Re: [gentoo-dev] LWE/Boston 2006 summary

[Mike Frysinger]

On Saturday 08 April 2006 00:36, Greg KH wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 07, 2006 at 10:52:38PM -0500, Lance Albertson wrote:
> > I used this [1] for the last LWE I went to. Its an OO2 drawing file.
> > Edit to your liking (I took out my real numbers).
> >
> > [1] http://dev.gentoo.org/~ramereth/misc/gentoo-buscard2.odg
>
> Looks great, I was just looking for this today after seeing brix's card.
> Did you print out the cards yourself or have a company do it for you?

one suggestion i got was to go to like staples and buy the avery business card 
pages ... OOo.org generally has templates for avery products and if they 
dont, you can usually download them

of course, the quality then depends on your printer ...
-mike
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] LWE/Boston 2006 summary

[Lance Albertson]

Greg KH wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 07, 2006 at 10:52:38PM -0500, Lance Albertson wrote:
>> Mike Frysinger wrote:
>>> On Friday 07 April 2006 19:39, Roy Marples wrote:
> ... some just want a generic Gentoo business card and the
> ones we had were great, but when you get into real conversations, the guy
> wants to follow up later with *you*
 Quite an important point, but to have that fuzzy corporate feel then the
 cards should look the same across the Gentoo devs at the event. Maybe the
 organiser could organise some cards?
>>> we have a template already ... it's floating around somewhere
>> I used this [1] for the last LWE I went to. Its an OO2 drawing file.
>> Edit to your liking (I took out my real numbers).
>>
>> [1] http://dev.gentoo.org/~ramereth/misc/gentoo-buscard2.odg
> 
> Looks great, I was just looking for this today after seeing brix's card.
> Did you print out the cards yourself or have a company do it for you?

I went to staples to got it on cheap card stock. I created a PDF, handed
them a thumbdrive and they opened it up. The only thing is, the size of
it may be a little off. And make sure you embed the font :)

-- 
Lance Albertson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Gentoo Infrastructure | Operations Manager

---
GPG Public Key:  
Key fingerprint: 0423 92F3 544A 1282 5AB1  4D07 416F A15D 27F4 B742

ramereth/irc.freenode.net



signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: [gentoo-dev] adding a code of conduct

[Mike Frysinger]

On Tuesday 04 April 2006 10:42, Grant Goodyear wrote:
> Of course, the pretty thorough hashing that this current proposal is
> getting pretty much means that this time is much different than the
> last, and that I should probably just shut up now.

dont worry, i'm pretty sure just about everyone reads what you have to write 
as it's always well intentioned, thought out, and generally a good read :)
-mike
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] LWE/Boston 2006 summary

[Greg KH]

On Fri, Apr 07, 2006 at 10:52:38PM -0500, Lance Albertson wrote:
> Mike Frysinger wrote:
> > On Friday 07 April 2006 19:39, Roy Marples wrote:
> >>> ... some just want a generic Gentoo business card and the
> >>> ones we had were great, but when you get into real conversations, the guy
> >>> wants to follow up later with *you*
> >> Quite an important point, but to have that fuzzy corporate feel then the
> >> cards should look the same across the Gentoo devs at the event. Maybe the
> >> organiser could organise some cards?
> > 
> > we have a template already ... it's floating around somewhere
> 
> I used this [1] for the last LWE I went to. Its an OO2 drawing file.
> Edit to your liking (I took out my real numbers).
> 
> [1] http://dev.gentoo.org/~ramereth/misc/gentoo-buscard2.odg

Looks great, I was just looking for this today after seeing brix's card.
Did you print out the cards yourself or have a company do it for you?

thanks,

greg k-h
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] LWE/Boston 2006 summary

[Lance Albertson]

Mike Frysinger wrote:
> On Friday 07 April 2006 19:39, Roy Marples wrote:
>>> ... some just want a generic Gentoo business card and the
>>> ones we had were great, but when you get into real conversations, the guy
>>> wants to follow up later with *you*
>> Quite an important point, but to have that fuzzy corporate feel then the
>> cards should look the same across the Gentoo devs at the event. Maybe the
>> organiser could organise some cards?
> 
> we have a template already ... it's floating around somewhere

I used this [1] for the last LWE I went to. Its an OO2 drawing file.
Edit to your liking (I took out my real numbers).

[1] http://dev.gentoo.org/~ramereth/misc/gentoo-buscard2.odg

-- 
Lance Albertson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Gentoo Infrastructure | Operations Manager

---
GPG Public Key:  
Key fingerprint: 0423 92F3 544A 1282 5AB1  4D07 416F A15D 27F4 B742

ramereth/irc.freenode.net



signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: [gentoo-dev] LWE/Boston 2006 summary

[Robin H. Johnson]

On Fri, Apr 07, 2006 at 07:07:36PM -0400, Mike Frysinger wrote:
> - lots of interest in kickstart-like features in our installer ... people 
> want 
> to throw install media into a fresh box, boot it, and come back later and 
> have it be done/usuable
The 'CLI' frontend I wrote ~9 months ago worked back then for completely
automated installs - just feed it URLs to your two profiles (client profile and
install profile) and come back later. Some wrapping is needed to
distribute the profiles nicely still (I netbooted to an env with GLI).
(Disclaimer: I changed employment, and haven't personally used it for ~8
months now).

> - we were invited to a convention mysql hosts (forgot the name)
MySQLUC perhaps?
I'll be there representing phpMyAdmin.

-- 
Robin Hugh Johnson
E-Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED]
GnuPG FP   : 11AC BA4F 4778 E3F6 E4ED  F38E B27B 944E 3488 4E85


pgpCa5TvkR7M0.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Re: [gentoo-dev] LWE/Boston 2006 summary

[Mike Frysinger]

On Friday 07 April 2006 19:39, Roy Marples wrote:
> > ... some just want a generic Gentoo business card and the
> > ones we had were great, but when you get into real conversations, the guy
> > wants to follow up later with *you*
>
> Quite an important point, but to have that fuzzy corporate feel then the
> cards should look the same across the Gentoo devs at the event. Maybe the
> organiser could organise some cards?

we have a template already ... it's floating around somewhere

another thing for the events team to help collect in one place though
-mike
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] LWE/Boston 2006 summary

[Mike Frysinger]

On Friday 07 April 2006 19:38, Mark Loeser wrote:
> Mike Frysinger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said:
> > - quad g5 ppc64 running e17 and burning livecds for people on the fly (by
> > far the i686/installer was the most popular but amd64 was pretty strong
> > too ... we gave away prob like 8 ppc and 4 ppc64 cds)
>
> It would probably be good to bring a crapload of livecds with us next
> time, maybe the ones from cafepress so they look all cool?  And CD
> sleeves/cases would be awesome so people don't have to just throw them
> in their bag.

ideally we'd be able to use some of the donations to help fund this sort of 
thing ... otherwise, i'll just have to make sure i buy a spindle before LWE 
(reminds me, i need to get one now to replace the ones we used heh)
-mike
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] LWE/Boston 2006 summary

[Mark Loeser]

Mike Frysinger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said:
> - the dual core amd64 demo machine was running XGL and some movies like FF7 
> Advent Children (due later this month in the US btw!) ... this was such a 
> pimp demo, it caught everyone's attention ... and the best part was, opensuse 
> was across from us with nothing to show but free hats ... so bad when we 
> snipe their tech demos and get the credit ;x

Yea, people loved the spinning cube.

> - quad g5 ppc64 running e17 and burning livecds for people on the fly (by far 
> the i686/installer was the most popular but amd64 was pretty strong too ... 
> we gave away prob like 8 ppc and 4 ppc64 cds)

It would probably be good to bring a crapload of livecds with us next
time, maybe the ones from cafepress so they look all cool?  And CD
sleeves/cases would be awesome so people don't have to just throw them
in their bag.

> - lots of interest in kickstart-like features in our installer ... people 
> want 
> to throw install media into a fresh box, boot it, and come back later and 
> have it be done/usuable

A lot of people love the installer and said they have been looking
forward to it.  I was surprised how many people were into it.

> - devs need to make personal Gentoo business cards cause when people ask for 
> *your* card, you look retarded when you say you have none (i know i felt 
> retarded ;x) ... some just want a generic Gentoo business card and the ones 
> we had were great, but when you get into real conversations, the guy wants to 
> follow up later with *you*

Yea, I felt like an idiot too and will be making some for the next event
I go to.  Could someone send me that Gentoo business card template?

