Debian is not going to self destruct, it may just be changing a bit to adapt to new material realities. Debian's goal, it's guiding principle, is to produce the next stable release, I see no reason for that to change, although of course the time between stable releases remains something of a problem. But I do see more devs taking advantage of the luxury of being able to break stuff in the unstable pool, sid, while creating new packages and updates, and more power to them, this is volunteer work, I hope they do what they need to do in order to maintain both their real lives and the virtual debian ones they find the energy to also do, although the results of the last debian election suggest that fewer devs are finding that time than previously.

I for one plan on following Debian guidelines more in the future, for example, using aptitude, running testing based installs for rolling release, but also of course realizing that these things are just operating systems and packages, not anything actually important for life to exist, so I'm not going to get into some religious type frenzy about this stuff and its rules, that's just plain silly.

What sidux does or does not do depends largely on 2 core people in sidux, the only two I'd say that really make the distro work in terms of code and dev time put in. As long as they stay, the distro can remain largely fine, if they leave, either one, the distro's fate is in the air, and it will certainly not resemble what it is today, and if the most important one leaves, the one who never gets the credit, it will largely be a shell of itself, but I doubt that fact would ever even get announced in public if it were to occur, since I suspect he would simply fade away without any real public discussion.

Overall I personally don't care at all what happens to that idea though, it was an interesting project to do for a while, but I don't see it as becoming anything more than its current direction suggests it will linger on as, until one of the two said guys gets bored, or simply can't afford the luxury of the time spent any longer. Times are changing, and to expect anything to remain static at this point in history is largely wishful thinking.

Keep in mind, the set of users willing and able to track and fix sid is VERY small. Miniscule, in fact. And that set has competition now from distros like Arch, that are actually better models for bleeding edge and rolling release, since they never freeze at all for stable pre-releases. So while this stuff will work for some people, in absolute numbers, those are tiny fractions of the world user base of desktop computers, beyond tiny, microscopic. My studies have suggested that you are quite safe in dividing by 10 the average distro generated estimate of real ongoing users....

I can also say with absolute certainty that no sid install I have created would now still be in operation if I wasn't actively maintaining it in person, which just goes to show, sid is for power users and a few assorted others here and there, smxi tried to open that door a bit, but I really don't see that as having been a particularly good idea on my part to be honest, the lack of working and user friendly rolling release system in linux was my main concern all along, though I find that interest faded a bit, or maybe I should say 'jaded' from exposure to the reality of what doing that entails, the cost is a bit steep in my opinion.
Back to top

Hi
I have been using sidux since October 2007, as an experiment and an understanding of linux. It was a long route that got me here.
I have enjoyed the experience, and it was fun in the beginning with new ideas and the enthusiasm displayed by all parties. As sidux matured, it has left some wreckage in its path. This can be seen from all the new faces showing up on the forum. What happen to the other ones that were there from my beginning? They have vanished. I guess they too have become disillusioned.
As I sit here, I too have been trying to figure out were to go. The sidux forum is no longer fun, unless you enjoy watching someone get their butt kicked. It was an interesting soap opera. But now the party is over and it is time to move on. But where? To me it is more than just software, you are involved, you want to be involved, grow, learn and participate. With the current attitude, I cannot support the sidux group.
After reading several of h2's posts at the beginning of this year, I was trying to make a conscientious effort not to d-u every day. I waited for a month after KDE 4 came out and installed via smxi. I am glad I did, KDE had a learning curve, but everything is running and reasonably stable. I now have most of the software that I need running, so it is time to leave the keyboard alone. I am aiming for my next d-u to happen 2 weeks after KDE 4.3 hits sid, which I think is this week, then sit for 3 months. There are periods when things are stable and d-u at that point. This is still more management than I would like, for there are other projects to be done.
It is summer time in the northern hemisphere and I feel most of of the sidux devs have spent to much time behind a keyboard. They should get out and commune with mother nature. There is more to life than software
Many thanks for smxi.
Geordie
Back to top

May I call you H2 ? I have no doubt you know the inside of sidux like not many others do. I value your thoughts on the above and may I wish you the best on your future adventures.

Best Regards,
BakUp
Back to top

Thanks again for all your hard work, h2!
I was very sad to see the arguments on the sidux forum -- they really treated you so unfairly (understatement).
Unfortunately, they also mistreated Cathbard, Razberrie Tart, and others. I've been watching sidux irc a little and almost no one logs on (i can see why).

It's not been too long since there was an argument at PCLOS -- it's so sad when these things happen

I didn't post until now -- I just wanted to mention that someone asked on the kanotix forum about scripts for mplayer (of course a few words were censored in that post) and I responded, mentioning Kano's scripts first but also mentioning exoodles and smxi -- and my reference to exoodles and smxi was deleted, probably by Kano -- I was posting in the German part of the forum, and my German is limited -- here's Kano's reply

"aber ich lehne es ab, wenn hier Links zu sinnlosen Scripten gepostet werden"

rough translation is

"but I may object if links to senseless scripts are posted here"

sinnlosen roughly means senseless but I think the German word is not as derogatory as the English word

I enjoy mepislovers -- no arguments there (yet)
sabayon is an interesting distro -- they make gentoo so much easier to install and use

Mike
Back to top

Hi mdmarmer! Glad you like smxi -- seemingly as much as I do. Over time, there are few distro specific forums where arguments and break ups don't eventually happen. Two of them that are quite civil, and if they remain that way, just may break that trend, are the MEPIS Lovers Forum and the antiX forum.

