what timing
|
| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| gus3 Apr 28, 2012 8:22 PM EDT |
While the reports may be "premature," the slackware.com site is once again down. Let's hope it's for infrastructure upgrades. |
| slacker_mike Apr 28, 2012 8:42 PM EDT |
Mr. Volkerding actually responded to the same story posted on Slashdot with what I believe are the only public comments he has made on the website outage. http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2816335&cid=39828905 |
| caitlyn Apr 28, 2012 8:56 PM EDT |
@gus3: The website is up again. Of course, the Slashdot story was, at best, misleading. This comment (which I cannot take credit for) lays it out well: Quoting:The summary is, as usual, misleading. Caitlyn Martin didn't post this in a DistroWatch article, she (and some other posters) mentioned it in the comments section of that website. She also didn't say she was moving the derived distro to a new base, she said she and the rest of the development team would be voting on the issue as to whether to move to a different base. Sadly there are some points in Brian Proffitt's story that give a somewhat misleading picture as well. I agree with his premise and his points, but... there also was a development slowdown where little went into the changelog for several months immediately prior to the outage. It wasn't one outage that caused the concern. It was a series of events. I remember what Joe Brockmeier wrote when CentOS was having difficulty delivering releases and security patches. It applies to Slackware in this case as well: Quoting:Nobody Got Fired for Buying IBM: You Might for Deploying CentOS Slackware will undoubtedly survive in one form or another. So will Mandriva as I pointed out in the same LQ thread Brian Proffitt quotes and as he points out in the article. It still is better, if you are going to build on someone else's work, to pick a source with a solid foundation. Slackware has a solid technical foundation but a very small, insular development community and little financial backing. Oh, and FWIW, we didn't rebase. We went back to our roots and are rebuilding it from scratch. Expect a Yarok alpha release in late June. |
| claudecat Apr 29, 2012 3:26 AM EDT |
Just before the (first) outage, KDE 4.8.2 (and related dependencies) was added to -current, and there have also been updates to the kernel and several other packages there in the last few months. I'm just going by memory here, but "immediately prior to the outage" doesn't jibe with my recollection of the sequence of events. That said, I do seem to recall a lengthy period of calm prior to maybe 2-3 months ago. |
| caitlyn Apr 29, 2012 6:54 PM EDT |
You're correct that 4.8.2 was pushed, but that was a day or two before the outage. The lack of development activity for a long time, even if followed by a short period of activity, and then the outage, *IS* cause for concern from where I sit. |
| gus3 Apr 29, 2012 10:14 PM EDT |
I would amend your statement to read,
Quoting:The lack of visible development activity for a long time... |
| caitlyn Apr 30, 2012 1:28 AM EDT |
No, gus, from what Eric Hameleers wrote there really was a development slowdown. My statement is fine as is. However, you have put your finger on one really big issue the Slackware developers have: they don't communicate well with the community, if at all. It took a statement made by Eric Hameleers in passing to blow up in his face to even get some communication this time. |
| gus3 Apr 30, 2012 9:36 AM EDT |
Okay, I'll grant that. But I do remember earlier times (ancient history by now) when periods of silence on the ChangeLog.txt were followed by several packages updated together, including glibc and/or the kernel and/or the coreutils and/or gcc. |
| caitlyn Apr 30, 2012 3:57 PM EDT |
@gus3: No doubt. I really think the problem here was communications. First we had almost none for a long period of time, then Eric Hameleers made a very short post that someone ran with and it ended up in a blog and then in the wider tech press where I saw it. The issues with Slackware were never technical. They may not even be a serious financial problem though there is, at this point, no way to really know. There is a serious communications problem. That's hardly unique to Slackware. |
| gus3 Apr 30, 2012 6:04 PM EDT |
"What wee have he-ah, is a failyah tah comyoonicayte..." |
| caitlyn Apr 30, 2012 9:04 PM EDT |
@gus3: You'd fit in real well around here. You're learning to talk like the natives :) |
| montezuma Apr 30, 2012 9:08 PM EDT |
Caitlyn, You sound suspiciously like a NE ayleetist. |
| caitlyn Apr 30, 2012 9:13 PM EDT |
I don't think one American accent is superior to another, montezuma. I'm just pointing out that a Southern accent is very distinctive. Also, a North Carolina accent is very different from a Georgia accent or an Alabama accent. FWIW, I did catch the "My Cousin Vinny" reference :) Very funny movie on a lot of levels. I think it was also the last screen appearance for the late Fred Gwynne. |
| montezuma Apr 30, 2012 9:32 PM EDT |
Just teasin' Oz style. I went to Europe last year and was told I had the strangest accent somebody had ever heard. An Australian New York hybrid. |
| jdixon Apr 30, 2012 10:12 PM EDT |
> ...and was told I had the strangest accent somebody had ever heard. An Australian New York hybrid. I think I've heard of someone who has that beat. He's a former quarterback for Marshall University. The story has it that he came from the Quebec region of Canada and spoke almost entirely French. He learned to speak most of his English while he was at Marshall. So he speaks English with a combined French and southern West Virginia accent. :) Unfortunately, I can't remember his name, and Google isn't helpful. |
| gus3 Apr 30, 2012 10:48 PM EDT |
"Youx all"? "Yeux all"? |
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