> - in general, we had a pretty strong showing; in devs (i lub you all), in 
> users, and in people who had heard of us but were interested in learing more 
> or why we were "better" than say Ubuntu/Fedora/etc... (their words ... it's 
> best imo if you take the approach of how our distro *differs* rather than 
> falling into how we're "better" than others ... it's up to the user to figure 
> out which distro is better *for them*)

No one really seems to know how we worked, and were surprised that we
are entirely volunteer based and don't get paid.  They seemed to respect
us even more once they heard about that.  The people that walked up to us
and just told us, "You guys rock!" were awesome too :)


Just my two cents, :)

-- 
Mark Loeser   -   Gentoo Developer (cpp gcc-porting qa toolchain x86)
email -   halcy0n AT gentoo DOT org
  mark AT halcy0n DOT com
web   -   http://dev.gentoo.org/~halcy0n/
  http://www.halcy0n.com


pgpRm51CtS8bH.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Re: [gentoo-dev] LWE/Boston 2006 summary

[Roy Marples]

On Saturday 08 April 2006 00:07, Mike Frysinger wrote:
> - devs need to make personal Gentoo business cards cause when people ask
> for *your* card, you look retarded when you say you have none (i know i
> felt retarded ;x)

Meh, you just look retarded :P

> ... some just want a generic Gentoo business card and the 
> ones we had were great, but when you get into real conversations, the guy
> wants to follow up later with *you*

Quite an important point, but to have that fuzzy corporate feel then the cards 
should look the same across the Gentoo devs at the event. Maybe the organiser 
could organise some cards?

FWIW, after 6 years at my present company I got my first ever box of business 
cards with my name on em. Wow. I didn't take them out  on company business 
because I hardly ever do, but the one time I did I looked a right tit for not 
having one!


>
> - in general, we had a pretty strong showing; in devs (i lub you all), in
> users, and in people who had heard of us but were interested in learing
> more or why we were "better" than say Ubuntu/Fedora/etc... (their words ...
> it's best imo if you take the approach of how our distro *differs* rather
> than falling into how we're "better" than others ... it's up to the user to
> figure out which distro is better *for them*)

Shows our users are mor intelligent than most :)

> that's all i got, i'm sure the other guys that were there can chime in with
> their experiences (i almost got rajiv to ride piggy back ... maybe next
> year) -mike

Sounds like you had a blast! How about a nice writeup for GWN?

Thanks

-- 
Roy Marples <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Gentoo Linux Developer
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

[gentoo-dev] LWE/Boston 2006 summary

[Mike Frysinger]

here's a big old brain dump of all the fun stuff that went down this year

- the dual core amd64 demo machine was running XGL and some movies like FF7 
Advent Children (due later this month in the US btw!) ... this was such a 
pimp demo, it caught everyone's attention ... and the best part was, opensuse 
was across from us with nothing to show but free hats ... so bad when we 
snipe their tech demos and get the credit ;x

- quad g5 ppc64 running e17 and burning livecds for people on the fly (by far 
the i686/installer was the most popular but amd64 was pretty strong too ... 
we gave away prob like 8 ppc and 4 ppc64 cds)

- laptop hooked up to a projector showing off the graphical installer (props 
by the way to the guys who write this thing ... the 2006.0 version is really 
quite damn mature)

- lots of interest in kickstart-like features in our installer ... people want 
to throw install media into a fresh box, boot it, and come back later and 
have it be done/usuable

- x86/amd64 usage was quite common

- bunch of ppc/laptop guys that JoseJX was fixing bugs for :)

- people were interested in expanding our Gentoo/binary package support ... 
basically, more up-to-date and more expanded GRP stuff

- i got one guy with a room of ia64 workstations

- chatted with another about s390/s390x

- bunch of interest in Gentoo on arm based PDA's

- random cross-compiling stuff with mips targets (embedded and SGI)

- people wanted to buy shirts/hats ... they werent so interested in going 
online, they wanted to buy from us right then and there ... we had to explain 
that our NFP status is still in the air and we cant take the chance of 
screwing up

- unisys' sound system caught on fire on the first day, it was pretty cool

- amd64 marketting guys love us long time ... first they gave us amd lanyards 
to replace the intel ones, then they were redirecting people who had 
questions about gaming on linux and such to our booth :)

- the i-hydra guys had this sick ass machine that they wanted us to install 
Gentoo on for demoing at LWE (chris can fill in these details cause he did it 
with the graphical installer)

- people like Gentoo stickers

- the information cards that cshields sent us were friggin awesome

- devs need to make personal Gentoo business cards cause when people ask for 
*your* card, you look retarded when you say you have none (i know i felt 
retarded ;x) ... some just want a generic Gentoo business card and the ones 
we had were great, but when you get into real conversations, the guy wants to 
follow up later with *you*

- in general, we had a pretty strong showing; in devs (i lub you all), in 
users, and in people who had heard of us but were interested in learing more 
or why we were "better" than say Ubuntu/Fedora/etc... (their words ... it's 
best imo if you take the approach of how our distro *differs* rather than 
falling into how we're "better" than others ... it's up to the user to figure 
out which distro is better *for them*)

- the Debian booth was missing, quite sad :(

- the KDE booth had a friggin Jacksons Chameleon ... he was so cool looking

- we were invited to a convention O'Reilly hosts (forgot the name)

- we were invited to a convention mysql hosts (forgot the name)

- same general feeling as we've seen over time ... people mention they use 
Gentoo in corporate envs, but more hidden in the background and no real 
public acknowledgment that they do it ... mostly because we cant offer any 
sort of corporate support like RedHat/SuSE can

- LWE this year had more business suite types that just "dont get" 
opensource ... so devs should be prepared to meet people and try to explain 
that we give away everything ... real open source does not involve free 
crippleware (like the cruel joke Oracle plays with their "express" version), 
we do this for fun, and we dont actually get paid to do this stuff ... but 
dont feel bad if you cant get the message through, some suits will never "get 
it"

that's all i got, i'm sure the other guys that were there can chime in with 
their experiences (i almost got rajiv to ride piggy back ... maybe next year)
-mike
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] adding a code of conduct

[Mike Frysinger]

On Tuesday 04 April 2006 13:54, Aron Griffis wrote:
> Vapier wrote:  [Tue Apr 04 2006, 01:12:28AM EDT]
> > the idea is that it's common sense and to need to vote on something
> > like this seems asinine
>
> It might seem that way, but something that is voted on and accepted
> has credibility.  Something that is simply posted as "common sense"
> does not.

but something that is accepted by everyone rather than being handed down from 
a much smaller group of people has more credibility imho

the point of this thread was to see what everyone thought and getting it to 
the point where everyone is happy, not just the people who would be voting
-mike
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] adding a code of conduct

[Mike Frysinger]

On Tuesday 04 April 2006 15:34, Carsten Lohrke wrote:
> On Tuesday 04 April 2006 06:52, Mike Frysinger wrote:
> > sorry, those last two paragraphs are covered elsewhere between infra and
> > evrel ... so the document should be considered without those last two
> > paragraphs
>
> This is what I'd like to see clarified. To me, only a decision of the
> Council may lead to such a "suspension", as it is the relevant _elected_
> entity. And I hereby request to add a paragraph at least, stating exactly
> this.

as i said, this is an unrelated topic to the code of conduct

if you wish to learn more about the devrel/infra interaction stuff, feel free 
to check out their meeting logs
-mike
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo theming during bootup

[Mike Frysinger]

On Friday 07 April 2006 10:31, Carsten Lohrke wrote:
> Still, the basic question is: Why!? There's no benefit for the user, who
> will choose whatever theming he wants anyways. Imho it's superfluous and
> therefore wasted time.

highly suspect statements

these states are all quite common ... trying to make some kind of supposition 
as to which is the most common is a waste of time

in my experience, from the many forms of Gentoo communication (real life, 
mailing lists, irc, forums, etc...):
 - quite common for people to be lazy and just use the default
 - quite common for people to change the default to their own thing
 - quite common for people to use just Gentoo themes where they can

as long as people include Gentoo themes in packages for people to select, we 
should have pretty good coverage of everyone's needs
-mike
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo theming during bootup

[Krzysiek Pawlik]

Donnie Berkholz wrote:
>> can you post the .xpm for use with grub-0.xx for me to check out ?
> Don't have one designed yet, this is all still in the planning stages.