MEPIS Lovers go out of their way to be helpful. They have set up many guidelines to ensure that the site remains helpful to MEPIS and antiX users. You can get help for either MEPIS or antiX there. You will find that a number of people using both forums are people who enjoy using smxi as well. Quite a few users, but mostly the ones who are enthusiasts, also use sidux, but there are many who simply want a stable system. Those tend to stick with SimplyMEPIS.

What I find nice and refreshing there is that people will try to be helpful, they will steer conversations in such a way to avoid creating conflicts and tensions, they are all about helping others out.

Like anything else, their site is not for everyone. I'd say they cater most to beginning to moderate users, those who mostly just want to have a solid system and a good experience. There are, however, plenty of topics that also cover more advanced use, and they organize the different topics very well. Out of all of the distribution specific sites that I have ever visited, MEPIS Lovers is, hands down, my favorite one.

As far as more social gatherings, which discuss both Linux distros and all kinds of other things, I have a collection of them. The USALUG is my preferred Linux User Group. I seldom seem able to actually attend a local group, so this online group is about as good as it gets.

For Linux newbies, who also like to talk about plenty of other things, Newbies Linux, created by a friend of mine named John Fish, who has been using Linux for about a decade, a lot of on line friendships are developed there. Linux is discussed plenty, but topics are frequently disorganized and people talk about whatever they want. It can be a fun place to visit.

Jim Lynch, who recently left Ziff Davis Media, has a couple of his own sites. The Collective is his site to talk about anything - and tease and harass one another - all in fun, not to be taken too seriously. Jim recently started another site called desktoplinuxreviews, and he has a forum for that site as well. It has already become a fun place to hang out.

The Manic Geeks Forum, Random Electrons, Raiden's Realm, and LinuxQuestions are more sites worth taking a look at. Different people have different interests, so poking around to find the one or ones you like best can become a source of good information, if you are looking around, or good places to chat if you just like to do that.

Of course, this place is a great place to get scripts, and there are certainly some people who can talk technology here too.
Back to top

mdmarmer, considering that basically everyone left kanotix overnight, en-masse, I'd say kano appears to still not have understood what happened, or why. That's unfortunate, since from what I understand he's actually a fairly nice guy in real life, if you can pull him out of his virtual world into the real world, away from his monitor etc. There's a lot of bruised ego in these stories, far more than is healthy.

Geordie, you more than most have pinned the true source of the problem: spending too much time on the keyboard, staring at a two dimensional screen, failing to understand that a virtual world is not real.

When I started to extract myself from the sidux debacle, I started to take fairly long bike rides/hikes up in our local park's hills, in nature, and that really helped me get a sense of what was real and what was nonsense. Sadly, not one of the sidux devs appears to have had the sense to do something along those lines, and they simply started creating an increasingly absurd virtual reality. To me this is a very depressing thing to be part of in any way, and I plan on never repeating my experience with virtual online based groups like sidux or kanotix again. If someone insists on hiding who they really are online in favor of some totally fictitious online personae, I now know that's a huge warning sign.

For those who like to think on larger scales, there's an interesting note: ALL linux, and subsequently, Debian, development occured on the upside of two massive economic bubbles, first the tech bubble, then the real estate bubble. Now that we are on the downside of these bubbles, and the economies of the world are contracting at quite rapid rates (except arguably China's), the question is this: what will a globally distributed development model that depended on lots of free time and excess money floating around look like when the luxury of spending 10-40 or more hours per week on volunteer, free work is simply non-viable?

I do not believe people in the free or open source virtual worlds are giving this problem much thought. They should. As I noted, I saw in the last Debian election a significant drop in active voting members.

Again, all major linux development occurred on the upswing of a massive credit fueled series of economic bubbles. This is now in a state of collapse. To expect a return to this false economy of debt run wealth is foolhardy, and I find the total avoidance of such questions in the open source world slightly odd.
Back to top

Getting out and smelling the roses is important, it really does help to put things in perspective. I spend most of my waking hours in front of a monitor or at least doing computer related work and sometimes I have to force myself to go for a walk in the garden or grab one of my bikes and disappear for a couple of hours. I always feel better for doing it.

I actually think the Linux world is undergoing a shift and we will see more adoption with the economic downturn and corporations will become even more involved in the development. There are both good and bad sides to this obviously and such funding could quickly come to an end and heads roll if it ceases to make economic sense to the shareholders.

