Episode 49: Open Source Software: Slipping Beneath the Surface of Awareness

Episode Summary

Does operating system (OS) choice even matter anymore to most people? Especially with the emergence of serverless and containers? Debian may not see its name up in lights much these days, but it’s still very much front, center, and relevant to what people are doing in Cloud environments.
Today, we’re talking to Elana Hashman, a Python packager and Debian developer. Everything inside a base operating system may not be interesting to end users, but such a collection of components is necessary to create a functioning Linux system.
Some of the highlights of the show include:

Alternative Linux operating systems, including Amazon Linux 2
Level of awareness about free software when choosing and distributing an OS
What is a Python packager? How do you become one?
Python is the new default language due to growth and adoption of its ecosystem
Packaging community off-putting to beginners; find someone who understands the system to guide you

Links:

Elana Hashman
Elana Hashman on Twitter
Elana Hashman on Mastodon
A tale of three Debian build tools
Python
Python Packaging Authority
PyCon
Debian
The Debian Women Project
Docker
Red Hat
Fortran
Amazon Linux 2
Go
Perl
SaltStack
OpenHatch
SCALE
Jordan Sissel on Twitter
DigitalOcean

Episode Show Notes & Transcript

Does operating system (OS) choice even matter anymore to most people? Especially with the emergence of serverless and containers? Debian may not see its name up in lights much these days, but it’s still very much front, center, and relevant to what people are doing in Cloud environments.

Today, we’re talking to Elana Hashman, a Python packager and Debian developer. Everything inside a base operating system may not be interesting to end users, but such a collection of components is necessary to create a functioning Linux system.

Some of the highlights of the show include:

  • Alternative Linux operating systems, including Amazon Linux 2
  • Level of awareness about free software when choosing and distributing an OS
  • What is a Python packager? How do you become one?
  • Python is the new default language due to growth and adoption of its ecosystem
  • Packaging community off-putting to beginners; find someone who understands the system to guide you

Links:

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