There's one available at http://www.schultz-net.dk/grub.html (scroll
down pass the Debian/Slackware ;) ).

-- 
Krzysiek Pawlik  key id: 0xBC51
desktop-misc, desktop-dock, x86, java, apache...



signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo theming during bootup

[Donnie Berkholz]

Mike Frysinger wrote:
> On Thursday 06 April 2006 22:26, Donnie Berkholz wrote:
>> I've got some back-burner work on unified Gentoo theming for grub,
>> bootsplash, gdm/kdm [1]. (IOW, I spent a day doing research 2 months ago
>> and forgot about it until yesterday.) It's currently possible to have a
>> really awesome bootup, but it's quite a bit of work to configure and I
>> want to make it trivially easy.
> 
> can you post the .xpm for use with grub-0.xx for me to check out ?

Don't have one designed yet, this is all still in the planning stages.

But gimp can trivially take any image, reduce it to 15 colors using a
smart algorithm and save as xpm so feel free to use whatever you want
till then.

>> I also share the opinion that we shouldn't go against upstream wishes
>> IRT branding, but if upstream encourages some fairly subtle branding
>> along with keeping their name visible, I'm for it.
> 
> grub-0.xx has no upstream theme ... unless you count like white text on a 
> black background "a theme"

Exactly, that's the point. Places without themes are great places to
provide ours, since we aren't really overriding anything.

Thanks,
Donnie



signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo theming during bootup

[Mike Frysinger]

On Thursday 06 April 2006 22:26, Donnie Berkholz wrote:
> I've got some back-burner work on unified Gentoo theming for grub,
> bootsplash, gdm/kdm [1]. (IOW, I spent a day doing research 2 months ago
> and forgot about it until yesterday.) It's currently possible to have a
> really awesome bootup, but it's quite a bit of work to configure and I
> want to make it trivially easy.

can you post the .xpm for use with grub-0.xx for me to check out ?

> I also share the opinion that we shouldn't go against upstream wishes
> IRT branding, but if upstream encourages some fairly subtle branding
> along with keeping their name visible, I'm for it.

grub-0.xx has no upstream theme ... unless you count like white text on a 
black background "a theme"
-mike
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Thomas de Grenier de Latour]

On Fri, 7 Apr 2006 12:48:12 -0400,
Michael Cummings <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> On Friday 07 April 2006 11:15, Thomas de Grenier de Latour wrote:
> > On Fri, 7 Apr 2006 10:21:54 +0100,
> >
> > I would also suggest creation of a gentoo-dev-help@ mailing-list.
> 
> isn't that what the gentoo mailing list is for (not -dev, but the
> real [EMAIL PROTECTED]). 

No idea.  I can't find any archive on gmane or marc, and it's not
listed on www.g.o/main/en/lists.xml, so i really don't have a clue
about this ML.  And gentoo+subscribe@ gives SMTP error, so i'm not 
even sure it still exists at all (and is public).

--
TGL.
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Alexandre Buisse]

On Fri, Apr  7, 2006 at 18:07:14 +0200, Christel Dahlskjaer wrote:

> What Alec said, however, this would require that we have interested
> developers who would subscribe and be active when they can, to avoid it
> becoming another -user. 

Well, even if it's a small percentage of the devs, #gentoo-dev-help is
usually well populated and it is very rare that people don't get
answers to their question. I also think that a lot of people who will
subsribe will be power users who already wrote ebuilds and have some
experience, so should be able to address at least some of the questions.

I add my vote for the creation of this mailing-list.

/Alexandre
-- 
Hi, I'm a .signature virus! Please copy me in your ~/.signature.


pgpiP9nbKvjRL.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Re: [gentoo-dev] Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Michael Cummings]

On Friday 07 April 2006 11:15, Thomas de Grenier de Latour wrote:
> On Fri, 7 Apr 2006 10:21:54 +0100,
>
> I would also suggest creation of a gentoo-dev-help@ mailing-list.

Not to be a wet blanket (I'm all for making current users happier and 
encouraging new folks to take the bold step) but isn't that what the gentoo 
mailing list is for (not -dev, but the real [EMAIL PROTECTED]). Granted, not 
all devs are on there (I know I'm not), but when I was on there I remember it 
being the kind of place you could ask those questions.

just my two pieces of copper,

~mcummings


pgpqTrbahjMaH.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Re: [gentoo-dev] Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Christel Dahlskjaer]

On Fri, 2006-04-07 at 11:42 -0400, Alec Warner wrote:
> Thomas de Grenier de Latour wrote:
> > On Fri, 7 Apr 2006 10:21:54 +0100,
> > Ciaran McCreesh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > 
> > 
> >>* If we're looking to increase the flow of end users -> super users ->
> >>developers, perhaps we should focus more upon improving development
> >>tools or development documentation.
> > 
> > 
> > I would also suggest creation of a gentoo-dev-help@ mailing-list.
> > Something similar to what, i guess, the homonym IRC chan is, but for
> > people who don't like IRC.  Maybe i'm wrong and that's not the
> > intention, but after 4 years of reading on gentoo-dev@ (yeah, today is
> > anniversary of my subscription - yik, that's more than 36K emails in
> > this maildir) , my feeling is that it's not the right place for users
> > to ask technical questions about development/contributing (ebuilds
> > writing, etc.).  It's not that i fear this ML, but i see it mainly as a
> > place for dev-to-dev communication on general/important topics (gleps
> > discussion, common sense reminders, random flamewars, etc.), and thus i
> > see the occasional "How {c,sh}ould i do something?" messages about
> > small details as somehow off-topic, and i tend to avoid posting some.
> > 
> > Seeing how more numerous this kind of messages are on "Portage &
> > Programming" forums, or on gentoo-user*@ lists, i guess i'm not the
> > only user with such feeling.  But forums or users MLs are not really
> > satisfactory for non-obvious questions, because the devs/users rate
> > there is too low.
> > 
> > So, what i usualy do when i'm not sure about something, in an ebuild i
> > wrote for instance, is to post  it as-is on bugs.g.o, with the
> > questions left open in my report. But they will stay unanswered if
> > the bug falls in the "maintainer-wanted@" oubliettes, or if the
> > assignee is too short in time to explain me why he choosed one solution
> > rather than an other. And even if i get my answer, it will be from a
> > single dev, whereas others might have had a different views on the
> > topic.
> > 
> > Finally, i think such a mainling list could give good hints on what to
> > improve in the documentation. Some legitimate questions may point to
> > real lacks in the documentation, and some answers could be starting
> > point for new chunks to add to the official or unofficial handbooks.
> > 
> > --
> > TGL.
> 
> +1, plus the ML is archived unlike IRC, and users can search archives
> and we could more easily compile a FAQ about ebuild writing and such.

What Alec said, however, this would require that we have interested
developers who would subscribe and be active when they can, to avoid it
becoming another -user. 

But yes, I like that idea too! Thank you.


-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Alec Warner]

Thomas de Grenier de Latour wrote:
> On Fri, 7 Apr 2006 10:21:54 +0100,
> Ciaran McCreesh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
> 
>>* If we're looking to increase the flow of end users -> super users ->
>>developers, perhaps we should focus more upon improving development
>>tools or development documentation.
> 
> 
> I would also suggest creation of a gentoo-dev-help@ mailing-list.
> Something similar to what, i guess, the homonym IRC chan is, but for
> people who don't like IRC.  Maybe i'm wrong and that's not the
> intention, but after 4 years of reading on gentoo-dev@ (yeah, today is
> anniversary of my subscription - yik, that's more than 36K emails in
> this maildir) , my feeling is that it's not the right place for users
> to ask technical questions about development/contributing (ebuilds
> writing, etc.).  It's not that i fear this ML, but i see it mainly as a
> place for dev-to-dev communication on general/important topics (gleps
> discussion, common sense reminders, random flamewars, etc.), and thus i
> see the occasional "How {c,sh}ould i do something?" messages about
> small details as somehow off-topic, and i tend to avoid posting some.
> 
> Seeing how more numerous this kind of messages are on "Portage &
> Programming" forums, or on gentoo-user*@ lists, i guess i'm not the
> only user with such feeling.  But forums or users MLs are not really
> satisfactory for non-obvious questions, because the devs/users rate
> there is too low.
> 
> So, what i usualy do when i'm not sure about something, in an ebuild i
> wrote for instance, is to post  it as-is on bugs.g.o, with the
> questions left open in my report. But they will stay unanswered if
> the bug falls in the "maintainer-wanted@" oubliettes, or if the
> assignee is too short in time to explain me why he choosed one solution
> rather than an other. And even if i get my answer, it will be from a
> single dev, whereas others might have had a different views on the
> topic.
> 
> Finally, i think such a mainling list could give good hints on what to
> improve in the documentation. Some legitimate questions may point to
> real lacks in the documentation, and some answers could be starting
> point for new chunks to add to the official or unofficial handbooks.
> 
> --
> TGL.

