It’s really hard to install packages when the entire problem is that your computer can’t access the internet in Linux. Somebody needs to put together a reasonably-sized offline Debian package repository. (I searched forever, and all I found was a site with several DVD ISOs, which wasn’t quite what I was looking for.)

Which got me to thinking. Debian-based distros are perhaps the most prevalent flavor of Linux at the moment. Knoppix, Ubuntu, Debian itself…and for good reason, because the package system is so strong. Fedora Core is the only system that comes close to the same depth of package repository. So people everywhere know the name Debian.

But what they don’t know, I’m guessing, is where the Debian name comes from. Back in the early 90s when Linux just started, a guy named Ian invented one of the first GNU/Linux distros, and called it Debian, after his girlfriend (and now wife), Debra. Now people everywhere are talking about Debian packages. The extension, of course, is “.deb”.

Now, that got me to thinking. Isn’t it remarkable that Deb’s name is everywhere? Ian was in the right place at the right time, but he did a lot of work to start up the Debian Project. But now, its name–his name, her name–is referenced literally worldwide by those in the know. Isn’t that sort of…I don’t know the word. Romantic? Isn’t it wonderful that his work has paid off, and not just for him, but in a way, her too? I don’t know. Maybe it’s just me, but I find that sort of romantic. Poetic, perhaps. (Those of you who know me particularly well have seen I’m somewhat of a closet romantic.)

And I particularly enjoyed Monday’s xkcd comic. I guess it resembles what I want my life to be. I like free thinkers, people who aren’t worried about being different when they want to. But I don’t like people who bill themselves as free thinkers–those are the people who challenge authority just because they dislike it, not because they have any good ideas. The avant-garde artists. The outspoken anarchists and atheists. (Sorry, Dirac; I appreciate your contributions, at any rate.) No, that’s not what I want at all.

More than anything, I want someone to talk about everything with. Someone on my wavelength. And whenever the beats stop–when she comes by at the same speed, with the same frequency–there will be no phase disparity; the interference will only be constructive. And I won’t want to let go.

Please don’t make me let go?