[arch-projects] Keeping the list alive!
Hi all, I thought I'd give everyone a nudge to chip in with updates on their current project(s). This month, I have been mostly writing Jacman. (Fast show, anyone?!) So, c'mon guys, be honest... has it been worth my effort? Do you think people actually will use it? Does ArchLinux *need* such a utility? Or did I pick the wrong language? Bearing in mind that Archie won't use Jacman due to the size of the JRE. It's not that I haven't had lots of positive feedback. And even if no-one else liked it, it's certainly been good for practising Java GUI programming and how to interact with native commands. I'm just wondering what you guys think. What are you lot up to? Andy
On Monday 01 August 2005 14:19, Andy Roberts wrote: ...
It's not that I haven't had lots of positive feedback. And even if no-one else liked it, it's certainly been good for practising Java GUI programming and how to interact with native commands. I'm just wondering what you guys think.
thats the best way to look at your projects ;) its simply a learning curve. i do like jacman, specially its UI - looks like a lot of thought was put into it. i still think Arch can use a good pacman-frontend, but i would prefer seeing a pygtk wrapper (as i think xerxes2 is trying todo with lazypac, and as the Frugalware guys are aiming for the same goal) will be more Arch oriented (KISS). with that said, im still sure many users will appreciate your work and wont mind using a java frontend :) regarding my own projects, well, Archie is moving along pretty nicely, im thinking of giving the xfce desktop a facelift (after seeing the latest Windows Vista screenshots...) and as some users proposed, an e17 version should be easy enough to produce (by duplicating the xfce mkliveiso, but using e17 package list). Currently i started working on the Skinny Archie (uclibc based system) but already got tons of problems (again, with the gcc package), i hope to solve those issues asap and move on. my other project, lshwd 2.0, has suffered from many problems lately, most important one is my laziness... there are some issues (detection methods) i need to investigate and it seems i never get down to it... maybe after next Archie release i will resume work... -- regards, Elia Yehuda, aka z4ziggy Archie project developer, http://user-contributions.org/archie.html
On Mon, 2005-08-01 at 15:27 +0300, z4ziggy wrote:
i still think Arch can use a good pacman-frontend, but i would prefer seeing a pygtk wrapper (as i think xerxes2 is trying todo with lazypac, and as the Frugalware guys are aiming for the same goal) will be more Arch oriented (KISS). with that said, im still sure many users will appreciate your work and wont mind using a java frontend :)
The "magic" word is KISS that touches Archers' interest. It doesn't mean it cannot be GUI, its something else what users consider as "simple". In Arch "simple" is different what other distros are considering. Not easy to grasp. The "the Arch way" is good to read before starting a project for Arch. http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/The_Arch_Way What I didn't know, only recently, not confirmed, the selection of language is also part of Arch's concept of KISS. http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?t=13576 Rasat
On Monday 01 Aug 2005 13:59, Rasatmakananda wrote:
On Mon, 2005-08-01 at 15:27 +0300, z4ziggy wrote:
i still think Arch can use a good pacman-frontend, but i would prefer seeing a pygtk wrapper (as i think xerxes2 is trying todo with lazypac, and as the Frugalware guys are aiming for the same goal) will be more Arch oriented (KISS). with that said, im still sure many users will appreciate your work and wont mind using a java frontend :)
The "magic" word is KISS that touches Archers' interest. It doesn't mean it cannot be GUI, its something else what users consider as "simple". In Arch "simple" is different what other distros are considering. Not easy to grasp. The "the Arch way" is good to read before starting a project for Arch. http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/The_Arch_Way
I had studied the Arch Way for a while. I couldn't decide whether my app contradicted TAW. In someways, it obviously has because you can't get to the full pacman functionality via the GUI. However, I felt I had achieved the majority without dumbing down and losing usability. It's a tricky balance. There just seemed to be a need for a frontend. I wasn't personally convinced that it was essential. My original motivation for Jacman was to show just how much more efficient one could be with pacman via the command-line as opposed to a GUI! However, some people are comfortable with GUIs. Just think how synaptic has helped make Debian (and its derivatives) more attractive to average users rather than using apt. Horses for courses. I still use pacman, of course :)
What I didn't know, only recently, not confirmed, the selection of language is also part of Arch's concept of KISS. http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?t=13576
This is surely from a programmers perspective, i.e., languages that make programming easy. I really don't think that language choice was part of Judd's vision, since he's a C programmer. Andy
On Mon, 2005-08-01 at 15:19 +0000, Andy Roberts wrote:
.... the selection of language is also part of Arch's concept of KISS. http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?t=13576
This is surely from a programmers perspective, i.e., languages that make programming easy. I really don't think that language choice was part of Judd's vision, since he's a C programmer.