+1, plus the ML is archived unlike IRC, and users can search archives
and we could more easily compile a FAQ about ebuild writing and such.

-Alec Warner

-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Thomas de Grenier de Latour]

On Fri, 7 Apr 2006 10:21:54 +0100,
Ciaran McCreesh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> * If we're looking to increase the flow of end users -> super users ->
> developers, perhaps we should focus more upon improving development
> tools or development documentation.

I would also suggest creation of a gentoo-dev-help@ mailing-list.
Something similar to what, i guess, the homonym IRC chan is, but for
people who don't like IRC.  Maybe i'm wrong and that's not the
intention, but after 4 years of reading on gentoo-dev@ (yeah, today is
anniversary of my subscription - yik, that's more than 36K emails in
this maildir) , my feeling is that it's not the right place for users
to ask technical questions about development/contributing (ebuilds
writing, etc.).  It's not that i fear this ML, but i see it mainly as a
place for dev-to-dev communication on general/important topics (gleps
discussion, common sense reminders, random flamewars, etc.), and thus i
see the occasional "How {c,sh}ould i do something?" messages about
small details as somehow off-topic, and i tend to avoid posting some.

Seeing how more numerous this kind of messages are on "Portage &
Programming" forums, or on gentoo-user*@ lists, i guess i'm not the
only user with such feeling.  But forums or users MLs are not really
satisfactory for non-obvious questions, because the devs/users rate
there is too low.

So, what i usualy do when i'm not sure about something, in an ebuild i
wrote for instance, is to post  it as-is on bugs.g.o, with the
questions left open in my report. But they will stay unanswered if
the bug falls in the "maintainer-wanted@" oubliettes, or if the
assignee is too short in time to explain me why he choosed one solution
rather than an other. And even if i get my answer, it will be from a
single dev, whereas others might have had a different views on the
topic.

Finally, i think such a mainling list could give good hints on what to
improve in the documentation. Some legitimate questions may point to
real lacks in the documentation, and some answers could be starting
point for new chunks to add to the official or unofficial handbooks.

--
TGL.
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo theming during bootup

[Carsten Lohrke]

On Friday 07 April 2006 15:28, Simon Stelling wrote:
> He said he wanted to make it easy, not forcing it. Or am I mistaken?

How do you want not to enforce it? The last time¹ someone came up with 
a "branding" use flag, some were in favor of, some against it.

Still, the basic question is: Why!? There's no benefit for the user, who will 
choose whatever theming he wants anyways. Imho it's superfluous and therefore 
wasted time. I for one favor to stick with that, what upstream provides.


Carsten


[1] http://tinyurl.com/o7dkc


pgp4mnjbnG3MU.pgp
Description: PGP signature

[gentoo-dev] Re: Gentoo theming during bootup

[Duncan]

Simon Stelling posted <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, excerpted below,  on
Fri, 07 Apr 2006 15:28:46 +0200:

> Carsten Lohrke wrote:
>> On Friday 07 April 2006 04:26, Donnie Berkholz wrote:
>>> I also share the opinion that we shouldn't go against upstream wishes
>>> IRT branding, but if upstream encourages some fairly subtle branding
>>> along with keeping their name visible, I'm for it.
>> 
>> There's a thread in gentoo-core from 2004 with regards to branding and
>> the outcome was to refrain from it. I don't have a problem, when we do
>> this for live iso's, but generally I strongly dislike it. Users don't
>> choose their distro because of it, so it's just unnecessary bloat. And
>> given that we tout Gentoo a meta distribution, encouraging others to
>> build on it, there's no point forcing them to have to clean out the
>> Gentoo brand, before they actually can use it.
> 
> He said he wanted to make it easy, not forcing it. Or am I mistaken?

Something like a metapackage that deps on gentoo-xcursor and similar
packages, maybe?  That would unify installation/merging.  Include an
emerge --config script that in turn unifies the configuration?

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman in
http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_interview.html


-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Christel Dahlskjaer]

On Fri, 2006-04-07 at 14:43 +0100, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> On Fri, 07 Apr 2006 15:19:35 +0100 Christel Dahlskjaer
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> | So, from a developer pov Ciaran; if we could come up with some way of
> | keeping up to date with what you guys do (without eating up any of
> | your time or getting in your way) and then keep the masses informed,
> | would that be more attractive? Obviously making sure that information
> | is kept to a not exactly bare minimum, but presented in such a way
> | that it doesn't in any way halt progress or potential change of
> | direction? 
> 
> If it's information on things that are fine being public but aren't
> simply because of lack of time to write them up, then that would be
> great. If it's things that're being kept quiet purposefully, however,
> then the last thing we want is to start telling people things.

Yes, I agree with that entirely. If things are being kept quiet for a
reason we will have no wish to attempt to push for these to be made
public before the decision to do so is reached by the development teams
in question. 

> 
> | > Hence why some of us don't announce non-trivial projects on public
> | > mailing lists, and instead keep any discussion on -core and sekrit
> | > IRC channels. That's how what's now known as eselect was developed,
> | > and it turned out far nicer than the XML-laden aborted gentoo-config
> | > project precisely because of the lack of end user 'input'.
> | 
> | In more of a informative 'these are the exciting things we're doing'
> | sort of way rather than a 'tell us why you disagree' sort of way
> | maybe.
> 
> See, that doesn't work. There's this strange notion that because we're
> open source, users somehow have a right to a) see the code, b) make
> suggestions, c) demand new features, d) get support and e) annoy other
> developers or upstream when they break something that has a knock-on
> effect of breaking an unrelated package.

I was rather unclear, I think your previous passage had me rather spot
on for what I was wanting to do. 


-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

[gentoo-dev] Re: Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Duncan]

Christopher O'Neill posted
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, excerpted
below,  on Fri, 07 Apr 2006 09:51:58 +0100:

> some examples:
> 
> . A few days ago someone posted on the dev list asking about KDE3.5.x and
> it's current masked status.  As a KDE user myself I was also interested in
> the answer to his question, but to my dismay his first response was less
> than helpful! Although he did eventually get a satisfactory response,
> wouldn't it have been better if he hadn't had to ask at all?

As a user and booster of my favorite meta-distribution =8^), that
disturbed me, too, both the one sort of (non)-response, and the fact that
the OP response indicated my own response might not have been as helpful
as intended.
 
> . I notice certain other popular distros are now running GCC4 (and have
> been for some time), yet we are still running 3.4.6 (on ~x86). [snip]
> 
> . How's portage 2.1 getting along? I notice it gets frequent updates.
> 
> I am not asking for answers for those questions, they are merely
> examples (I could think of many more, so please don't single these out).

I have a fair knowledge of the status of all three of those (tho not so
much on when something's going stable, or x86 in particular, as I run
~amd64 exclusively), because I have all three merged and running,
unmasking where necessary to do it.  (Xorg-7.0/modular is another example,
again, unmasked and merged early, here, after following the developments
on it here.)  However, getting bogged down in the examples won't further
the discussion, as you say.

>  The point I am making is how we (the users) are in the dark on how
> Gentoo is progressing. This is the main reason I have subscribed to this
> mailing list (as well as Gentoo-Users) in an attempt to keep track of
> what's happening, but without much success).

I've had a bit more success here, as I use this list as an pointer finder,
then follow those pointers to the appropriate lists and/or unmaskings
and/or status bugs to try for myself, if it looks interesting.

