1: **Contents**
2:
3: [[!toc levels=2 ]]
4:
5: # jdf's wiki page
6:
7: Note: This is not what I'm really working on, it's just a place to gather some
8: notes I took about some topics.
9:
10: ## NetBSD flavoured
11:
12: Currently, NetBSD is a very generic operating system, leaving almost all
13: choices up to the user. While some consider this a strength, and it
14: definetly is for people who know what they're doing, it's an obstacle for
15: people who then have to setup *everything* by hand.
16:
17: Creating a *NetBSD flavoured* distribution shouldn't be much work, and require
18: just minor sysinst modifications.
19: It shouldn't be much work to just package distribution sets that already
20: include a list of packages it installs and several preconfigured configuration
21: files, maybe also some additional wrapper scripts.
22: On the other hand, you could also add some package calls to sysinst and just
23: provide a list of packages you consider necessary.
24:
25: My original attempt was to create a range of distributions for different
26: purposes, i.e. one for developers, one for graphic designers, one for servers,
27: etc. I don't know if this is the right way, esp. since some of the applications
28: are *very* specific. You cannot really provide a sane server default
29: installation except for some basic things like installing a vim, but that's all.
30: My current idea is to provide just one, maybe named *NetBSD flavoured*, with at
31: least the following tools on board:
32:
33: * vim
34: * pkgin
35: * git
36: * fossil
37: * subversion
38: * some other important VCSes
39: * light-desktop (i.e., LXDE)
40: * screen (tmux is in base)
41: * some sane X terminal emulators
42: * a browser (Firefox?!)
43: * a mailer (Thunderbird? Claws-mail?)
44: * emacs (maybe too large?)
45: * perl
46: * python
47: * mplayer (when it's possible to pack it up)
48: * pdf viewer
49: * preconfigured bozohttpd running on localhost showing documentation
50:
51: ## NetBSD documentation
52:
53: In [this
54: post](http://mail-index.netbsd.org/netbsd-docs/2012/09/20/msg000295.html)
55: I shared some ideas about what to do with documentation. Though much of it
56: was proven not practical by the replies, I still have one idea: Unify
57: documentation of NetBSD, and provide it all on a NetBSD system.
58:
59: The first step is to merge as much content as possible into the NetBSD wiki.
60: Currently, the NetBSD documentation is very diverse in its distribution form.
61:
62: Then, the Google Code-In produced some nice results, including a CGI for a small
63: markdown wiki to browse the wiki (if it was offline), and maybe even a terminal
64: markdown browser.
65:
66: Finally, ship these two in a pkgsrc package or even with base, and provide a
67: small script which regularly updates the documentation.
68:
69: ## NetBSD website
70:
71: Currently, the NetBSD website is written in HTML and Docbook and requires many
72: tools to be edited and committed. The final goal should be to have just a small
73: homepage with a bit important information, but all the essential technical
74: information should be in the wiki. There's also a separate page for this:
75: [[htdocs_migration]].
76:
77: Though the plan is currently to migrate *all* contents to the wiki, I don't
78: think this is the way to go. A wiki just doesn't leave a good impression.
79:
80: ## NetBSD community and marketing
81:
82: Just some thoughts... I think NetBSD has a very bad way of making technical
83: ecisions which are counterproductive from a marketing point of view, or just are
84: not used for marketing purposes.
85:
86: The world has changed; nowadays, there's a growing *hacker community* which
87: consists of many people with an age below 30. They're just not used to the
88: flexibility of the old tools Unix provides, and to the flexibility you have
89: with a modern Linux.
90:
91: There are repeating questions why NetBSD doesn't use git as its primary VCS, but
92: rather CVS. CVS *is* indeed a very mighty tool, but many people don't know. They
93: like git more because they can explicitly `push` with it (and don't know about
94: hooks in CVS or Subversion).
95: The same holds for many other decisions.
96:
97: NetBSD has a very... oldish view of how a community should be organised. On the
98: one hand, there are the developers, which are coding the project, maintaining
99: the website, maintaining packages, maintaining documentation, organising events,
100: organising NetBSD itself... and on the other hand, there are the users. They're
101: rather consumers than contributors.
102:
103: The few ones which want to contribute are doing so, and after some time becoming
104: developers with the right and possibility to do everything, but there's nothing
105: in between. There's only few community involvement overall, though there are
106: many topics which don't require a developer status.
107: I think breaking with the old habits and providing more community involvement
108: and community support is the way to go, but except for starting with a
109: user-editable wiki, I don't have many ideas how to do so.
110:
111: ## NetBSD current
112:
113: The same problem exists imho with the release cycle. The standard release cycle
114: of NetBSD is too slow for many people who use it privately (just see how
115: wide-distributed Arch Linux got), and tracking current is a rather obscure thing
116: with compiling things on your own, etc. ...
117: And it's not well-documented. There *are* changes, but who knows them? Which was
118: the current version where tmux was imported? Etc.
119:
120: Tracking these changes more centrally, and providing a nice way to install and
121: track a current installation would be a great benefit for NetBSD.
CVSweb for NetBSD wikisrc <wikimaster@NetBSD.org> software: FreeBSD-CVSweb