
Debian 10.3 - annadane
https://www.debian.org/News/2020/20200208
======
teddyh
Please note: Starting with Debian 7, the minor number is not part of the
Debian release number, and numbers with a minor component like 9.4 or 9.7 now
indicate a _point_ release. Basically, only security updates and major bug
fixes, with new updated installation media images. This, 10.3, is _not_ a new
major release of Debian.

~~~
derefr
"Debian 10 Service Pack 3."

------
susam
Did you know that Debian releases are named after characters from the Toy
Story films? I began using it with Debian 4 (Etch) in 2007. It was named after
Etch A Sketch[1], one of Andy's toys. The latest release, Debian 10 (Buster),
is named after Andy's pet puppy[2].

The name Debian itself is a portmanteau of the names Ian Murdock (the creator
of Debian) and Debra Lynn (his then-girlfriend, later ex-wife). As a result,
this name has been called _a curiously personal name for such a community-
oriented project_.[3]

I was using Fedora and Ubuntu in 2007 when a member of a local Linux User
Group (LUG) introduced me to Debian. Its simplicity and elegance, its vast
package repository, and its stability and robustness made me an ardent user of
this distribution pretty quickly. Thirteen years later, I still use Debian on
my laptops, Linode servers, and virtual machines. I run my personal website[4]
on Debian too. I have got so used to "apt-get install" and the large number of
tools available in the Debian repositories that I keep a Debian VM or a remote
shell handy when I am working on a non-Debian system. Over these years, I have
gradually moved from GNOME 2 to GNOME 3 and then to Xfce 4. It really helps
that Debian provides an installation CD with Xfce as the default[5]. In case
anyone is interested, I have documented and shared my Debian setup notes on
GitHub[6].

[1]:
[https://pixar.fandom.com/wiki/Etch_A_Sketch](https://pixar.fandom.com/wiki/Etch_A_Sketch)

[2]:
[https://pixar.fandom.com/wiki/Buster](https://pixar.fandom.com/wiki/Buster)

[3]:
[https://archive.org/download/lud098mag/LU%26D098%20-%20Andro...](https://archive.org/download/lud098mag/LU%26D098%20-%20Android%20Tablet%20Super-
Test.pdf)

[4]: [https://susam.in/](https://susam.in/)

[5]: [https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/amd64/iso-
cd/#i...](https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/amd64/iso-
cd/#indexlist)

[6]: [https://github.com/susam/dotfiles/blob/master/docs/debian-
se...](https://github.com/susam/dotfiles/blob/master/docs/debian-setup.md)

~~~
malkia
From Ian Murdock's wikipedia page, the debian's founder: "He named Debian
after his then-girlfriend (later wife) Debra Lynn, and himself (Deb and
Ian).[3] They later married, had three children, and divorced in January
2008.[4]"

~~~
dehrmann
Sadly, Ian committed suicide in late 2015. It's great to see that the distro
is still going strong.

I remember back around 2005, I missed meeting him by a ~week. My college Linux
users group was having a birthday party for Debian, and Ian was an alumnus of
that school, so he was going to attend. It was right before the semester
started, so I was out of town.

------
jlgaddis
That would explain why my PXE installs broke yet again (with that oh so
familiar error message about a mismatch between the kernel and modules
versions)!

Fortunately, it only takes a minute to grab the latest _mini.iso_ , mount it,
grab the kernel and initial ramdisk images (and "cat" the non-free/unofficial
firmware to the end of the ramdisk), push 'em up to the TFTP server, and be
right back in business.

~~~
mkesper
This happens every time a new kernel is pushed out (security fixes...).
Debian's suggested way is to use the debian-installer-netboot packages for
updating, e.g. [https://packages.debian.org/buster/debian-
installer-10-netbo...](https://packages.debian.org/buster/debian-
installer-10-netboot-amd64)

~~~
jlgaddis
Yep, but the TFTP server doesn't run Debian so this is the easiest "solution"
for me.

When it does break, it literally takes less than five minutes to get it
working again. Looks like I'd been using the previous kernel and initramfs
since 2019-09-05 and, well, I can deal with spending five minutes on an issue
once every five months -- especially considering all the time that it _saves
me_!

(At one point, I insisted -- for some unknown reason! -- on using the weekly
"unstable" images so the breakage was much, much more frequent. Fortunately
for my sanity, I finally gave up and went back to just using the latest
"stable" mini.iso.)