> Ideally, what I'd like is for the various dev teams to compile a weekly
> status report, which could then be compiled into the weekly newsletter
> (which currently seems to be lacking much useful information).  It would
> be great if we (the users) could find out what's going on behind the
> scenes of our favourite distribution.

I like the idea, but practically speaking, once a week is way to often, as
it will both increase the work load (thereby cutting the actual work done
on the project in question) and the noise factor.

I'd suggest (and maybe it's what you had in mind, but it just didn't come
out that way) a status report from one or two /feature/ projects each
week, not /all/ of them each week.  Rotate them such that all the
interesting ones (and ones with devs that want to participate) get covered
once every month or quarter.

I'd also point out the Gentoo Planet developer blogsite
( http://planet.gentoo.org ). Many devs have blogs that cover the stuff
their doing that users may find interesting, in more or less detail. 
Actually, /this/ needs to be covered a bit better or more frequently in
GWN, and that would pretty much eliminate the need for independent feature
coverage.

Note that GWN does cover it occasionally, but due to a rather nasty
incident some months ago where a dev thought the GWN article
misrepresented the situation from his blog (and not rehashing that or
pointing the blame at any party), the GWN folks likely avoid it to some
extent.  I don't think that's necessary, however, provided the snafus that
evidently happened there as far as notifying the dev in a timely manner
that his blog was going to be covered, could be avoided.

Thus, perhaps my suggestion should be to find someone that could dedicate
a bit of time each week (or once or twice a month in any case, it doesn't
have to be /every/ week) to such a feature.  Having someone routinely
responsible for it will take the pressure off the regular GWN editors, and
should encourage the necessary research and pre-feature dev contact, to
ensure things go smoothly and there's not a repeat of that earlier
unpleasant incident.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman in
http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_interview.html


-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Christel Dahlskjaer]

On Fri, 2006-04-07 at 08:20 -0500, Grant Goodyear wrote:
[snip]
> On the other hand, this problem does have a solution--another level of
> indirection.  Anybody who wishes, dev or user, could spend time 
> tracking Gentoo development (through bugs and the mailing lists) and
> submit status reports to the GWN.  Care to volunteer?  I'd be happy to
> provide pointers on how to get started.

I may grab you on IRC later and see if you can tell me your pointers, I
like his idea and I'd like to look into it! 

Thanks Grant.


-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Christel Dahlskjaer]

On Fri, 2006-04-07 at 15:35 +0200, Martin Ehmsen wrote:
[snip]

> How about a website/blog hosted on www.gentoo.org pr. project and a 
> little tool for posting on such a website (ala echangelog). I don't have 
> the time to set something like that up on my own, but I would use it if 
> it was given to me.
> I work in text-markup and we don't do much high profile development, but 
>   I would like a way to tell users about what we are doing even though 
> it would only mean a post pr. month or so.
> But if I need to spend time and energy on setting such a thing up, then 
> it will never happen.

Excellent. Thank you Ehmsen.
If it looks like there is a bit more interest from both camps I will
certainly make sure we look into what we as userrel can do to implement
something, and in which ways we can make it easy to use, and non time
consuming.


-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Ciaran McCreesh]

On Fri, 07 Apr 2006 15:19:35 +0100 Christel Dahlskjaer
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
| So, from a developer pov Ciaran; if we could come up with some way of
| keeping up to date with what you guys do (without eating up any of
| your time or getting in your way) and then keep the masses informed,
| would that be more attractive? Obviously making sure that information
| is kept to a not exactly bare minimum, but presented in such a way
| that it doesn't in any way halt progress or potential change of
| direction? 

If it's information on things that are fine being public but aren't
simply because of lack of time to write them up, then that would be
great. If it's things that're being kept quiet purposefully, however,
then the last thing we want is to start telling people things.

| > Hence why some of us don't announce non-trivial projects on public
| > mailing lists, and instead keep any discussion on -core and sekrit
| > IRC channels. That's how what's now known as eselect was developed,
| > and it turned out far nicer than the XML-laden aborted gentoo-config
| > project precisely because of the lack of end user 'input'.
| 
| In more of a informative 'these are the exciting things we're doing'
| sort of way rather than a 'tell us why you disagree' sort of way
| maybe.

See, that doesn't work. There's this strange notion that because we're
open source, users somehow have a right to a) see the code, b) make
suggestions, c) demand new features, d) get support and e) annoy other
developers or upstream when they break something that has a knock-on
effect of breaking an unrelated package.

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh : Gentoo Developer (Wearer of the shiny hat)
Mail: ciaranm at gentoo.org
Web : http://dev.gentoo.org/~ciaranm



signature.asc
Description: PGP signature

Re: [gentoo-dev] Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Christel Dahlskjaer]

On Fri, 2006-04-07 at 07:32 -0400, Thomas Cort wrote:
> Perhaps we should have a page explaining all of the ways someone can 
> help / contribute to Gentoo. There is no central place (that I know of) 
> for finding out what you can do as a user to make your favorite 
> distribution become even better. The Free Software Foundation has a nice 
> page here: http://www.gnu.org/help/help.html I was thinking we could 
> have something similar to that for Gentoo. The list would include stuff 
> like becoming an AT/HT, becoming a dev, writing documentation, 
> translating docs, linking to Gentoo.org from your blog/website, telling 
> your friends, starting a Gentoo user group, fixing bugs, writing good 
> bug reports, answering questions on the forums/irc/ml, giving away 
> Gentoo CDs, buying t-shirts from the Gentoo store, etc, etc.

That is certainly an idea, we do have a small 'Getting involved' section
on the userrel page, but the section certainly could be improved on and
maybe even linked to or copied to somewhere where it is easier to find.

We'll have a good look at the link you provided and see if they have any
ideas we may be able to steal! Thank you.


-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Christel Dahlskjaer]

On Fri, 2006-04-07 at 10:21 +0100, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> On Fri, 07 Apr 2006 03:30:10 +0100 Christel Dahlskjaer
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> | What do you believe could make Gentoo more attractive
> | to new users and to current users?
> 
> Something that's often missed in these discussions... The only serious
> interaction between Gentoo and nearly all of our end users is through
> the tree, package manager and related tools and our documentation. Most
> of our users don't regularly read mailing lists, use IRC or the forums,
> so the only thing they really see is what happens when they emerge
> --sync and install things.

Nod, I may have dreamt this, but I believe I saw mention of some sort of
implemented news reader-esque idea. Is that something you know if people
have given any thought? Discussed? Is it an idea that could be worth
looking at again? 


> I'm not entirely sure how bugzilla fits into all this. I suspect that
> it's nowhere near as widely used by end users as it could be.

As for using bugzilla for information, I am not entire sure. As for the
sort of stuff that has been brought up bugzilla wise are things like
'Better how-to's" to ensure it's easier for users to write good bug
reports and less time demanding for devs to respond to them (This is
already being worked on by cwp et al)

Other ideas are things such as introducing bugzillas voting system.

> Three things I can think of that can be drawn from this:
> 
> * GLEP 42

Ding! The 'news reader esque' idea I thought I had dreamt may very well
have been just that, I read through all the GLEPs the other day, and I
suspect that may be where I got it from. Thank you.

> * All the pretty pink unicorns in the world aren't going to make a
> scrap of difference if the tree keeps breaking.

Ack, however much I love pretty pink unicorns (and pretty pink portage,
and pretty pink baselayout and most other things that are well, pretty
and pink) I agree with you there. 

Personally, I like the idea of such things as higher standards, more
direction, code reviews, developing coding standards, document
functions, getting the proper comments in place in code (I'm quite
astonished by the dearth of comments and how it looks like it hasn't
been reviewd for quite some time in places). However, this may be better
off in a different discussion and not on a userrel thread.

> * If we're looking to increase the flow of end users -> super users ->
> developers, perhaps we should focus more upon improving development
> tools or development documentation.

Perhaps that is somewhere else we need to look.


-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Martin Ehmsen]

Christel Dahlskjaer wrote:

On Fri, 2006-04-07 at 10:07 +0100, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
So, from a developer pov Ciaran; if we could come up with some way of
keeping up to date with what you guys do (without eating up any of your
time or getting in your way) and then keep the masses informed, would
that be more attractive? Obviously making sure that information is kept
to a not exactly bare minimum, but presented in such a way that it
doesn't in any way halt progress or potential change of direction? 