Not Judd's vision but somehow the choice of C and Bash were the right languages making Arch an ideal distro where users can easily hack and configure as they want. This is the main factor in Arch. Not only a product to use but anyone who is interested can easily develop on their own or join in Arch development. What I am trying to say here, most of the Archers are "devs" in one way or other, or learn to become because of user contributions. Therefore loves in products/projects what is simple in performance and easy to help/hack for further improvement. If one sided, the language is too troublesome to read/hack, they may still use the product but will not show interest. The Arch Way: "Don't let configure tools / GUIs control the system but be controlled by the user". In my recent understanding, this principle applies not only, not to be controlled in configure matters but also not to be depended what tools offer. A tool should be hackable to be able to makes things as user want..... not what the tool want (smile). Rasat
On Monday 01 Aug 2005 12:27, z4ziggy wrote:
On Monday 01 August 2005 14:19, Andy Roberts wrote:
thats the best way to look at your projects ;) its simply a learning curve. i do like jacman, specially its UI - looks like a lot of thought was put into it. i still think Arch can use a good pacman-frontend, but i would prefer seeing a pygtk wrapper (as i think xerxes2 is trying todo with lazypac, and as the Frugalware guys are aiming for the same goal) will be more Arch oriented (KISS). with that said, im still sure many users will appreciate your work and wont mind using a java frontend :)
I don't quite understand what you mean. As I've tried to clarify on the forums, I'm not a Java loyalist by anymeans. However, you seem to imply that a GTK front-end via a python script is more in sync with Arch's KISS philosophy than a Java front-end. Surely it has everything to do with their usability. Installing Lazypac would be no more taxing than Jacman as pacman will sort out all the dependencies for you. Unless you're saying that use of Free software is also key in KISS? Or are you just meaning that Jacman is more complex to use than the forthcoming front-end from Xerces2? I dunno, I'll stop speculating now!
regarding my own projects, well, Archie is moving along pretty nicely, im thinking of giving the xfce desktop a facelift (after seeing the latest Windows Vista screenshots...) and as some users proposed, an e17 version should be easy enough to produce (by duplicating the xfce mkliveiso, but using e17 package list). Currently i started working on the Skinny Archie (uclibc based system) but already got tons of problems (again, with the gcc package), i hope to solve those issues asap and move on.
I'm going to use Archie this week to try and install Linux on a friend's PC. I originally tried Fedora because I thought that would just automagically install, and he's a bit of a newbie. However, it wouldn't even start the installer! His laptop is pretty new, so I expect it has some interesting hardware on it that could be causing issues. It's an AMD 64 chip too. However, I'll try Archie this time and see how that goes. Andy
On Monday 01 August 2005 17:33, Andy Roberts wrote: ...
I don't quite understand what you mean. As I've tried to clarify on the forums, I'm not a Java loyalist by anymeans. However, you seem to imply that a GTK front-end via a python script is more in sync with Arch's KISS philosophy than a Java front-end. Surely it has everything to do with their usability. Installing Lazypac would be no more taxing than Jacman as pacman will sort out all the dependencies for you. Unless you're saying that use of Free software is also key in KISS? Or are you just meaning that Jacman is more complex to use than the forthcoming front-end from Xerces2? I dunno, I'll stop speculating now!
