Cypherpunk and transhumanist who participated in early Bitcoin discussions
On October 26, 2009, German cryobiologist and transhumanist Eugen Leitl asked the bitcoin-list mailing list:
“Still no .deb packages for Bitcoin?”
The question — coming from a Transhumanist Declaration (1998) co-author who reached the project through the cypherpunk and transhumanist networks — captures one of Bitcoin’s earliest distribution frictions. Leitl was replying to a “Does Bitcoin Crash in Windows?” thread in which Satoshi Nakamoto had been helping diagnose Wine crashes.
Leitl is a computer scientist with long-running involvement in discussions on anonymity, cryptography, nanotechnology, and brain preservation.
On October 26, 2009, Leitl replied to a thread on the bitcoin-list mailing list titled “Does Bitcoin Crash in Windows?” in which Satoshi Nakamoto had responded to Liberty Standard’s report of crashes under Wine. Leitl quoted Satoshi’s remark that “bitcoin.sourceforge.net looks fine now” and noted that the site was not working when he checked. He also asked: “Still no .deb packages for Bitcoin?” — highlighting early demand for Linux packaging of the software.
The thread’s crashes were happening under Wine, and Leitl’s request for .deb packages was the flip side of the same gap: nearly ten months after release, Bitcoin still had no easy path onto Linux — even as it drew interest well beyond the cryptography mailing list.
2 entries
Satoshi responds to Liberty Standard's report of Bitcoin crashing under Wine, attributing it to Wine compatibility issues. Eugen Leitl also replied in the thread, asking about Debian packages.
Eugen Leitl contradicts Satoshi's claim that bitcoin.sourceforge.net was working, reporting the site is still down, and asks whether Debian (.deb) packages for Bitcoin are available.