How Debian votes: the General Resolution
Debian policy is set by a ranked ballot of about a thousand developers. How a General Resolution is proposed, seconded, counted, and reaches your server.
#history
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The history of SSH, from telnet to OpenSSH
A 1995 password sniffing attack in Helsinki produced SSH. Here is the verified timeline from telnet and rlogin to OpenSSH and post-quantum defaults.
Why Debian and Ubuntu split
Ubuntu began as a snapshot of Debian unstable in 2004. What 22 years of shared packaging and quiet divergence mean when you pick a server OS.
Claude Code resume and session history
Resume a Claude Code session by name or from the picker, and find the plaintext transcripts it leaves behind on the machine where the agent ran.
File transfer protocols, from Kermit to rsync
Kermit turns 45 and just shipped a new release. The story of file transfer, from noisy phone lines to FTP behind NAT, and why rsync and SFTP won.
From Red Hat to CentOS to Rocky and AlmaLinux
How Red Hat Linux split into Fedora and RHEL, why CentOS existed, what the 2020 CentOS Stream change broke, and where Rocky Linux and AlmaLinux came from.
A history of open source software
From the Homebrew Computer Club to the SSPL: how the GPL, the 1998 rebrand and today's relicensing wave shaped the apps you self-host today.
Linux kernel history: the decisions that stuck
A history of the Linux kernel from 0.01 to 7.x: the GPL switch, the microkernel argument, the birth of git, the LTS model, and what each means for servers.
The history of systemd, and why it won
What SysV init could not do, what Upstart and launchd tried first, why every distribution moved to systemd in four years, and which objections were right.
The history of Unix and Linux, 1969 to now
How Unix became Linux: Bell Labs in 1969, AT&T licensing, Berkeley BSD, the 1992 lawsuit, and why the server room went to Linux instead of BSD.
A history of Linux distributions
Almost every Linux distribution descends from Slackware, Debian or Red Hat. Trace the family tree, the package managers, and what your VPS images inherited.
A history of Tor: onion routing to today
Tor began as onion routing research inside a US Navy lab in 1995. Here are the dated milestones, and a straight answer on who funds the network.
Computing history: from mainframe to your VPS
The VPS you rent is a direct descendant of 1960s time-sharing. Trace the line through CTSS, Multics, Unix, IBM VM/370, Xen and KVM, and what never changed.
Bash history expansion: !! and !$
!! repeats the last command and !$ gives you its last argument. Learn the six bash history expansions worth knowing, plus :p to print one before it runs.