4 ms·

Somewhat disappointed this isn't about installing and using Debian Linux 2.0 on a PC now 2 decades later, and comparing it to the experience of a modern Debian.

Somewhat disappointed this isn't about installing and using Debian Linux 2.0 on a PC now 2 decades later, and comparing it to the experience of a modern Debian. I'd even watch a video (does LGR know anything about Linux?).

ufo 7y ago
Another thing I am curious about is the section about system requirements. How much disk space would be necessary for a full installation of literally every possible package in Debian 10?
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  I've been installing Debian since rougly 1998, with separate partitions for most major filesystems. My last /usr partition was 20 GB, and that's no longer sufficient for a generous (though far from complete) Debian install. The last package count I made of unstable was over 70,000 distinct software packages. I think stable is well below that, though probably north of 40k. A "full" installation is not possible as many packages mutually conflict. Though it wouldn't surprise me if a maximal install of software alone would be well over 100 GB. Much of the growth has come in support libraries, especially internationalisation. For a while there was a package which would go through, post-install, and remove unneeded translations and charactersets.
  - ufo 7y ago
    Why is there such a big difference in the number of packages in stable and unstable? I always thought that stable was mostly just a snapshot of the testing branch, and that everything in unstable would make into testing before the freeze period.
    - dredmorbius 7y ago
      First, don't take my counts as gospel. .... lessee ... OK, the Debian 10 ("buster") release notes give "over 59,000 other packages" (in addition to a dozen or so listed), so it's about 10k that didn't make the stable release. https://www.debian.org/News/2019/20190706 https://www.debian.org/News/2019/20190706 Only software with no release-critical bugs is included in the release, and with 70k+ packages in total, it's not surprising that some (mostly more obscure / unmaintained / or recently developed, I'd suspect) don't make the release cut. Debian also makes a practice of splitting out source packages ("over 29,000") into release packages, along arbitrary divisions such as: core vs. additional / support packages, base and dev, debug (unstripped and debugging compiliation options left in), documentation, and increasingly, various language support. So a single upstream could conceivably result in numerous Debian releases. Development tools are especially prone to this, see Python, Perl, R, etc., as examples. This allows for modularlity and precision in package selection, smaller installations, and choices in performance vs. diagnostics (debug) options. Pared-down systems can be configured without documentation packages, a fat desktop can be configured with full docs and support. Incidentally, the integrated support and DWWW package (Debian-WWW project) make your system effectively self-documenting via a local webserver, which can be extremely helpful. Similarly, each installed package creates an entry in /usr/share/doc/<packagename>, without the idiotic version number Red Hat adds (frustrating the ability to link directly to package docs without knowing the specific version number). It's even possible to reconstruct the package set of a corrupted Debian system from that list: http://qref.sourceforge.net/Debian/reference/ch-package.en.html#s-recover-status http://qref.sourceforge.net/Debian/reference/ch-package.en.h... Public examples used to be easier to find, this one turns up searching "powered by dwww version": https://lists.ci.juneau.ak.us/dwww/ https://lists.ci.juneau.ak.us/dwww/
  - JNRowe 7y ago
    > The last package count I made of unstable was over 70,000 distinct software packages. I think stable is well below that, though probably north of 40k. For others, like me, interested in this you can grab a txt/JSON package list for mangling locally[1]. With the data I have grabbed it is 65k vs 57k. > Though it wouldn't surprise me if a maximal install of software alone would be well over 100 GB. A rough estimate[2] of just ``main`` on Buster: $ awk -F: '/^Installed-Size/ {print $2}' /var/lib/apt/lists/*buster_main* | numsum 272960149 1. https://packages.debian.org/stable/ https://packages.debian.org/stable/ - Scroll to the bottom for links 2. https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-controlfields.html#installed-size https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-controlfields.ht...
    - dredmorbius 7y ago
      That's installed size in kB, correct? So, 273 GB, more or less, for "main". "Well over 100 GB" ;-)
      - JNRowe 7y ago
        There is even talk on supporting packages that are larger than 10GB[1], so three or four hundred gigabytes might be passed quicker than we'd think... 1. https://lwn.net/Articles/789449/ https://lwn.net/Articles/789449/ - Gives a little information if you scan for "size"
    - muxator 7y ago
      Kudos for numsum! After so many years using Linux, I still missed that one. Thanks!