I would use such a service if one is provided and it is very easy to use 
(don't take a lot of time).


How about a website/blog hosted on www.gentoo.org pr. project and a 
little tool for posting on such a website (ala echangelog). I don't have 
the time to set something like that up on my own, but I would use it if 
it was given to me.
I work in text-markup and we don't do much high profile development, but 
 I would like a way to tell users about what we are doing even though 
it would only mean a post pr. month or so.
But if I need to spend time and energy on setting such a thing up, then 
it will never happen.


Just my two cents,

Ehmsen
--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo theming during bootup

[Simon Stelling]

Carsten Lohrke wrote:

On Friday 07 April 2006 04:26, Donnie Berkholz wrote:

I also share the opinion that we shouldn't go against upstream wishes
IRT branding, but if upstream encourages some fairly subtle branding
along with keeping their name visible, I'm for it.


There's a thread in gentoo-core from 2004 with regards to branding and the 
outcome was to refrain from it. I don't have a problem, when we do this for 
live iso's, but generally I strongly dislike it. Users don't choose their 
distro because of it, so it's just unnecessary bloat. And given that we tout 
Gentoo a meta distribution, encouraging others to build on it, there's no 
point forcing them to have to clean out the Gentoo brand, before they 
actually can use it.


He said he wanted to make it easy, not forcing it. Or am I mistaken?

--
Kind Regards,

Simon Stelling
Gentoo/AMD64 Developer
--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Christel Dahlskjaer]

On Fri, 2006-04-07 at 11:37 +0100, Jonathan Coome wrote:
> On Fri, 07 Apr 2006 02:33:07 -0700
> Donnie Berkholz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > The general case of the above is that if you want information, you 
> > need to find the right spot for it. That's generally either a specific
> > relevant list or Bugzilla. The information doesn't come looking for 
> > you.
> 
> This, I think is exactly the point of what Christopher was saying.
> Currently, a lot of information is simply not available unless you know
> exactly where to look and who to ask, and that means that you have to
> spend a while around Gentoo before you can even ask the questions.
> 
> I think planet.gentoo.org helps in this regard, but there could be a
> lot more done to keep end users aware of what's going on.

Thank you John, 
that is my view too. We have the resources that could be used for this,
we just need to utilize them! And thats exactly the sort of thing we
(userrel) is all about! 

Christel


-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Christel Dahlskjaer]

On Fri, 2006-04-07 at 02:33 -0700, Donnie Berkholz wrote:
[snip]

> The general case of the above is that if you want information, you need
> to find the right spot for it. That's generally either a specific
> relevant list or Bugzilla. The information doesn't come looking for you.

That may have been the case up until this point, but again, lets keep in
mind that one of userrels main focuses is improving communication and
information flow, so I see no reason why we shouldn't look at other ways
of keeping users somewhat up to date. We have the resources in place for
keeping people updated, we just need to make use of them in a way that
benefits both camps. 

Christel


-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Christel Dahlskjaer]

On Fri, 2006-04-07 at 13:32 +0200, Patrick Lauer wrote:
> On Fri, 2006-04-07 at 11:33 +0200, Grobian wrote:
> > Maybe user-rel should, together with GWN bridge this problem by keeping
> > the source of news anonymous?  Just to use it as teasers of what kind of
> > things are being done in Gentoo's kitchen?
> > Of course this only holds for new projects like in your hypothetical
> > example.
> GWN has a section "Future Zone" where any Gentoo project can announce
> new ideas, roadmaps or previews. It is not used that often, but if
> anyone wants some testing of a pre-release version or some user feedback
> on ideas ... just tell the GWN :-)

I'm about to reply to your e-mail in a second, and then I may grab you
to discuss a couple of these things. That cool? 
And from what you're saying it sounds like provisions are already in
place from GWNs side and thus convincing you to work with us on this
shouldn't pose a problem! Excellent!

Christel




-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Christel Dahlskjaer]

On Fri, 2006-04-07 at 11:33 +0200, Grobian wrote:
> On 07-04-2006 11:07:28 +0100, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
[let's pretend I snipped a bit here, oh wait, I did!]

> Maybe user-rel should, together with GWN bridge this problem by keeping
> the source of news anonymous?  Just to use it as teasers of what kind of
> things are being done in Gentoo's kitchen?
> Of course this only holds for new projects like in your hypothetical
> example.

Yes, that is quite similar to the idea that went through my head after
reading Christophers response. And I quite like it.

> Existing projects, like KDE and GCC probably already deal with questions
> from users, and giving a status update once a month would in my opinion
> help them to keep users both informed and interested, which is what the
> original poster meant I think.  From a user-rel perspective the
> information is used to inform the users that they're not waiting in vain
> for something not to happen, as well as why they are waiting, for
> example.

I'll bring this up at our upcoming userrel meeting and I'll also tease
our GWN liaison with the idea. And of course, I will be welcoming
feedback from developers and users. Ideas are welcome, and if someone
has any thoughts on how they think this could be done without eating
valuable developer time then I'd be more than happy to hear them!

Thank you Grobian!

Christel


-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Grant Goodyear]

Christopher O'Neill wrote: [Fri Apr 07 2006, 03:51:58AM CDT]
> As a Gentoo user, one thing that I'd very much like to see is improved
> communication between the dev teams and the users.  At the moment it
> feels pretty much like I am in the dark as regarding to how we are
> progressing on certain things.  Let me pick some examples:

As was already mentioned, bugs.g.o is almost always the place to look.
I realize that it's counterintuitive, but we use bugs to track just
about everything.  Of course, finding stuff in bugs can be a real pain,
but it's still better than searching the mailing lists.

> Ideally, what I'd like is for the various dev teams to compile a
> weekly status report, which could then be compiled into the weekly
> newsletter (which currently seems to be lacking much useful
> information).  

I think you (and many others, too) may have a somewhat incorrect
perception of how devs are spread across Gentoo.  The phrase "dev teams"
would seem to suggest that we have well-coordinated groups of people
targeting all of the various areas of Gentoo.  In some cases, of course,
that's quite true, but in some others the "dev team" is predominantly a
one-person show, and taking the time to write a weekly status report
would seriously impact how much developing actually got done.

On the other hand, this problem does have a solution--another level of
indirection.  Anybody who wishes, dev or user, could spend time 
tracking Gentoo development (through bugs and the mailing lists) and
submit status reports to the GWN.  Care to volunteer?  I'd be happy to
provide pointers on how to get started.

-g2boojum-
-- 
Grant Goodyear  
Gentoo Developer
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.gentoo.org/~g2boojum
GPG Fingerprint: D706 9802 1663 DEF5 81B0  9573 A6DC 7152 E0F6 5B76


pgpoGkpFk6QUs.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Christel Dahlskjaer]

On Fri, 2006-04-07 at 10:07 +0100, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> On Fri, 7 Apr 2006 09:51:58 +0100 "Christopher O'Neill"
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> | Ideally, what I'd like is for the various dev teams to compile a
> | weekly status report, which could then be compiled into the weekly
> | newsletter (which currently seems to be lacking much useful
> | information).  It would be great if we (the users) could find out
> | what's going on behind the scenes of our favourite distribution.
> 
> The problem with this is... Once someone says "we're working on $x",
> they're continuously pestered about it by users asking when it will be
> ready. Given how few of us are paid to work specific hours on Gentoo
> things, it's very easy for provisional release dates to be missed --
> and when half of a developer's time is spent responding to questions
> about where $x is and why an early test of $x pulled out of a
> supposedly "not for end users" repo broke their system and the other
> half is spent writing status updates it's pretty much impossible to get
> anything out consistently.

So, from a developer pov Ciaran; if we could come up with some way of
keeping up to date with what you guys do (without eating up any of your
time or getting in your way) and then keep the masses informed, would
that be more attractive? Obviously making sure that information is kept
to a not exactly bare minimum, but presented in such a way that it
doesn't in any way halt progress or potential change of direction? 
> 
> Hence why some of us don't announce non-trivial projects on public
> mailing lists, and instead keep any discussion on -core and sekrit IRC
> channels. That's how what's now known as eselect was developed, and
> it turned out far nicer than the XML-laden aborted gentoo-config
> project precisely because of the lack of end user 'input'.

In more of a informative 'these are the exciting things we're doing'
sort of way rather than a 'tell us why you disagree' sort of way maybe.

