It's a shame really. Sidux was a great distro, but without smxi it is fast becoming a distro without users. I'm still upgrading a 2 year old sidux install using smxi [& keeping kde3.5] and have had very few problems at all. A true testament to the great job done by techAdmin! Problem with sidux now is that the forum is like a ghost town. There is nobody there anymore. How am I supposed to learn anything that way? Also, without many users, how is techAdmin supposed to get any feedback about upcoming problems so smxi can be kept up to date in the future? It's this last thought that really concerns me. I know issues are to be brought to his attention here & that's great, but with a diminishing number of users it would seem the job of keeping smxi working properly must be getting more & more difficult.
Back to top

speaking of users, the warning team is getting lazy, which means they aren't watching for holds and alerts to post live in real time for users.

This is probably related to the ghost town nature of the sidux forums. But they still do have timely sid break reports, which I'll look at if someone lets me know about a problem, but I don't actually visit the sidux forums anymore unless I'm checking on an issue that has been reported.

Anyone who wants to join the smxi warning team and help keep up the warnings, send me a pm, all it takes is being willing to keep some kind of track of breaks, the idea was always that if 5 or 10 people tracked it more or less, one of them would tend to discover a break reasonably soon after it hits sid, then could post a hold / alert / warning.

Too bad about how sidux turned, but that's life, we have to move on to real things out here.
Back to top

i know pure sid is supposed to be dangerous, but i have been running it for a couple of months now - with gnome + smxi - and have had zero problems

actually, i think my kernel is a sidux kernel, but that is pretty much it

i keep waiting for my box to explode or something, but it just keeps working...
Back to top

I've just added the kdelibs holds and notice the python holds are still there. I don't have python-kde4 but I've updated python-gnome2 without any issues. Are these holds still relevant?
Back to top

python-gnome2 I removed, I didn't notice any other holds there though except the python-kde4. You guys are right about the sidux forums, that python thread hasn't had a comment in it since a week+ ago, yet the issue is not marked resolved.

That's sad, since among the positive things sidux did, but again, this requires a very large active user base, was to get a really good warning data set for sid breaks in their forums. As with smxi, once the user base declines below a certain critical active mass, this process becomes a bit less dynamic and reliable.
Back to top

hi

Normally after reading techAdmin's kind suggestion for ppl to pm him, I would jump at the chance....having been ignorarnt that was available in the past.

But I thought I should expose my issues ..ok I have more heh heh

issue 1.....I use smxi.....and in the past have had little or no troubles.
If I see a package is going to be removed....I wait a while rather than report it...........I am guessing this is now something you need?

issue 2.....maybe in another thread? forum users has indicated some issues with sid....and made suggestions of arch etc.

Having left Mandriva and gone to sidux/sid.....I have little fears of changing distro.


The Garage raised a vaild point on forum support and techAdmin mentions some laziness creeping into sidux dev spotting issues.

So I am not sure.....enough techpattern users will join the warning list to make a difference to sidux users

I am not sure sidux will be useful to me....which is my main point.

Maybe....if it does not offend too many ppl....techAdmin could indicate how many ppl give him warning at the moment pls?

I left Slackware when I realised Pat got sick and he was effectively the only maintainer........if smxi relies on too few respondants.....the issue becomes clearer in my mind what to do and what not to "continue" to do.

I want to be transparent in my potential offer to be a respondant or not.

regards

gordy aka aus9
Back to top

I don't know the active count, the actual list was about 8-10 people, but it needs to be trimmed and updated to see who is still active.

The more people on it the better it works.

smxi also embodies several years of sid fixes that now run automatically.

so it's far better just running alone than the early smxi was running with heavy active scripting going on on a daily basis, at least I think it is.

the backend thing is easy to do, it just takes reading a faq thingie and realizing if more people do it, it will work better.

But to return to the original topic of this thread, I fear I have deceived all of you. One of the following is I believe the actual answer to the question re evil and smxi:

1. I am the encarnation of the AntiChrist, and can produce nothing but evil, even when it is cynically disguised to sucker people into thinking it is good.
   
2. As above, I am pure evil, but now and then, I slip up and do something not purely evil, just mildly.
   
3. I am neither evil nor not evil, but smxi itself is pure evil, the spawn of Satan at best.
   
4. I am neither evil nor not evil, or rather, my evilness does not enter into the question, but smxi itself is evil, but possibly not the literal spawn of Satan.
   
5. smxi is so evil that it has contaminated all around it, including me, and, like the original sin, has brought ruin and degradation to all involved, me most of all.
   
6. smxi is just normally evil, and can or cannot, depending on various circumstances, such as your actions in past lives, if you kicked a kitten when you were younger, that type of thing, influence you to take the dark roads to the nether regions populated by the undead.
   
7. smxi is, like much of H.P. Lovecraft's work, an actual metaphor that can lead people into an endless spiral of damnation and eternal hellfire, ie, the work, if studied, actually pulls you into a non-metaphorical world of pure and hideous barbarism and putrid decay out of which no person can ever expect to extract themselves without incredibly good luck. At best.
   
8. smxi is in fact not at all a metaphore, but is in itself, by its existence, that very malignancy and pure decay out of which a putrid stench of long dead corpses stuck in airless catacombs, disturbed only by stagnant drips of death filled water from the chamber's slime covered ceiling, rises, filling the air and soul with a vague, hard to pinpoint, dread, making all those who approach quiver with unconscious terror and strange palpitations of heart.
   

I tend to believe it's the last case, but that might be simply because I am trying to absolve myself from the blame I have probably so richly merited, and want to revive my image in the light of a day I have probably no right to ever step into, spoiling as it would the flow of sunlight and life.

I hope that helps clarify the i ssue of smxi being evil.
Back to top

hmmm

smxi is product of your loins....(pronounced lines)

Therefore you fall to the first category.
Back to top

Well, this certainly explains those sounds I hear if I play the hard drives backwards.
Back to top

Well, I was feeding the warning list which made sense when Sid was updated once a day and mismatches lasted for a day or two.

I stopped it when Debian changed to updating Sid every six hours. My then Hungarian mirror lagged anyway, so with the new updating schedule I was hit when others reported *solved*.

Also: the automatic system of smxi became quite elaborate over time so most of the packages were on automatic hold in smxi anyway.

Another side effect was: I stopped my daily dist-upgrade frenz when Debian switched to four server updates a day.

That's the reason why I stopped, it had nothing to do with the smxi discussion at sidux.com. Maybe a side effect was, that those people who contributed to the warning system did not use smxi - they wanted to find packages out of sync.

I also am not sure if there were sidux devs in the warning group. Piper was there but I don't know if he's a dev.

hubi
Back to top