Sean "shaleh" Perry and Joey Hess gave a talk about [debian]*.
<Andy's paraphrase, with apologies to Sean and Joey>
[Debian]* is a fully contributed distribution. Meaning, everything was done by people who use
(and need) their stuff everyday. People contribute software that they wrote because they can. All Free software
Every software package is somebody's baby(or pet project). Sean talked about the deb packaging system
[
dpkg]* and the steps it takes to install that deb on your system. A deb (by the way) is the debian package, like
a RedHat rpm. Joey talked about
[
alien]*(the famous rpm to deb converter, Alien converts amoung 4 package formats, which means it
can actually do 12 types of foo -> bar conversions)
and about debconf. [Debconf]* is
a 'standard' way to automate part of the debian install process.
</end paraphrase>
Among the most notable quotes:
" Debian in Open Source done the Open Source way. "
" [Corel]* has given nothing back to debian."
" [LinuxCentral]* has always come through for Debian."
Debian is designed to be installed and updated/upgraded from the web. Using the apt tools, apt-get, apt-update,
and apt-upgrade you can maintain your system at will. (No searching for the rpm!) There was talk about burning your
own debian CD. Here is that link to [cdimage.debian.org]*. With this link you can burn your
own debian CD with the current build! You can buy Debian T-Shirts at [Copy Left]*
During the break and after the meeting:
There was discussion about boot disks, VA and Viao's, GPL, and genetics(at the little table).
There were 25 people at the meeting. No rain!
Links:
[Debian]* the main Debian site.
[Debian Package Search]*
[Debconf]*
[Debian Bugtrack]*
[Debian Weekly News]*