Things I Have Learnt At DebConf

Posted on July 24, 2025
Tags: madeof:bits

An unsorted list, including some I already knew, but was reminded of.

  • dpkg-mergechangelogs exists.
  • Sewing your own shirt, posting it on planet and wearing it on the first day of DebConf, is more effective than a badge for making people recognise you.
  • I need to look into a number of tools for testings things (and try to start using some of those at $DAYJOB).
  • Masks are good. masks protect you from debbugs. masks protect you from ring cameras in the hotel you’re staying on the day after debconf.
  • It’s really nice to be chatting of random topics during lunch and discover that you are talking to the maintainer of a package of which you are one of the very few users! (the latter bit needs to be changed :) ).
  • I need to look into sequoia and all of the modern OpenPGP stuff.
  • Even if I don’t have a lot of money, apparently I have even less sense (there will be blog posts on the topic in the mid-term future).
  • I can go to a talk about AI and not hate the speaker (yeah, the bar is pretty low there :D ). The automatic subtitles still failed in the same way as automatic subtitles always fail.
  • Debian gets used in really cool places.
  • At times it is a bit — or a lot — dysfunctional, but Debian still feels like a family.

And I still haven’t watched the recordings of those talks that I couldn’t (or decided not to, because the hallway track was more interesting) attend.