Public SourceMage Discussion List

[evraire AT tuwg.com]

> I've always worried that the high turnover rate could be due to people 
> being unsatisfied with things and quitting in disgust. But I also 
> conclude from not hearing those problems voiced that it's an unfounded 
> worry. 

  It's funny you should mention that as I too am considering moving away from 
SourceMage and I wasn't going to speak up about it.  I happen to be a user of 
SourceMage since just before the split off of Sorcery.  At the time I was 
tired of bloated binary distributions like RedHat and was looking for 
something a little more lean and fast, and the promises a source-based 
distribution offered were just too good to pass up.

  My current setup is a multi-boot Athlon 1.4GHz with SourceMage as my main 
OS.  As such I've been using it constantly for quite a while now, and for 
that matter so has my nearly computer illeterate girlfriend.  I love running 
a completely up-to-date source-based distribution, and I love seeing the 
magic of casting... when it works.

  Personally I run into problems every time I do a system-update.  At first, 
I attributed it to the early state of development of the tools and decided to 
wait it out, hoping things would improve with time.  Unfortunately for me, 
they haven't: just last weekend the system-update hosed my Gnome2 desktop.  
I've managed to get Gnome2 back up again, but unfortunately Mozilla has yet 
to recover.  It seems to cast totally fine, but when I run it it pops up and 
dissapears instantly.  I'm still tracking that problem down.  Other bits and 
pieces of my system are MIA... I'm pretty sure ALSA is down again, but I 
didn't have time to check it out.  I haven't had a working trash can on my 
Gnome2 desktop since my first update of it.

  These little issues are a real pain and take up a lot of time to work out.  
Perhaps I'm not an advanced enough Linux user to figure them out 
instantaneously, perhaps I've tinkered with my system too much and rendered 
it unstable, or perhaps I've just cast/uncast too many applications that I 
wanted to try out.  Perhaps going from Sorcery to an early SourceMage, 
through the gcc, glibc and db major upgrades, the grimoire splits, etc. is 
too much for one system to handle and I should just reinstall SourceMage 
using the latest ISO... who knows, I may just do that!  I'm certainly NOT 
looking forward to a reinstall, as one of the advantages I've always 
appreciated of Linux (and despised of Wintendo) is not needing to reinstall 
at regular intervals.

  I can hear the unspoken question already, and no I haven't filed these 
little issues with Bugzilla.  Honestly, I'm not sure whether it's a 
SourceMage problem or me tinkering with config files... in fact, it's 
probably a combination of the both.  Also, these little problems have 
probably been building up as I might have left one or two unresolved at each 
updates.

  Anyway, the bottom line is I'm unhappy with the rough edges of my system 
and am considering moving to another distro looking for something a little 
more polished.  I don't think I could go back to a binary distribution, so I 
was considering Gentoo as my first alternative as it's been around a lot 
longer and has a much larger package base.  You may recall a quick post a 
while back where I asked a user who switched from Gentoo to SourceMage 
"why?".  Unfortunately, having been burnt by Kyle and seeing the same thing 
happening on Gentoo's side isn't very encouraging and has me worried.  I'll 
probably try a fresh SourceMage install first.

  So what improvements would I like to see in SourceMage?  More spells would 
be nice, but I think we need to work on quality before quantity.  I think the 
way spells install by default should be tweaked to appeal to less advanced 
users and should be completely functional out of the box (like a working 
trash can).  I think upgrades need to be more fluid: I should be able to do a 
system-update without dreading the post-update fixups.

  I think we should look at other distros and see what we could incorporate 
into ours to improve it.  I like that Gentoo doesn't overwrite config files 
during an update, then assists you in merging the changes.  I like the idea 
of the USE flags: they're a means of describing what you want out of your 
system as a whole to the OS so it can make better "decisions" on how to 
install packages.  For example, you can specify you're a Gnome/GTK user and 
individual packages can compile with the GTK interface and not the QT one, or 
you can specify your a KDE/QT user and get the reverse, or even specify both. 
 In SourceMage you're prompted for these things, so you can still choose 
them, but it makes it harder for unattended installs.  Plus, if I've got QT, 
why not go ahead and build the QT interface for me instead of asking me about 
it?  For that matter, in general if I've got a library already installed why 
would a package ever prompt me to build optional components that depend on 
them, they should just do it!  (MPlayer comes to mind, as it has many 
optional codec dependancies.)  I guess I like the hands-off of package 
installation/updates in Gentoo as well, which goes back to my point of having 
better defaults.

  I used Gentoo for comparison because I've been evaluating it the most 
recently, but I think there are other distributions we can look to.  RedHat's 
desktop is really getting slick, and Knoppix' hardware support is simply 
astounding.  Other distros have Mozilla up and running with Java and other 
plug-ins easily, not to mention the latest version of OpenOffice.  I have 
issues with all of these!  Granted, what we're trying to do is infinitely 
more complex (source vs binary), but it's all part of smoothing out the edges.

  SourceMage isn't all bad though, and that's why I've stuck around for so 
long.  First off, the community is top-notch!  Very friendly, very helpful, 
very courteous, and very "fun"!  You know they love this distro and it shows. 
 I love that!  Second, IMHO everything is going in the right direction.  The 
work being done on the init system is a good example of that: it needs to be 
done (although I'm dreading the move from our current init system to the new 
one).  We've got a good hiearchy in place with very open development 
standards and I believe that's very healthy.  We've locked down the feature 
creep and are sticking to our road map.  In short, everything's finally 
coming together, but it's taking a very long time.  I just don't know how 
much longer I'm willing to wait and live with such a picky system.

  That about sums it up.  I still haven't decided yet what I'm going to do 
next.  Hopefully this email will lead to improvements in our distro.  It 
certainly won't be a complete waste: I've convinced myself to try a fresh 
install before moving on to something else. :)

  Keep up the good work guys!  I believe in where you're headed, so no matter 
what I do we may yet end up together down the road... only time will tell.

  Jonathan Evraire
  evraire at tuwg.com



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