Debian dances to a different drum beat than the other major distros, which I think is one of the things that makes it appealing to me. I see the gap between Debian and Ubuntu closing over time, I don't think Debian should mold itself to accommodate the upstart Ubuntu, but I think that will happen to a certain extent, in fact it is already happening in some areas. I would certainly like to see better interchange between the two, there would be less duplication effort.

Do you think that Debian may adopt Launchpad now it is open sourced? I know too little to really have an opinion on it.

UncleVom
Not my real name ;-)
Back to top

May a new guy comment? I arrived at sidux from Ubuntu because I thought sidux would furnish a good learning experience.

I decided to try sidux at the urging of my friend Masinick and I walked in just as the bar-room brawl broke out. Yikes! For an exercise in pure nastiness it has few peers I have seen on Linux forums.

Understand that I read through 9 pages of "stuff" not quite knowing who h2 was or what smxi was (both since corrected), but it was clear that h2 made more sense and someone -- or several someones -- really needed an attitude adjustment. And then they got into it with Masinick, who has always impressed me as both very bright and very civilized. What in the world ????

In fact sidux has been a good learning environment but I may well leave it for antiX or Mepis (or just straight Debian) in order to get away from the acidic sidux forum.

I'll stay here, but of course I won't talk about anything TechAdmin says I can't talk about. No sir. Gotta be careful or off I go into the cold, cruel world without even my Debian blankee ..........

Wonderful post h2, I had a good laugh and you made just the right point.
Back to top

Hey Bill, depending on how much disk space and how many partitions you can spare, don't ditch sidux just because a few of the people there have a control fetish. At the time I am writing this, it is still one of the fastest, if not THE fastest system I have - antiX might beat it, but if so, not by much.

What I do is I hedge my bets. Even when I knew nothing of the fireworks going on, I still have a policy of always having one or more very stable systems. If one, it is SimplyMEPIS. If two, it is SimplyMEPIS and Debian Stable (Lenny at the present time). Then I keep at least one small, fast one. antiX is my favorite for that - it is nice when I am on the road, because it has great wireless network manager apps - a choice of 3-4 of them (because for inexplicable reasons, some work for some people and others work for others). I have great results with ceni and wicd myself. Then I keep at least one cutting edge favorite. That has been sidux.

Just to show that I harbor no ill against sidux (but WILL avoid the forums), while I already had a couple instances installed, I put a fresh sidux 2009.02 on my repaired Dell Latitude D600 laptop, and even as I am writing this, I decided to replace the existing version of sidux on my laptop with the 2009.02 edition. I get a kick out of the red scorpion - and think of how it has been chewing on h2, Razberry Tart, Cathbard, and anyone else who thinks, as we do, that smxi and Harold's other tools are awesome.

I do plan on getting some other distros, though, and Canibix, something not even out yet, might be one worth watching - I've written about it elsewhere - check the forums you and I visit for more on that.

Clearly smxi can help tame the wild beast. I find it kind of ironic. A few years ago, I came to sidux via Debian Etch, which I hand upgraded to Sid, then brought in sidux.com repos, then added smxi. I was told that was non-standard, and I said, yes, I am well aware of that, I am just experimenting. Now that seems to be one of the main models in h2's latest works, so in that sense, I am almost glad that all of this happened. Also, Debian Stable, Debian Testing, and Debian Sid are well supported, plus we have support for sidux, Debian, and dmz liquorix kernels. That's a big upgrade, too.

In fact, the first things I am doing with my "new" sidux systems are: 1) Adding smxi, 2) Changing the default repo locations - I use debian.lcs.mit.edu - fast for me, 3) add the liquorix site and set the liquorix kernel as the default, 4) add a bunch of additional WM and DM, and presto, away I go with "Masnix", my own h2, smxi, sidux, Debian Sid, damentz custom version. Some day I may master or remaster my own, based on the best collective works (* best for ME - everyone's mileage varies - we have to get off our high horses on claiming X is best *).

Anyway, smxi and sidux is STILL a good combination as far as I am concerned. Though there are problems with recent kernels, sound and display support, I have yet to have any of them personally bite and affect my systems, so I stick with it. If and when that day comes, I still have LOTS of other options.
Back to top

Well, of course you are right. Trashing sidux amounts to shooting myself in the foot. OK, OK, the other foot .....

sidux runs really well and switching between multiple desktops (oh I are so smart!) is really interesting. Now that I have suspend/hibernate working it is becoming my preferred system. Believe me, given the reliability of Ubuntu 8.10 on this machine that is saying a lot.

sidux forum? Replaced on my Bookmarks Toolbar by this site.

But I really am quite curious about antiX, so I may have to put that on in order to see where it fits in all of this. First I have to clean up this sidux (I think I have more games than Toys R Us), but antiX is probably the next stop in my investigations.

Meanwhile Fedora 11 is sitting on another machine and I just have not had time to pay proper attention to it. sidux and fedora make an interesting comparison inasmuch as each of them is trying to "live on the edge" in order to push the technical envelope. So at some point fedora deserves a more careful look so that I can see how they go about it.
Back to top