> I mean, as a purely hypothetical example... Could you imagine just how
> many dumb feature requests, questions and requests for code from the
> unwashed masses someone would get if they admitted to having an early
> alpha of an alternative to Portage that didn't require Python? Having
> to deal with the noise would be more than enough to ensure that no more
> development would ever get done...

Purely hypothetically I suspect you'd be better suited for answering
that question than I am. 


-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Christel Dahlskjaer]

Heya Chris, 

Thank you for responding!

On Fri, 2006-04-07 at 09:51 +0100, Christopher O'Neill wrote:
> As a Gentoo user, one thing that I'd very much like to see is improved
> communication between the dev teams and the users.  At the moment it
> feels pretty much like I am in the dark as regarding to how we are
> progressing on certain things.  Let me pick some examples:


So, if we somehow ensured we kept up to date with projects and where
they were at and maybe worked closely with our GWN liaison to maybe do a
'whats hot' type section of what's brewing? 
Now, as there is constant change I don't think we could make sure that
we could keep you updated on every single detail but we could certainly
entertain the thought of looking into ways of giving a brief update on
various projects progress.

> . A few days ago someone posted on the dev list asking about KDE3.5.x
> and it's current masked status.  As a KDE user myself I was also
> interested in the answer to his question, but to my dismay his first
> response was less than helpful! Although he did eventually get a
> satisfactory response, wouldn't it have been better if he hadn't had
> to ask at all? I'm sure many more people are wondering the same and
> probably aren't subscribed to this list.

I watched that thread with much interest. And yes, we need to improve
developer to user communication/information on other mediums as well.
Mind, a decent number of developers make good use of their planet. blogs
and they are always good to keep an eye on.

> 
> . I notice certain other popular distros are now running GCC4 (and
> have been for some time), yet we are still running 3.4.6 (on ~x86). I
> know it's a lot of work ensuring that all packages compile properly
> with GCC4 and that there are no introduced bugs, but I have no idea
> how we are progressing on this - and wouldn't even like to ask for
> fear of asking in the wrong place..

Yes, I think the fear issue is quite a big one for many users, and for
some developers and prevent them from both asking questions and piping
in with ideas. And we certainly need to work on making people feel more
welcome again. 

> 
> . How's portage 2.1 getting along? I notice it gets frequent updates.
> 
> I am not asking for answers for those questions, they are merely
> examples (I could think of many more, so please don't single these
> out).  The point I am making is how we (the users) are in the dark on
> how Gentoo is progressing. This is the main reason I have subscribed
> to this mailing list (as well as Gentoo-Users) in an attempt to keep
> track of what's happening, but without much success).

We will look at what other ways we have of keeping people informed, and
see how we can make various projects work together on making sure we
reach as many users as possible.

> Ideally, what I'd like is for the various dev teams to compile a
> weekly status report, which could then be compiled into the weekly
> newsletter (which currently seems to be lacking much useful
> information).  It would be great if we (the users) could find out
> what's going on behind the scenes of our favourite distribution.

That is a pretty decent idea, however I suspect many developers already
invest whatever time they have in to the work they currently do and
won't be looking to take on yet another task. We may however look at
ways of keeping updated with various projects and doing something with
GWN to keep you more up to date. It's certainly something we are happy
to toy with to try find a way of doing this that works both for
$rand_project, User Relations, GWN and the target userbase.

> Anyway Christel, I hope this is the sort of response you are looking for.

Again, Thank you very much Chris. It was certainly the sort of response
I was after! If you have anything to add, don't hesitate to grab us!

Christel


-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo theming during bootup

[Carsten Lohrke]

On Friday 07 April 2006 04:26, Donnie Berkholz wrote:
> I also share the opinion that we shouldn't go against upstream wishes
> IRT branding, but if upstream encourages some fairly subtle branding
> along with keeping their name visible, I'm for it.

There's a thread in gentoo-core from 2004 with regards to branding and the 
outcome was to refrain from it. I don't have a problem, when we do this for 
live iso's, but generally I strongly dislike it. Users don't choose their 
distro because of it, so it's just unnecessary bloat. And given that we tout 
Gentoo a meta distribution, encouraging others to build on it, there's no 
point forcing them to have to clean out the Gentoo brand, before they 
actually can use it.


Carsten


pgp5mpBfaoj37.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Patrick Lauer]

On Fri, 2006-04-07 at 11:33 +0200, Grobian wrote:
> Maybe user-rel should, together with GWN bridge this problem by keeping
> the source of news anonymous?  Just to use it as teasers of what kind of
> things are being done in Gentoo's kitchen?
> Of course this only holds for new projects like in your hypothetical
> example.
GWN has a section "Future Zone" where any Gentoo project can announce
new ideas, roadmaps or previews. It is not used that often, but if
anyone wants some testing of a pre-release version or some user feedback
on ideas ... just tell the GWN :-)


Patrick

-- 
Stand still, and let the rest of the universe move


signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part

Re: [gentoo-dev] Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Thomas Cort]

Perhaps we should have a page explaining all of the ways someone can 
help / contribute to Gentoo. There is no central place (that I know of) 
for finding out what you can do as a user to make your favorite 
distribution become even better. The Free Software Foundation has a nice 
page here: http://www.gnu.org/help/help.html I was thinking we could 
have something similar to that for Gentoo. The list would include stuff 
like becoming an AT/HT, becoming a dev, writing documentation, 
translating docs, linking to Gentoo.org from your blog/website, telling 
your friends, starting a Gentoo user group, fixing bugs, writing good 
bug reports, answering questions on the forums/irc/ml, giving away 
Gentoo CDs, buying t-shirts from the Gentoo store, etc, etc.


-tcort
--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Jonathan Coome]

On Fri, 07 Apr 2006 02:33:07 -0700
Donnie Berkholz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> The general case of the above is that if you want information, you 
> need to find the right spot for it. That's generally either a specific
> relevant list or Bugzilla. The information doesn't come looking for 
> you.

This, I think is exactly the point of what Christopher was saying.
Currently, a lot of information is simply not available unless you know
exactly where to look and who to ask, and that means that you have to
spend a while around Gentoo before you can even ask the questions.

I think planet.gentoo.org helps in this regard, but there could be a
lot more done to keep end users aware of what's going on.

Regards,
Jonathan

--
Jonathan Coome <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Gentoo Forums Moderator
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Jakub Moc]

Donnie Berkholz wrote:
> Christopher O'Neill wrote:
>> . I notice certain other popular distros are now running GCC4 (and
>> have been for some time), yet we are still running 3.4.6 (on ~x86). I
>> know it's a lot of work ensuring that all packages compile properly
>> with GCC4 and that there are no introduced bugs, but I have no idea
>> how we are progressing on this - and wouldn't even like to ask for
>> fear of asking in the wrong place..
> 
> Toolchain updates in particular take longer than with most distros,
> because of the nature of ours -- we need every user to be able to
> compile every keyworded package from source, and we have an extremely
> large package database.
> 
> I bet there's a bug open for it.

http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=117482

> 
>> . How's portage 2.1 getting along? I notice it gets frequent updates.
> 
> The gentoo-portage-dev list is the place to follow this.

Also, http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=115839


-- 

jakub



signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Ciaran McCreesh]

On Fri, 7 Apr 2006 11:33:12 +0200 Grobian <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
| On 07-04-2006 11:07:28 +0100, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
| > I mean, as a purely hypothetical example... Could you imagine just
| > how many dumb feature requests, questions and requests for code
| > from the unwashed masses someone would get if they admitted to
| > having an early alpha of an alternative to Portage that didn't
| > require Python? Having to deal with the noise would be more than
| > enough to ensure that no more development would ever get done...
| 
| This is ofcourse a purely hypothetical prediction for a hypothetical
| example.  Another hypothesis might be that noone would care about the
| hypothetical alternative to Portage, hence no developer obstruction
| would take place at all.

That hypothesis looks unlikely, given all the discussions that took
place around portage-ng and the like, all the feature requests for
Portage on bugzilla and the countless zillions of "Portage should do
$x" threads on the forums. From a non-hypothetical perspective, I can
tell you that I received a significant number of really really stupid
suggestions when various developers found out about what's now called
eselect -- and that was with extremely limited internal publicity on a
far lower profile category of project than the one we're
hypothetically discussing.

| Yet another hypothesis might be that there
| would actually exist a few smart users that give some smart comments
| on the, in this case hypothetical, product.

