Alper Nebi Yasak

github profile: https://github.com/alpernebbi

A weirdo from Turkey who likes to learn things thoroughly and to do things "the right way". Working on making Debian and Debian Installer support Chromebooks' native boot mechanisms, and became a Debian Maintainer on the installer team through that effort. On the other end, working on replacing their firmware with FOSS alternatives like coreboot and U-Boot to make them more Linux-friendly through more standard boot mechanisms.

Accepted Talks:

Debian on Chromebooks: What's New and What's Next?

At DebConf22 I’ve presented a talk about running Debian and Debian Installer on Chromebooks. A lot happened since then – I’ve become a Debian Maintainer and got the core of that work into Debian and Debian Installer, but some critical parts are still missing. Installing and running Debian on Chromebooks is still not as smooth as I’d like it to be. In this talk I’d like to go over what progress happened in the last two years on this front, what works and what doesn’t, and what still remains to be done.

Ideas to Move Debian Installer Forward

Debian Installer is a very complex project with many parts. Every piece involved has its own idiosyncrasies due to its age and the constraints under which it was designed to work. I’m not sure I understand all it needs to be, but in my mind there’s a harsh critic who points out a lot of things and a junior engineer who dreams that things could be better. Some examples of my gripes with it are:

  • Installer itself is an OS somewhat different than Debian
  • Installer packages (“udebs”) are very special
  • Sidesteps buildd process a bit, needs internet access
  • Cannot build in parallel, or cross-build
  • Needs multi-project builds for full installation media
  • Debconf template-based UI control feels weird

I could extend that list by a lot. I keep occasionally thinking about what I would like the Debian Installer to be, what could be done to get it to that point. In this talk I’ll try to get what I have in mind to a coherent roadmap, so that we can at least evaluate if the necessary work would be worth it.

Debian Installer Workshop

In this workshop I’ll try to do a live demonstration of the process of developing for, testing and debugging the Debian Installer. I would prefer to do that by implementing a feature or fixing a bug as suggested by the audience, so it may end up being a mostly improvised interactive work session.