Debian India Online Bookworm Release Party

As the tradition dictates, we at Debian India organised an online release party for the next stable release of Debian, codenamed bookworm on 10th June. The initial discussion started a while back, but we had a planning meeting just 3–4 days before the release party. As most of us were busy with DebConf or DebUtsav Kochi stuff, we didn’t had time to explore new ideas for events . The consensus was to have a technical overview of changes, a Debian trivia quiz and ending with SuperTuxKart gaming event. As we used to keep on talking about improvements to Debian, we decided to hold a discussion on what Debian lacks/needs to improve. This was later taken up by Akshay. A call for proposals (CFP) was sent along with an announcement on debian-dug-in mailing list and Debian India channels, though no one proposed any event/talk.

As Jitsi usually fumbles with large groups with videos on, we choose to have the event on BigBlueButton. Like last year, Abhas generously supported us with a room on his BigBlueButton instance, and we created a redirect behind 12.debian.org.in to it.

On 10th, the release party started around 7:45 PM IST. As usual, the mood was light and fun. Around 16 people joined the party at its highest. Abraham started with a technical overview covering changes in bookworm. A major highlight for me was the inclusion of non-free firmware in official ISOs, which would essentially ease one of the biggest pain points for new user onboarding. Now, I would be able to directly recommend Debian to new users, rather than Linux Mint, due to getting the firmware right. Sidenote, I too struggled with getting the drivers right for almost a month when I started using Debian way back in 2020. Coming back, technical overview was followed by Debian trivia by Anupa. Initially I was confident about the quiz, though the questions Anupa brought were harder than I had anticipated and taught quite a few things about Debian. This was followed by Akshay’s “Discussion - What Debian Lacks/Needs to Improve” session. Akshay, being an Arch user, had some insights to highlight where Debian can improve. He had collected statements and walked us through the viewpoints. Meanwhile, Abraham also gave a quick overview of a draft redesign for the debian.org.in website to ease user onboarding, which he mentioned we lack. Then group photo was taken and we moved onto the SuperTuxKart gaming party, which was fun as always. We did record the party, but I have no ETA when this would be available.

I’m yet to upgrade servers under my management to bookworm, as I usually wait it out a few days after a release so that teeny-tiny bugs are reported and ironed out and for cooling down of download mirror loads. Maintaining a Matrix instance through Synapse has made me cautious about not being on the bleeding edge of new releases. Recently, I also got a new perspective that with the now omnipresent mix-and-match usage of third party repositories, waiting a bit more bit for them to be up to speed with the new stable would remove much of the troubles post-updates.

Good then, and see you in DebUtsav Kochi and/or DebConf Kochi :)