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  • From: "Eric Sandall" <eric AT sandall.us>
  • To: sm-discuss AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [SM-Discuss] Experiences of a newcomer to SMGL
  • Date: Thu, 29 May 2003 15:34:47 -0700 (PDT)


Rene Schneider said:
> Hi all,

Hello again. :)

> as you may have noticed, I had quite some problems with my SMGL
> installation,
> maybe many of them due to being new to SMGL and the downtime of the
> sourcemage mirror. Unfortunately these problems cost me more time than I
> was
> able/willing to spend on keeping my Linux installation running and up to
> date. As a result I decided to switch to an other distro again.

:( I'm sorry to hear that. Perhaps our latest ISO will help, when you
have time, and now that we have mirrors up.

> However, I think all you people who work on this project do a very good
> job in
> solving what I know is difficult problem, building a up to date source
> based
> distro.

Why thank you, we try to do our best with our limited resources. :)

> Since I took profit from your work (well, I used the distro) I think the
> least
> I owe you is feedback on what could/should be improved in order to make
> SMGL
> more attractive to other users. So here my comments:

Feedback is lways welcome to help improve SMGL.

> 1. The frontend to sorcery is very useful to newcomers.

This is the ncurses front-end I take it (via 'sorcery' command)? Did you
ever try Tim (GNOME-based) or ksorcery (KDE-based)?

> 2. The spell/add functionality in the frontend is nice but annoyingly slow
> (time between one add and getting the listing back again). IMO it should
> be
> replaced by the spell/select function with an added "what is this spell"
> button.

This is currently being worked on. The slowness is due (IIRC) to how
sorcery locks files before modifying so that only one process does the
modifying at a time and they don't trample on each other. Currently, for
each update to a file the file is locked, instead of locking once and
doing all of the writes.

> 3. The backround execute caused me some trouble. While installing a large
> number of packages (soon after initial install) a menu popped up to select
> the languages for some I18N (kde-i18n or locale, or both?), however it
> didn't
> take any input (due to incompatibility of tee and menu program?). I had to
> kill it from an other console. This might also be related to the voyeur
> option.

I have not tried the background option, but there have been reports of
other problems, if you would be so kind as to submit a bug report for this
detailing your experience, that would be of much help. :)

> 4. About the stable grimoire. As I understood the criterion to get into
> stable
> is that a spell in its version is not changed for 14 days (correct?).
> Seemingly as a result of that it was not stable but out of date. Many
> spells
> I installed failed due to changed URLs (sourceforge sites moved their
> download section) or new release candidates (due to which the old
> candidate
> disappeared instantly). I think the devel grimoire is currently more
> stable
> than the stable one (at least for a initial install).

The mirrors were supposed to fix the problem of missing URLs, but we are
having problems with that. Hopefully soon our mirrors will have
everything needed for stable to be stable and not need version updates
just to be able to install.

> 5. Spells that failed to install/update should remain in the install queue
> or
> be moved to a new "problem" queue. This would help to track and solve
> problems. Now they just disappeared and sometimes the summary of the queue
> installation was scrolled too far out of the screen to even notice
> something
> went wrong.

Again, a bug report with details will help us work on this. :) And I
completely agree, there is a similar bug report here:
http://bugs.sourcemage.org/show_bug.cgi?id=388

> 6. A minor thing, as it doesn't concern too many people: it would be nice
> if
> the install ISO contained the raidtools (especially mkraid and raidstart).
> Although the necessary kernel modules were available I had to copy them
> from
> a floppy.

A bug report for the ISO Team would move this forward. We try to keep the
ISO small, but that program is necessary (?) for people using a RAID
system.

> 7. The quick response and usefull comments on the mailing list helped a
> lot.

Thank you, we try to be as helpful as possible, though sometimes there is
'lag' when everyone is busy with RL. :(

> Sorry about so many negative things. Let me emphasise again that these
> points
> are intended as constructive criticism. You're doing a great job and e.g.
> the
> video section is cutting edge compared to the big distros. Carry on.

All feedback is helpful and we like to hear from our users (rather than
just the rumblings of developers ;)).

> Thank you,
>
> Rene

When you have the time, come back to us. :)

-One of Four
a.k.a. sandalle

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Eric Sandall | Source Mage GNU/Linux Developer
eric AT sandall.us | http://www.sourcemage.org/
http://eric.sandall.us/ | SysAdmin @ Inst. Shock Physics @ WSU
http://counter.li.org/ #196285 | http://www.shock.wsu.edu/




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