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October 21

Debian version

I have a laptop that until an hour ago was running Debian 10 aka Buster, which is two versions before the current "Bookworm" release. I updated it to Debian 11 (Bullseye), rebooted, then updated the Bullseye to Bookworm. That seems to be working fine. But when I looked at the version numbers of all the installed programs, it sure looks to me like the Bookworm upgrade actually installed the current unstable/testing version aka Trixie. For example, typing "python3" says 3.11.2, and so on, per here.

Any idea what is going on? I'm less upset than I am puzzled. I thought that version updates of individual packages only was supposed to happen at new Debian releases.

Output of "uname -a" is:

Linux boxname 6.1.0-26-amd64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Debian 6.1.112-1 (2024-09-30) x86_64 GNU/Linux

I wrote "boxname" instead of the box's actual name. Also, /etc/debian_version says 12.7 which is what I expected. Thanks.

2601:644:8581:75B0:0:0:0:8FFA (talk) 04:55, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have recently upgraded to trixie and now have python 3.12. /etc/debian_version says trixie/sid. There are a number of inconsistencies in those release notes: bookworm was already at python 3.11, trixie now has gcc 14.2.0 and perl 5.28.2, both higher than what is stated on that web page. And uname gives 6.10.11-amd64. I think you are fine. --Wrongfilter (talk) 05:15, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I might check when Bookworm was released, but I expected that back then, gcc, python3, etc. would be on earlier versions than what I see now in 12.7. Trixie Stable is probably some months a way so I plan to stay on Bookworm for now. 2601:644:8581:75B0:0:0:0:8FFA (talk) 00:32, 22 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

1-bit music

In the 1980s, Tim Follin created a lot of 1-bit music. It can be heard here.

Our chiptune article lacks technical details. Though 8-bit music redirects there, the meaning isn't explained. Presumably each sample has an amplitude from 0 to 255. That characteristic alone wouldn't cause music to sound very distinctive, though, just low-quality, so perhaps "chiptune" is indeed a better name.

But anyway that isn't 1-bit music. I presume that in 1-bit music, each sample has 1 bit and thus is either fully on or fully off. This could produce square waves of different frequencies, and by mixing them, chords.

What puzzles me is how Tim Follin apparently modulates amplitude. For instance, the piece "Agent X 2" (the music for the game Agent X II: The Mad Prof's Back, and apparently the only good thing about it) ends with a fade out. How is that possible? Card Zero (talk) 06:57, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

On an original Spectrum, all one could do is turn on and off a single (rather inertial) output line. Exploiting that inertia, one could turn the relevant control bit on and off quickly enough, making a sound of a given frequency. But there is no control over amplitude. I think that webpage is rather disingenuously presenting its audio samples - it's talking about the 1-bit audio, but I think those sounds (at least the Agent X 2 track you're asking about) are played on a Spectrum 128k (or more likely, a modern software emulation thereof) which had a General Instrument AY-3-8910 sound chip - a real sound chip with proper oscillators and multiple channels (info). Compare the version on the page you linked to this youtube clip which appears to be a real original Spectrum playing the same music on "beep speaker". It sounds much worse, much noisier, and there's no fade at the end.

For a pretty detailed discussion of how audio was synthesised on the original Spectrum, I do recommend this video. -- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk 11:16, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]