In or around 2014 I bought an iPad Mini (2), and following the normal lifecycle of iOS devices, a major OS update eventually killed it as a useful, general-purpose device: operating it was just too sluggish. It remained useful as a streaming media player for a little while longer until eventually the big streamers (BBC iPlayer, Netflix, etc.) stopped supporting the version of their app which the iPad could install: the last officially supported iOS was 12.4.8 in July 2020, and by November it was officially dead.

During its useful life, the iPad Mini witnessed Apple's transition from 32 to 64 bit apps. In the 32 bit days, there was a little cottage industry of app developers, and in particular, game developers. There were even several independent websites (App Shopper, Pod Gamer, Free-App Hero), which aided in sorting through the morass of apps to find the good ones (then as now, the App Store itself was almost impossible to effectively browse). This all went away during the 32/64 transition, as many small-scale developers weren't actively developing their applications or games any more, and weren't prepared to pay the time or apple tax to rebuild and publish them as 64 bit.

The last version of iOS that supported 32 bit apps on this device was 10.3.3, and by luck, there are some methods available to install this old version of iOS on the Mini 2 Today. A couple of years ago I did so, and I kept no notes so sadly I can't report on which method I used. But it worked, and I was able to install a bunch of old 32 bit games that I had no access to on more modern devices.

Prior to John Carmack's¹ departure from iD Software, he'd been responsible for publishing several experimental iD software games on iOS. These mostly disappeared in the 64 bit transition. Amongst them are ports of Wolfenstein 3D, classic Doom, some RAGE tie-ins, but perhaps most interestingly. at least two original games, designed for the phone form factor: Doom 2 RPG and Wolfenstein RPG.

Another notable game that disappeared was "Civilisation Revolution", a cut-down Civ game that for a while I was obsessed with. Rather than port it to 64 bit, the publisher withdrew it, and then published a "new" game "Civilisation Revolution 2", requiring a separate purchase. Sadly, it is rubbish, nowhere near as good as the first one.

Anyway, having managed to downgrade it to the 32 bit iOS and install these old lost games, I then, of course, never played them and the device continued to gather dust. I should make clear that, running such an old unpatched iOS version means it's not safe at all to put any kind of sensitive information on this, including entering passwords. I don't recommend even opening the web browser. However, this 12 year old device does have some use as an e-reader, especially for certain types of ebook or magazine, that I've struggled to engage with on other devices. That's a topic for another blog post.

13 May 2026 2:45pm GMT

My experience at MiniDebConf Campinas 2026

Last week, I spent the entire week in Campinas attending MiniDebConf and MiniDebCamp. The Debian Brazil community organizes this event every year, and this year's edition was the biggest so far.

During MiniDebCamp, I sponsored a few uploads and spent two days teaching packaging to two participants. I usually teach packaging online, so it was refreshing to do it in person. I believe the experience was much better than teaching online.

One of my mentees introduced me to the DDTSS (Debian Distributed Translation Server Satellite). Even though there are many i18n contributors in Brazil, this was my first time learning about this system. I plan to contribute to translations over the next few weeks using DDTSS.

My Activities

NOTE: I translated every talk title; the original titles are in PT-BR, so some details may have been lost in translation.

I presented three talks and led one BoF session. The talks are all available on Debian's Peertube:

• Get to know dh-make-vim
• Zero-Code Instrumentation of an application using eBPF
• DD non-uploading can upload

You can also find my slides at people.d.o.

My first talk was a showcase of dh-make-vim, a tool I created and have been using for a few months. Some people tested it and found bugs, which was really nice to see.

My second talk was essentially a live version of my blog post Zero-Code Instrumentation of an Envoy TCP Proxy using eBPF.

I also gave a lightning talk about something many people are not aware of: non-uploading DDs can also sponsor uploads.

If you're interested, this bug report provides more context: tracker.debian.org: Signed by field is missing when sponsoring as DD non-uploading

Finally, I led the BoF session "Experiences, lessons learned, and next steps from the mentoring sessions". This was my favorite session, we had many participants with different perspectives and ideas, which led to a very engaging discussion. I'm still working on the action plans and I plan to release them soon.

