On 09/28/2003 04:19:44 AM, Warly wrote:
- What was wrong in 9.2 development process?
Too much change to kernel and drak tools during the rc phase. This happens every time. What were the weakest points of 9.1? Kernel and drak tools I'd say. Let's hope it's not the case for 9.2.
- What could we do to improve 9.3/10.0 development.
1. Get more constant daily cooker testers, especially who use cooker as a desktop. While the constant bitching and moaning of cooker folks can get a bit annoying, it keeps us on our toes, finds bugs more quickly, and reduces the work required during beta season. Personally, I need more people to test my contrib apps. I believe that publicising the wiki will attract more possible cooker users.
2. Get more contibutors. If I wasn't maintaining like 200 RPMs, I'm sure I could do a better job of it.
- What should we do to improve the Wiki.
1. Clean it up. Make it easier to navigate. It is currently hard to find things. Find someone who does this kind of thing for a living, and have them redo the layout/linking/menus/etc.
2. Tell the press about it. Link to it. Advertise it. I feel that the wiki's most important purpose will be to tell potential new cooker helpers that it's fun and easy to help out.
- What could we do, as a community, to increase the acceptance of mandrakelinux?
Help us work on the live CD's maybe? Knoppix has done VERY well, and it has attracted a lot of people to linux, and to debian in particular. A few specialized Mandrake-based live CDs could be a HUGE marketing boom, since advertising this kind of thing is essentially free (distrowatch, pclinuxonline, slashdot, etc.). Problem is, we will need mirror space/ bandwidth, and some sort of unofficial name/connection to Mandrake.
- How to have more contributors?
1. Publicise the wiki.
2. Update the cooker page on www.mandrake.com... it way out of date.
3. Make a clear list of who maintains what, let us change it ourselves, and keep it up to date. Make it easier to know what has to be done, who's working on what, and who to report to as a new packager/translator/artist/whatever.
4. Have someone dedicated to organizing the volunteers. Lenny and Warly kinda share this now, but they are both too busy too separate from each other.
5. Document the process better.
6. Press, press, press. Can we get more press?
And anything related to the mandrakelinux distro.
Don't slack off on keeping it easy to use. The drak tools are key, but they seem to be neglected lately. Stay on top of hardware detection and new drivers (in other words, follow Thomas Backlund's every move). Redo some of the shoddier tools (draksound, drakfont...). XFdrake used to have more options... bring them back. Can we make it easier to install NVidia drivers? Libranet does, and they are based on free software only as well. Drakconnect has sucked for a long time. Make sure it's easy to setup wireless networking.
Rethink the way the kernels are maintained. Communication must improve with the 'kernel team'. Having kernels in contribs sucks; can we avoid it?
Make contribs more visible. When people want RPMs, they still go to rpmfind. net or whatever. Let's fix that. Who cares if contribs are unofficial! At least let people know they exist. We work hard on them, and people really want them.
Make networking setup a priority. Make sure it's painless for a semi-newbie to set up a cups server/client, a samba server/client, work on ldap, appletalk, whatever. Buchan can preach about this better than I.
Okay, that's enough.
By the way, 9.2 will kick ass, the community-oriented development model is working very well, Mandrake Linux has a bright future, and props to everyone who worked on 9.2 (employees and volunteers alike).
Austin
--
Austin Acton
Synthetic Organic Chemist, Teaching Assistant, Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Chemistry, York University, Toronto
MandrakeLinux Volunteer Developer, homepage: www.groundstate.ca