screenshots.debian.net

Actually a coworker asked me on how to find a certain piece of package from the ten thousands of Debian packages. He installed and deinstalled a lot of software (which Debian handles gracefully fortunately) only to find what he needed. He said it would be nice to see what a software looks like before installing its package. So I went ahead and developed the debshots software (a web software based on the Pylons web framework) that now powers screenshots.debian.net. Things became especially interesting when the service was announced to slashdot and we still didn't die under the load.

Beginning of 2010 the screenshots service hosted screenshots for over 3000 applications. Ubuntu's software management center and the Synaptic software use screenshots from it.