DebConf24 is now over! I'm very happy I was able to attend this year. If you haven't had time to look at the schedule yet, here is a selection of talks I liked.
What happens if I delete setup.py?: a live demo of upgrading to PEP-518 Python packaging
A great talk by Weezel showcasing how easy it is to migrate to PEP-518 for existing Python projects.
This is the kind of thing I've been doing a lot when packaging upstream
projects that still use setup.py. I encourage you to send this kind of patch
upstream, as it makes everyone's life much easier.
Debian on Chromebooks: What's New and What's Next?
A talk by Alper Nebi Yasak, who has done great work on running Debian and the Debian Installer on Chromebooks.
With Chromebooks being very popular machines in schools, it's nice to see people working on a path to liberate them.
Sequoia PGP, sq, gpg-from-sq, v6 OpenPGP, and Debian
I had the chance to see Justus' talk on Sequoia — an OpenPGP implementation in
Rust — at DebConf22 in Kosovo. Back then, the conclusion was that
sq wasn't ready for production yet.
Well it seems it now is! This in-depth talk goes through the history of the project and its goals. There is also a very good section on the current OpenPGP/LibrePGP schism.
Chameleon - the easy way to try out Sequoia - OpenPGP written in Rust
A very short talk by Holger on Chameleon, a tool to make migration to Sequoia easier.
TL;DW: apt install gpg-from-sq
Protecting OpenPGP keyservers from certificate flooding
Although I used to enjoy signing people's OpenPGP keys, I completely gave up on this practice around 2019 when dkg's key was flooded with bogus certifications and have been refusing to do so since.
In this talk, Gunnar talks about his PhD work on fixing this issue and making sure we can eventually restore this important function on keyservers.
Bits from the DPL
Bits from the DPL! A DebConf classic.
Linux live patching in Debian
Having to reboot servers after kernel upgrades is a hassle, especially with machines that have encrypted disk drives.
Although kernel live patching in Debian is still a work in progress, it is encouraging to see people trying to fix this issue.
"I use Debian BTW": fzf, tmux, zoxide and friends
A fun talk by Samuel Henrique on little changes and tricks one can make to their setup to make life easier.
Ideas to Move Debian Installer Forward
Another in-depth talk by Alper, this time on the Debian Installer and his ideas to try to make it better. I learned a lot about the d-i internals!
Lightning Talks
Lighting talks are always fun to watch! This year, the following talks happened:
- Customizing your Linux icons
- A Free Speech tracker by SFLC.IN
- Desktop computing is irrelevant
- An introduction to wcurl
- Aliasing in dpkg
- A DebConf art space
- Tiny Tapeout, Fomu, PiCI
- Data processing and visualisation in the shell
Is there a role for Debian in the post-open source era?
As an economist, I've been interested in Copyright and business models in the Free Software ecosystem for a while. In this talk, Hatta-san and Bruce Perens discuss the idea of alternative licences that are not DFSG-free, like Post-Open.