve our ratio again in the future. In the meantime, I just try to keep going, do my part, attract those I can, reassure those who are too scared to come closer. Debian is a wonderful community, it is a family, and of course a family cannot do without us, the women.

These interviews were conducted via email exchanges in October, 2024. Thanks to all the wonderful women who participated in this interview. We really appreciate your contributions in Debian and to Free/Libre software.