Blog: 2024-02-27

Moment of realization just now: why can't you shutdown debian from the login screen? bc it would need a root user to submit the "shutdown" command. Even when you switch with alt-f2 or whatever to the text login screen, it prompts for username; you can't enter commands from there. Maybe the solution is to boot to a root repl (like safe mode) and from there you can launch login gui.

Other realization I'll note down here: lots of software isn't available in apt because its compile step requires being offline, and much of software is pulling dependencies from the internet: rust with cargo, python with pip, node with npm. All transitive dependencies need to be packaged with apt for an application to also be packaged in apt. "app style" applications bundle all their dependencies and end up with a 300mb blob, that needs to be completely removed when you do a point release (see signal apt; 3rdparty built with fpm)