im guessing its a mix of many things for me. 1st, the JRE size. 2nd, pygtk is usually installed already on most base systems and there are much more applications for this env (ofcourse we could argue that this will never change with ppl like me using this excuse, but thats for another debate ;) ). 3rd, yes, closed-source applications (and in this case - programming language) always makes me "ignore them by default". unless there is a REALLY good reason for using them (which i still havnt found, in all my 20 years programming)... and there is a private 4th - as an ex-java programmer (both on AS/400 and x86) i consider Java applications to be slower and memory consuming monsters. this might had been changed in the recent years, but thats the impression i had from my own java programs. i try my best to keep myself out of those "programming language" debates since i know my perspective of things is not shared among the majority. so to close the matter, i fully agree we might not see eye-to-eye, but this is only my own private conclusion :)
I'm going to use Archie this week to try and install Linux on a friend's PC. I originally tried Fedora because I thought that would just automagically install, and he's a bit of a newbie. However, it wouldn't even start the installer! His laptop is pretty new, so I expect it has some interesting hardware on it that could be causing issues. It's an AMD 64 chip too. However, I'll try Archie this time and see how that goes.
i can only recommend manual install atm. ie, dirsync or similar to copy the iso contents to an empty partition. iphitus is finishing his gui hd-installer (someone mentioned pygtk? :-), hopefully in time for next major release (Vika).
Andy
-- regards, Elia Yehuda, aka z4ziggy Archie project developer, http://user-contributions.org/archie.html
On Monday 01 Aug 2005 14:56, z4ziggy wrote:
On Monday 01 August 2005 17:33, Andy Roberts wrote: ...
I don't quite understand what you mean. As I've tried to clarify on the forums, I'm not a Java loyalist by anymeans. However, you seem to imply that a GTK front-end via a python script is more in sync with Arch's KISS philosophy than a Java front-end. Surely it has everything to do with their usability. Installing Lazypac would be no more taxing than Jacman as pacman will sort out all the dependencies for you. Unless you're saying that use of Free software is also key in KISS? Or are you just meaning that Jacman is more complex to use than the forthcoming front-end from Xerces2? I dunno, I'll stop speculating now!
im guessing its a mix of many things for me. 1st, the JRE size. 2nd, pygtk is usually installed already on most base systems and there are much more applications for this env (ofcourse we could argue that this will never change with ppl like me using this excuse, but thats for another debate ;) ). 3rd, yes, closed-source applications (and in this case - programming language) always makes me "ignore them by default". unless there is a REALLY good reason for using them (which i still havnt found, in all my 20 years programming)... and there is a private 4th - as an ex-java programmer (both on AS/400 and x86) i consider Java applications to be slower and memory consuming monsters. this might had been changed in the recent years, but thats the impression i had from my own java programs.
Well, I understand all your points there. Fortunately for me they aren't to do with KISS which was what I was checking. Python isn't the lightest package either, but you're right in that it's such a common dependency that it will dragged on to your system by another package shortly after setup (You still have to sit through 10Mb or so) JRE size is an interesting point. Because Archers don't get the vanilla Sun JRE package that's around 12-15Mb, we get a pkg.tar.gz instead which is 30Mb :( The size doesn't bother me anymore now that I've got broadband, but there are obviously still many people without high speed net access who would find both packages a slight chore (Java more so that others)
i try my best to keep myself out of those "programming language" debates since i know my perspective of things is not shared among the majority. so to close the matter, i fully agree we might not see eye-to-eye, but this is only my own private conclusion :)
I hear what you're saying. Obviously, programming language is very subjective. One point I'd make before I'll end this debate is that it's odd to disregard Java on speed metrics whilst recommending Python. Memory usage on the other hand is a fair point.
I'm going to use Archie this week to try and install Linux on a friend's PC. I originally tried Fedora because I thought that would just automagically install, and he's a bit of a newbie. However, it wouldn't even start the installer! His laptop is pretty new, so I expect it has some interesting hardware on it that could be causing issues. It's an AMD 64 chip too. However, I'll try Archie this time and see how that goes.
i can only recommend manual install atm. ie, dirsync or similar to copy the iso contents to an empty partition. iphitus is finishing his gui hd-installer (someone mentioned pygtk? :-), hopefully in time for next major release (Vika).
Thank's for the heads up on Vika - when is the expected release? Andy
participants (3)
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Andy Roberts
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Rasatmakananda
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z4ziggy