Here are some photos of these activities:

My favorite activities

This is a list, in no particular order, of some of the sessions I enjoyed the most:

• Salsa CI, showing features that almost nobody knows

  I wrote a blog post about one of the things I learned in this talk, and there is still a lot more to explore. Aquila Macedo is developing many cool features in Salsa CI.

• Free Software: Freedom, Autonomy, Sovereignty

  I had been really looking forward to this one. Alexandre Oliva is a very important figure in the Free Software movement, especially in South America. I'll need to rewatch it, my futures talks about Free Software will likely be inspired by this one.

• What I've lived/seen in 33 Years of Debian & Free Software in general

  Eduardo Maçan was the first Debian Developer in Brazil, so it's always valuable to hear the story from someone who was part of it.

• Symbolism - an introduction

  Despite the title, this talk was not about astrology! I'll probably rewatch it as well, as there is a lot of information to take in. I really like the passion Sérgio Durigan has for C. He is also a great speaker and knows how to guide the audience through the topic.

• Debate: Contemporary controversies in Debian

  The debate itself was great, but the conversations we had afterward were even better. I changed some of my opinions after hearing different perspectives. I don't think this format would work at DebConf, but I would definitely like to attend another one like this.

• Why LTS on Debian?

  I had a few questions about LTS, and Kanashiro and Santiago answered them both during the talk and in the Q&A session. They also shared some challenges and how to avoid them, it was a great learning experience.

• From my first contribution to the Debian Maintainer

  Polkorny was a bit shy but did a great job! I really enjoy this kind of talk. It is always nice to see the different paths people take.

Unfortunatly, I couldn't attend everything I was interested in, as always.

DayTrip - The Brazilian Particle Accelerator

Sirius is the largest and most complex scientific infrastructure ever built in Brazil and one of the most advanced synchrotron light sources in the world. My jaw dropped the entire time; it's hard to describe how incredible this is.

My favorite detail: they're running Debian :)

Wrap up

I believe this was the best MiniDebConf Brazil so far. There were many other things I chose not to include here, as this post is already quite long. Still, here are a few more highlights:

• A Bug Squashing Party
• Driving Samuel Henrique's drones
• Lots of capybaras
• A small birthday party
• A visit to two data centers

13 May 2026 1:05pm GMT

My Debian contributions this month were all sponsored by Freexian.

You can also support my work directly via Liberapay or GitHub Sponsors.

dput-ng

Ian Jackson reported that dput-ng could lose data when using the local install method (relevant in tests of other packages, for instance) and filed an initial merge request to fix it. I improved this to isolate its tests properly, and uploaded it.

groff

I upgraded from 1.23.0 to 1.24.1. 1.24.0 and 1.24.1 were the first upstream releases since 2023, and had extensive changes; I'd had the corresponding packaging changes in the works since January, but it took me a while to get round to finishing them off. It was good to get this off my list.

OpenSSH

I released bookworm and trixie fixes for CVE-2026-3497, and issued the corresponding BSA-130 for trixie-backports.

I upgraded from 10.2p1 to 10.3p1.

parted

I upgraded from 3.6 to 3.7. 3.7 was the first upstream release since 2023, but the changes were nowhere near as extensive as groff, so this was a fairly quick job. I also fixed the parted-doc package to ship proper API documentation.

Python packaging

New upstream versions:

• django-modeltranslation
• nbconvert (fixing CVE-2026-39377 and CVE-2026-39378)
• pydantic-extra-types
• pydantic-settings
• python-agate (fixing file conflicts)
• python-nacl
• zope.configuration
• zope.interface

I started an upstream discussion about how best to handle the pydantic and pydantic-core packages now that they share an upstream git repository.

Other bug fixes:

• python-libnacl: Depends on cruft package libsodium23

Rust packaging

New upstream versions:

• rust-jiter
• rust-minijinja

YubiHSM packaging

I upgraded from 2.7.2 to 2.7.3.

Code reviews

• libfido2 1.17.0-1 (sponsored upload for Patrick Winnertz, since their key had expired)
• python-backports.zstd: Obsolete with Python 3.14 (sponsored upload for YOKOTA Hiroshi)
• python-better-exceptions 0.4.0-2 (sponsored upload for Seyed Mohamad Amin Modaresi)

11 May 2026 12:25pm GMT