On Mon, Dec 03, 2001 at 10:50:51PM +0100, Ondrej Hurt wrote: > This points to a more general problem: I think that we should make > one "official" Hurd web site with all important information.
There is, http://hurd.gnu.org/. From this page, under "Installation" it mentions that it is possible to compile Hurd from source but not recommended. From there, it refers to a binary Hurd distribution. But since GNU doesn't do that project, it refers to here: http://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/ > Now all the information is spread across the web. Pick a random topic of interest. Look across the web. You'll find lots of information "spread across the web". That's life. Now, the reality of the situation is that GNU tries its best to collect Hurd-specific stuff on hurd.gnu.org while Debian tries to collect Debian GNU/Hurd stuff (such as the installation guide) on the aforementioned Debian site. But the developers of both these projects are really quite taxed out actually developing the Hurd to keep their pages up to date with the latest documents, guides and whatnot. > There are several more or > less useful webs with different Hurd texts, links, with more or less > up-to-date installation guides. Why should people interested in Hurd > surf these hidden sites for the best installation instructions and > other Hurd info or even dig it from google (like I did year ago) ? "Hidden"? These are works in progress by some of the contributers to both the Hurd and Debian GNU/Hurd projects. These guides were always intended to end up on the appropriate web sites. Only time and energy to maintain them in multiple places prevents that. Consider this: - the author of a guide for installing Debian GNU/Hurd may not be a Debian maintainer, or if he is, may have his hands full already with his present duties and have no time/energy for maintaining it in two places - maintaining a guide both on one's home page *and* on the Debian site now introduces overhead, so if the author himself is not up to the task, someone else in Debian needs to keep the guide in synch with "upstream" - the upstream guide may be changing from week to week as the design of the Hurd is still fluid, so this additional overhead may be deemed a waste of effort - both upstream and Debian might then agree that until things have "settled down" it is not worth the duplication of effort So, I'm sorry if this division of labour, and consequently division of work into several websites offends you, but I think all things considered, Hurd contributors do their best with what resources they have. > Wouldn't it be nice if _most_ of the information spread across web > was at ONE CENRAL PLACE known to everyone ? Shouldn't we make _one_ > "official" instalation guide which is up-to-date rather than to have > several personal (sometimes unmaintained) texts ? If anybody has > something to say he or she could contribute it to the "official" site > rather that keeping it at his/her personal site hidden to the world. Last I checked, nobody is filtering walfield.org. And it is commonly known both on irc and on this list (and others) that Neal's guide is the best. You use "hidden" in a strange sense. > I would make one big site from most of the stuff that is now > scattered. And all updates of materials used would take place there. [ snip ] > I would mix all the individual sites together. Why? GNU cannot and will not encompass all the things you envision should go into such a site, as not all of them align with their ideals. Debian, while more permissive about which sites it will link to and which information it will carry on its official web site is still narrowly focused on the Debian GNU/Hurd port, and therefore engaging in the construction of such a site will diffuse energies away from the porting effort itself. So this leaves us with "so who will make this site if it isn't GNU and it isn't Debian"? So far, nobody has stepped to the plate. > It would be useful especially for newcomers and all the people that > are interested in the Hurd in general. If Hurd had reached maturity by this point, I'd be tend to be more in agreement with you, but the fact remains that major hurdles in design are yet to be overcome. Now is not the time for a big publicity push to reach new audiences. The information you say is "hidden" is not. It is merely inconveniently placed at the moment. Be patient please, and this will soon be fixed. > If nobody should want to I could take care of it but I don't run any > web server. On which web server, then? No group that I know of has the high profile regarding Hurd that either GNU or Debian do. I cannot think of another appropriate place to host an "official, central" web site about Hurd. I think you'll find as the Debian GNU/Hurd port matures, more useful stuff will materialize on the Debian site, and it will be kept up-to-date as well. But with things in as much flux as they are now, you'll just have to weather through the inconvenience of access to multiple web sites (which is a very small inconvenience, when measured against the other inconveniences of actually running a Hurd box or developing for it at the moment). Regards, Ben -- nSLUG http://www.nslug.ns.ca [EMAIL PROTECTED] Debian http://www.debian.org [EMAIL PROTECTED] [ pgp key fingerprint = 7F DA 09 4B BA 2C 0D E0 1B B1 31 ED C6 A9 39 4F ] [ gpg key fingerprint = 395C F3A4 35D3 D247 1387 2D9E 5A94 F3CA 0B27 13C8 ]