This hypothesis probably holds. However, it ignores two other points:
Firstly, that the hypothetical noise would more than offset any
hypothetical advantage (little point in being given a diamond if it
comes in the middle of ten tonnes of horse manure and you only have
one shovel), and secondly that the hypothetical smart users could be
brought in on the hypothetical project anyway.

| Maybe user-rel should, together with GWN bridge this problem by
| keeping the source of news anonymous?  Just to use it as teasers of
| what kind of things are being done in Gentoo's kitchen?
| Of course this only holds for new projects like in your hypothetical
| example.

Yikes, that's even worse than sticking them out with a name on it.

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh : Gentoo Developer (Wearer of the shiny hat)
Mail: ciaranm at gentoo.org
Web : http://dev.gentoo.org/~ciaranm



signature.asc
Description: PGP signature

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Donnie Berkholz]

Christopher O'Neill wrote:
> . I notice certain other popular distros are now running GCC4 (and
> have been for some time), yet we are still running 3.4.6 (on ~x86). I
> know it's a lot of work ensuring that all packages compile properly
> with GCC4 and that there are no introduced bugs, but I have no idea
> how we are progressing on this - and wouldn't even like to ask for
> fear of asking in the wrong place..

Toolchain updates in particular take longer than with most distros,
because of the nature of ours -- we need every user to be able to
compile every keyworded package from source, and we have an extremely
large package database.

I bet there's a bug open for it.

> . How's portage 2.1 getting along? I notice it gets frequent updates.

The gentoo-portage-dev list is the place to follow this.

> I am not asking for answers for those questions, they are merely
> examples (I could think of many more, so please don't single these
> out).  The point I am making is how we (the users) are in the dark on
> how Gentoo is progressing. This is the main reason I have subscribed
> to this mailing list (as well as Gentoo-Users) in an attempt to keep
> track of what's happening, but without much success).

The general case of the above is that if you want information, you need
to find the right spot for it. That's generally either a specific
relevant list or Bugzilla. The information doesn't come looking for you.

HTH,
Donnie



signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Grobian]

On 07-04-2006 11:07:28 +0100, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> I mean, as a purely hypothetical example... Could you imagine just how
> many dumb feature requests, questions and requests for code from the
> unwashed masses someone would get if they admitted to having an early
> alpha of an alternative to Portage that didn't require Python? Having
> to deal with the noise would be more than enough to ensure that no more
> development would ever get done...

This is ofcourse a purely hypothetical prediction for a hypothetical
example.  Another hypothesis might be that noone would care about the
hypothetical alternative to Portage, hence no developer obstruction
would take place at all.  Yet another hypothesis might be that there
would actually exist a few smart users that give some smart comments on
the, in this case hypothetical, product.

Maybe user-rel should, together with GWN bridge this problem by keeping
the source of news anonymous?  Just to use it as teasers of what kind of
things are being done in Gentoo's kitchen?
Of course this only holds for new projects like in your hypothetical
example.

Existing projects, like KDE and GCC probably already deal with questions
from users, and giving a status update once a month would in my opinion
help them to keep users both informed and interested, which is what the
original poster meant I think.  From a user-rel perspective the
information is used to inform the users that they're not waiting in vain
for something not to happen, as well as why they are waiting, for
example.


-- 
Fabian Groffen
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Ciaran McCreesh]

On Fri, 07 Apr 2006 03:30:10 +0100 Christel Dahlskjaer
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
| What do you believe could make Gentoo more attractive
| to new users and to current users?

Something that's often missed in these discussions... The only serious
interaction between Gentoo and nearly all of our end users is through
the tree, package manager and related tools and our documentation. Most
of our users don't regularly read mailing lists, use IRC or the forums,
so the only thing they really see is what happens when they emerge
--sync and install things.

I'm not entirely sure how bugzilla fits into all this. I suspect that
it's nowhere near as widely used by end users as it could be.

Three things I can think of that can be drawn from this:

* GLEP 42

* All the pretty pink unicorns in the world aren't going to make a
scrap of difference if the tree keeps breaking.

* If we're looking to increase the flow of end users -> super users ->
developers, perhaps we should focus more upon improving development
tools or development documentation.

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh : Gentoo Developer (Wearer of the shiny hat)
Mail: ciaranm at gentoo.org
Web : http://dev.gentoo.org/~ciaranm



signature.asc
Description: PGP signature

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Ciaran McCreesh]

On Fri, 7 Apr 2006 09:51:58 +0100 "Christopher O'Neill"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
| Ideally, what I'd like is for the various dev teams to compile a
| weekly status report, which could then be compiled into the weekly
| newsletter (which currently seems to be lacking much useful
| information).  It would be great if we (the users) could find out
| what's going on behind the scenes of our favourite distribution.

The problem with this is... Once someone says "we're working on $x",
they're continuously pestered about it by users asking when it will be
ready. Given how few of us are paid to work specific hours on Gentoo
things, it's very easy for provisional release dates to be missed --
and when half of a developer's time is spent responding to questions
about where $x is and why an early test of $x pulled out of a
supposedly "not for end users" repo broke their system and the other
half is spent writing status updates it's pretty much impossible to get
anything out consistently.

Hence why some of us don't announce non-trivial projects on public
mailing lists, and instead keep any discussion on -core and sekrit IRC
channels. That's how what's now known as eselect was developed, and
it turned out far nicer than the XML-laden aborted gentoo-config
project precisely because of the lack of end user 'input'.

I mean, as a purely hypothetical example... Could you imagine just how
many dumb feature requests, questions and requests for code from the
unwashed masses someone would get if they admitted to having an early
alpha of an alternative to Portage that didn't require Python? Having
to deal with the noise would be more than enough to ensure that no more
development would ever get done...

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh : Gentoo Developer (Wearer of the shiny hat)
Mail: ciaranm at gentoo.org
Web : http://dev.gentoo.org/~ciaranm



signature.asc
Description: PGP signature

[gentoo-dev] Re: Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Christopher O'Neill]

As a Gentoo user, one thing that I'd very much like to see is improved
communication between the dev teams and the users.  At the moment it
feels pretty much like I am in the dark as regarding to how we are
progressing on certain things.  Let me pick some examples:

. A few days ago someone posted on the dev list asking about KDE3.5.x
and it's current masked status.  As a KDE user myself I was also
interested in the answer to his question, but to my dismay his first
response was less than helpful! Although he did eventually get a
satisfactory response, wouldn't it have been better if he hadn't had
to ask at all? I'm sure many more people are wondering the same and
probably aren't subscribed to this list.

. I notice certain other popular distros are now running GCC4 (and
have been for some time), yet we are still running 3.4.6 (on ~x86). I
know it's a lot of work ensuring that all packages compile properly
with GCC4 and that there are no introduced bugs, but I have no idea
how we are progressing on this - and wouldn't even like to ask for
fear of asking in the wrong place..

. How's portage 2.1 getting along? I notice it gets frequent updates.

I am not asking for answers for those questions, they are merely
examples (I could think of many more, so please don't single these
out).  The point I am making is how we (the users) are in the dark on
how Gentoo is progressing. This is the main reason I have subscribed
to this mailing list (as well as Gentoo-Users) in an attempt to keep
track of what's happening, but without much success).

Ideally, what I'd like is for the various dev teams to compile a
weekly status report, which could then be compiled into the weekly
newsletter (which currently seems to be lacking much useful
information).  It would be great if we (the users) could find out
what's going on behind the scenes of our favourite distribution.

Anyway Christel, I hope this is the sort of response you are looking for.

--

Chris

-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

[gentoo-dev] Bump and grind etiquete

[Michael Cummings]

I have to ask, please refrain from adding packages to the tree and assigning 
them to a herd that you have no part in. The folks that watch those herds 
would appreciate it. It'd also be nice if you did this if you at least got 
all of the deps correct. 

Please refrain from arbitrarily bumping packages wihtout coordinating with the 
folks that govern that herd. They'd appreciate that too.

People are in projects to watch over a herd because they have vested interest 
and knowledge. If you want to help watch a herd, I'm sure nobody would mind 
if you asked, learning whatever tricks of the trade are necessary for that 
particular package set.
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list