ufo 7y ago

Another thing I am curious about is the section about system requirements. How much disk space would be necessary for a full installation of literally every possible package in Debian 10?

dredmorbius 7y ago
I've been installing Debian since rougly 1998, with separate partitions for most major filesystems. My last /usr partition was 20 GB, and that's no longer sufficient for a generous (though far from complete) Debian install. The last package count I made of unstable was over 70,000 distinct software packages. I think stable is well below that, though probably north of 40k. A "full" installation is not possible as many packages mutually conflict. Though it wouldn't surprise me if a maximal install of software alone would be well over 100 GB. Much of the growth has come in support libraries, especially internationalisation. For a while there was a package which would go through, post-install, and remove unneeded translations and charactersets.
- ufo 7y ago
  Why is there such a big difference in the number of packages in stable and unstable? I always thought that stable was mostly just a snapshot of the testing branch, and that everything in unstable would make into testing before the freeze period.
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
    First, don't take my counts as gospel. .... lessee ... OK, the Debian 10 ("buster") release notes give "over 59,000 other packages" (in addition to a dozen or so listed), so it's about 10k that didn't make the stable release. https://www.debian.org/News/2019/20190706 https://www.debian.org/News/2019/20190706 Only software with no release-critical bugs is included in the release, and with 70k+ packages in total, it's not surprising that some (mostly more obscure / unmaintained / or recently developed, I'd suspect) don't make the release cut. Debian also makes a practice of splitting out source packages ("over 29,000") into release packages, along arbitrary divisions such as: core vs. additional / support packages, base and dev, debug (unstripped and debugging compiliation options left in), documentation, and increasingly, various language support. So a single upstream could conceivably result in numerous Debian releases. Development tools are especially prone to this, see Python, Perl, R, etc., as examples. This allows for modularlity and precision in package selection, smaller installations, and choices in performance vs. diagnostics (debug) options. Pared-down systems can be configured without documentation packages, a fat desktop can be configured with full docs and support. Incidentally, the integrated support and DWWW package (Debian-WWW project) make your system effectively self-documenting via a local webserver, which can be extremely helpful. Similarly, each installed package creates an entry in /usr/share/doc/<packagename>, without the idiotic version number Red Hat adds (frustrating the ability to link directly to package docs without knowing the specific version number). It's even possible to reconstruct the package set of a corrupted Debian system from that list: http://qref.sourceforge.net/Debian/reference/ch-package.en.html#s-recover-status http://qref.sourceforge.net/Debian/reference/ch-package.en.h... Public examples used to be easier to find, this one turns up searching "powered by dwww version": https://lists.ci.juneau.ak.us/dwww/ https://lists.ci.juneau.ak.us/dwww/
- JNRowe 7y ago
  > The last package count I made of unstable was over 70,000 distinct software packages. I think stable is well below that, though probably north of 40k. For others, like me, interested in this you can grab a txt/JSON package list for mangling locally[1]. With the data I have grabbed it is 65k vs 57k. > Though it wouldn't surprise me if a maximal install of software alone would be well over 100 GB. A rough estimate[2] of just ``main`` on Buster: $ awk -F: '/^Installed-Size/ {print $2}' /var/lib/apt/lists/*buster_main* | numsum 272960149 1. https://packages.debian.org/stable/ https://packages.debian.org/stable/ - Scroll to the bottom for links 2. https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-controlfields.html#installed-size https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-controlfields.ht...
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
    That's installed size in kB, correct? So, 273 GB, more or less, for "main". "Well over 100 GB" ;-)
    - JNRowe 7y ago
      There is even talk on supporting packages that are larger than 10GB[1], so three or four hundred gigabytes might be passed quicker than we'd think... 1. https://lwn.net/Articles/789449/ https://lwn.net/Articles/789449/ - Gives a little information if you scan for "size"
  - muxator 7y ago
    Kudos for numsum! After so many years using Linux, I still missed that one. Thanks!