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Comment by toyg | Hacker News Reader

My first release was Potato. I still remember downloading so many (3? 6?) CDs...

God, I feel old.

I don't use Debian much these days, certainly not as a desktop, but it will forever be the "real" Linux distribution in my heart. Without the ongoing work of umpteen Debian package managers, you wouldn't have Ubuntu (and all its humongous downstream), Knoppix, and so on.

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I started out with... Rex I think. Or maybe Buzz? I kept the CD's out of nostalgia for a while, but may have finally got rid of them. I liked it so much that, despite not having a lot of skills, I signed up to help, and packaged up a few things. Debian was an awesome learning experience, and a great "escalator" in that I came in with not a lot of knowledge, and by the time I left, knew a whole lot more about a variety of things. I know I'm not the only one for whom it was such a formative experience.

My first Linux experience was downloading Slackware over a slow modem line (I want to say 14.4, but it was a while ago) onto floppies.

I spent about a week downloading perhaps 7 CDs for Woody (I guess it would have been 2002). I'm fairly sure I never actually installed packages from most of the CDs.

IIRC most of the x86 packages were on disc 1 and 3. I don't think I've ever touched the rest.

People can elect to install a package called "popularity-contest", which reports what packages you've installed to a central server. At release, the most popular packages are put on the first discs.

Each set of discs is for one architecture only.

When I first installed Woody, I didn't know that you could "apt-get" from the net. I don't remember ever using any of the CDs but 1, but I still have all seven for nostalgic purposes :3

I downloaded all 7 CDs for Woody, but didn't actually know how to burn a CD from an ISO, so I ended up with 7 coasters. I figured out my mistake and tried again the next week, but this time I picked a distro that only needed one CD: Ubuntu (Hoary). Never managed to get back to straight Debian since then.

You were lucky.

I had to install my first Debian hit (1.1 / buzz) via recycled floppies downloaded over a 33.6k dialup.

There is not a single time at my life since where I haven't had a Debian installation somewhere since (currently have 46 machines running it at my command).

I shyed away from Debian initially, as I had a bad experience with Knoppix on my hardware (though it did pique my interest.) However I do remember that Fedora Core 3 came on 4 CDs though. That was the very early 2000s.

I still remember when Fedora moved to DVDs. I was quite frustrated because I didn't have a DVD burner at the time. Almost 13 years later and my distro of choice fits on a single CD-R; I guess I've come full circle.

The first Debian "release" I installed was called "Slink-and-a-half." It was Slink with some important Potato packages backported by VA Linux.

I quickly upgraded it using dist-upgrade to unstable, which was potato at the time (testing didn't exist yet).

I built "slink and a half" and I'm lying in a tent in a field in Switzerland after the main Debian b-day party, bonfire, triple rainbow (no kidding!), etc. Wave!

I assume "joeyh" stands for Joey Hess, a name I recognize from seeing it many, many times over the years. :) I didn't know you did slink-and-a-half though.

Thanks for all your hard work, and especially for introducing me to Debian. Have a wonderful Debian birthday!

I think potato was six CDs.

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