Congratulations to us all! Debian turns 15 today. How time flies when you’re having fun!

I like how EFYtimes puts it:

Despite being only 15 years old, Debian is more mature than any of the other operating systems.

I’ll drink to that! It’s a huge exaggeration but still, we have a solid foudation to build our freedom on.

Our desktops still rely on many very old technologies and ideas. Motif is not even a very old tookit if you look at the age of the whole WIMP metaphor (windows, icons, menus, pointer). As Pici, genii and TiredWolf reminded us today, this is in fact true of most, if not all technology.

Working on my dissertation, I was going through my field notes again today. I came across this snippet from my IRC logs, concerning the high-level design of the GNOME desktop.

<Amaranth> An option where two people disagree on how something will work? Not gnome
<Amaranth> Automatically figuring out what to do based on the circumstances? Gnome

‘Nuff said. Should apply to any user-facing software.

But yes, even after this Zen moment, I’m still writing the book. =)

Sometimes it’s good to give your friends some time to work on their ideas. mc44 totally appreciates wobblywu’s hard work. This is how communities work at best.