Public SourceMage Discussion List

[Vlad Glagolev <stealth AT tiberian.ru>]

On Tue, 29 Sep 2015 18:55:43 -0600
Sukneet Basuta <sukneet AT gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Sep 29, 2015 at 11:50 AM, Ismael Luceno <ismael.luceno AT gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > When it comes to visibility, IMO, where we have our repositories is
> > completely irrelevant, and contributing to Source Mage is already far
> > easier than contributing to other distributions (e.g. updating a spell
> > is dead easy). We could improve the help quill provides, we could make
> > it even easier to use, but that's about it.
> 
> 
> +1
> 
> 
> > Now, what I find important is that we definitely fail in a few areas
> > that are critical. The two main problems that make users think of SM
> > as something of low quality are: upgrades failing in mysterious ways,
> > something quite common, and the fact that documentation is somewhat
> > scarce.
> >
> > Also, although less important, most are unhappy about having to
> > configure every minute detail the first time (this is something we
> > could easily solve, without compromising our goals), and the fact that
> > we don't have up-to-date ISOs (is that still a problem?).
> >
> 
> IMO, those 3 points are what keep new users away. People like to be lazy
> which is why gentoo, CRUX, and even arch's ABS are more popular than Source
> Mage. I'm not saying we should be like them--I actually like how Source
> Mage lets you configure every detail--but if attracting new users is the
> goal, then yes allowing them to be lazy is a good start. FreeBSD's ports is
> somehow able to get away with being very configurable though.
> @Ismael I encourage you to propose something if you have an idea and see
> what people say.
> 
> New users tend to get frustrated when they can't even install the distro. I
> know I did when I first used Source Mage. I actually gave up after the
> first few times and tried Lunar, which just worked. I think I ended up
> somehow finding the beta iso, which ended up working. Basesystem and the
> install system need to be rock solid.
> 
> I know...I know...people have been complaining about this stuff for years
> and they have yet to be fixed. I don't have the time to do it/I'm more
> interested in other things these days, so I'm not complaining or anything.
> I'm just letting people know my opinion if they are interested.
> 
> What ever happened to Vlad's new website? Using that as Source Mage's
> website would be a step in the right direction imo.

Vlad's new website is in-place, but the migration procedure to Jeremy's
hardware is on hold because of some RL happening.

So I still propose to set up temporary proxying from at least
sourcemage.org and www.sourcemage.org hosts and/or change DNS records
instead of wasting even more time.

The same goes for bugzilla (bugs.sourcemage.ru), which is up-to-date,
btw. I would easily backport our chili/redmine bug-reports to XML and
import them into that bugzilla installation.

I'm thinking that putting our primary node of repositories to gitlab is
a bad idea and strategic mistake in comparison with supporting our own
multi-mirror infrastructure (which all must be running Source Mage, not
that RedHat, Fedora, Ubuntu or whatever you happily fire&forget).

Justin has some progress on prep'ing ISOs by working with the chroots
(which must be updated at least to our latest stable grimoire, indeed,
but that also hasn't been done because of the same RL happening).
I will try to work on both x86/x86_64 images anytime soon in October.

So by joining these too we might get something visible pretty soon.

--
Vlad Glagolev <stealth AT tiberian.ru>

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