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apt-get install debian-wizard
Personal blog · raphaelhertzog.comprogrammingsystems
apt-get install debian-wizard is a personal blog at raphaelhertzog.com about programming and systems. Since 2010, 22 different Hacker News readers have linked it 27 times, most often “Challenging Times for Freexian”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-08-26, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (12) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Posts by Raphael Hertzog about Debian, including reports on Freexian-funded Debian LTS work, package config file handling, and Debian governance. HN readers cite them for Debian context.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 12 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Insider infos, master your Debian/Ubuntu distribution
Most-linked posts?
- /2010/09/21/debian-conffile-configuration-file-managed-by-dpkg/4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2015-08-25
- /tag/Freexian+LTS/3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2016-08-01
- Challenging Times for Freexian2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-04-08
What Hacker News says?
There are some organisations/groups which seem to be effective in actually paying people. There is a group of Debian developers that collect funding and pay Debian developers/maintainers to maintain LTS for Debian releases: https://www.freexian.com/en/services/debian-lts.html https://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/Freexian+LTS/ The FreeBSD Foundation also hires developers to do actual work: https://www.freebsd.org/news/stat…
Comment linking /tag/Freexian+LTS/
on “Germany offers up to €30k for 6 months of working on OSS”Submitted Spotify migrate 5000 servers from Debian to Ubuntu as a story · 90 points
HN discussionIf you want to add the complexity of diff, you could do what Debian does[0][1]. [0] https://askubuntu.com/questions/365840/compare-differences-w... [1] https://raphaelhertzog.com/2010/09/21/debian-conffile-config...
Comment linking /2010/09/21/debian-conffile-configuration-file-managed-by-dpkg/
on “Fancy Zones, a tiling window manager”Submitted Official Debian/Ubuntu packages for Dropbox as a story · 6 points
HN discussionUbuntu uses aptitude and will prompt you when there are conflicting files and creates .dpkg-new for diffing: https://raphaelhertzog.com/2010/09/21/debian-conffile-config... Arch (pacman) creates .pacnew files for diffing later. RPM creates .rpmnew files, not sure if you're prompted or not at the time of updating.
Comment linking /2010/09/21/debian-conffile-configuration-file-managed-by-dpkg/
on “Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites”Submitted Looking back at 16 years of dpkg history with git and some figures as a story · 4 points
HN discussionPerhaps my framing of the situation was a little simplistic. To provide more facts, let me point out that the question of which init system should be default in Debian was first asked[0] to the tech ctte in October of 2013, however it was already clear the previous month that the GNOME packagers were trying to make systemd the required init system[1] in Debian (which had GNOME as its default graphical environment al…
Comment linking /2012/01/27/people-behind-debian-josselin-mouette-founder-of-the-debian-gnome-team/
on “Avoiding Complexity with Systemd”- xi · 2011-11-17
Submitted People Behind Debian: Mark Shuttleworth, Ubuntu’s founder as a story · 4 points
HN discussion Thanks for sharing. Didn't know they existed. Raphael's monthly reports[1] were very insightful and explains why equivalent billing rate seems anecdotally low. [1] https://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/Freexian+LTS/
Comment linking /tag/Freexian+LTS/
on “Handshake Donates $300k to Debian”Submitted Debian rolling distribution as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThere is a discussion that will be happening soon within Debian that you might like to participate in. The discussion was announced in a blog post, but hasn't happened yet, some of the related blog posts are worth reading: https://sunweavers.net/blog/node/129 https://raphaelhertzog.com/2021/03/30/challenging-times-for-... https://raphaelhertzog.com/2021/03/31/challenging-times-for-... https://raphaelhertzog.com/2021…
Comment linking /2021/04/02/challenging-times-for-freexian-4/
on “Jim Whitehurst to step down as IBM President”Submitted Challenging Times for Freexian as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSam Hartman is an extremely competent, blind developer. http://raphaelhertzog.com/2011/06/24/people-behin-debian-sam...
Comment linking /2011/06/24/people-behin-debian-sam-hartman-kerberos-package-maintainer/
on “Ask HN: Anyone using a “no hands” setup for programming?”Submitted Challenging times for Freexian (3/4) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionAnother area where it may be taking off is Free and Open Source Software. See http://raphaelhertzog.com/flattr-foss/ ; dpkg is currently in the top 5 most flattrd things.
Comment linking /flattr-foss/
on “Flattr is now in open beta”Submitted Convince your company to contribute to Debian Long Term Support as a story · 2 points
HN discussionp.s. A somewhat similar but specialized arrangement https://www.freexian.com/en/services/debian-lts.html and monthly reports on level of support and work done https://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/Freexian+LTS/
Comment linking /tag/Freexian+LTS/
on “Crowd Hiring”Submitted People Behind Debian: Steve McIntyre, former Debian Project Leader as a story · 2 points
HN discussionFor those that might be confused, the actual vote page is http://www.debian.org/vote/2012/vote_002 and goes into detail about what is being voted on. I don't think Debian has a problem with diversity; as an example, the Debian Women group has been around since 2004: http://women.debian.org/home/ Maybe this is more about getting non-programmer/sysadmin types involved in Debian. (There's an interesting interview with…
Comment linking /2012/04/06/people-behind-debian-francesca-ciceri-member-of-debian-press-publicity-teams/
on “Debian Diversity Statement accepted”Submitted Raphaël Hertzog on how to pay Debian contributors as a story · 1 points
HN discussionExim4 as an MTA, and Dovecot as an IMAP Server. I particularly like Exim4's configuration on Debian. It provides IMHO very reasonable defaults, but allows overriding of most of these defaults using a mechanism similar to hooks. In that sense, the configuration is more like a framework. This allows me to easily add my own configuration, while also not touching the default configuration as shipped by the Maintainer (a…
Comment linking /2010/09/21/debian-conffile-configuration-file-managed-by-dpkg/
on “Ask HN: What are your/the best setups for running your own mail server?”Submitted How to start contributing to Debian? as a story · 1 points
HN discussion> Granted, my experience with DEB has mostly been limited to Ubuntu - so it could be that/Canonical. It is not a Canonical specificity, but it is overridable behavior. For the dpkg prompting on configuration file changes: https://raphaelhertzog.com/2010/09/21/debian-conffile-config... > You can also make those options permanent by creating /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/local: > Dpkg::Options { > "--force-confdef"; > "--force-…
Comment linking /2010/09/21/debian-conffile-configuration-file-managed-by-dpkg/
on “Rhino Linux is a rolling release Ubuntu-based distribution”Submitted Why a Debian package is more than a simple file archive as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
