[Frugalware-devel] Dev Help Needed

[Shina Owolabi]

Thank you for your response, Mr Miklos.
I understand the base philosophy for your distro, but unfortunately
due to bad/poor
internet access here in Nigeria, its very slow going trying to get the
present build.
I forge on, regardless.
To reiterate, the target end users we are trying to gain as our market
are for the most part goverment and institutional users. We live in a
country where the word "computer" is nearly synomnous with "Microsoft
Windows". So it will be a bit of a task to get people to change their
understanding of user environments. I fully realize the differences
between Windows and Linux (I use Mandriva myself) but im looking at a
build that will have some forgiveness in it, something similar to
Xandros and Linspire, if you please.
I understand the level of work that will be required to achieve
localization, and I would be willing to put in place a team that will
tackle that very important task.
Essentially what im trying to build wont be frugalware, but a
derivative build based on frugalware , and customized/optimized to the
Nigerian experience, having a look and feel to make local users feel
at home with the system out of the box, with a very good technical
support system (i like the flash-based guides Linspire has)in the box,
and on the phone. Most of the users will be unfamiliar with computers
in general (as this will enable us to push cheaper PCs and laptops
into homes), and those that are, should not have too much of a problem
doing what they need to do with the OS, which is to use it to do their
day to day work and entertainment. I hope you see what I mean.
Hope to hear from you soon.

Best regards,

Sina Owolabi

On 5/15/07, VMiklos <vmiklos at frugalware.org> wrote:
> Na Tue, May 15, 2007 at 04:39:53PM +0100, Shina Owolabi
> <oluwasinaowolabi at gmail.com> pisal(a):
> > Who will I be speaking to directly regarding this?
>
> as long as we are just collecting ideas, feel free to write to this
> list. it's good because we can share our knowledge, etc :)
>
> obviously some topic should not be public (when we exchange private
> infos), then feel free to use my private address, as you did earlier. i
> mean, i've mailed some other devels and they said don't have problem /
> suggest me as a contact
>
> > Does your distribution include proprietary drivers that will require
> > any form of licensing? Will we need to purchase such licenses?
>
> there are two categories and groups in Frugalware. each package has one
> or more group, for list of groups available (for example for -current
> and i686) see
>
> http://frugalware.org/packages/?op=groups&srch=.&arch=i686&ver=current
>
> there are two special type of groups:
>
> 1) the ones that have the -extra suffix
>
> 2) the ones that do not have any hyphen
>
> the primary group is always 1) or 2), the ones having 1) as a primary
> group are installed by default
>
> ah and probably you already found out, the two categories are the
> installed/not installed by default ones, 1) and 2)
>
> okay, i may be too long, Frugalware doesn't provide binary packages for
> proprietary software, except:
>
> - flashplugin and j2re(java) - installed by default
> - fglrx (ati) and nvidia - not installed by default
>
> for the rest, we provide buildscripts and one can easily build binary
> packages on his/her own box. the difference is not that big:
>
> pacman-g2 -Sy; pacman-g2 -S foo <- installing a binary package
>
> repoman upd; repoman merge foo <- building and installing a package (ie.
> skype, vmware, opera, etc)
>
> > Will it be possible to include the functionality to be able to compete
> > with MS Windows to a good extent(that is, for the ordinary user)?
> > People need weaning off Windows a whole lot here. That is a very big
> > need.
>
> probably you know that Linux is not Windows (see
> http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm if this is something new), but of
> course there is nothing bad in an easy to use system. just we don't
> think our users are stupid, there is always a way for the ones who say
> "i know what i'm doing"
>
> > What sort of localization would you need done, in order to have
> > Nigerian languages, and an African look and feel desktop environment?
> > What responsibilities will you be expecting from us?
>
> have a look at this page:
>
> http://frugalware.org/docs/translations
>
> this web interface allows one to translate most Frugalware-specific
> text, like the installer, livecd, documentation, pacman-g2 and so on
>
> > How long do you estimate before we can have a presentable product?
>
> once the installer is translated, we can mark packages to be installed
> by default when the Nigerian language is selected. so i think that would
> be the first step. after this is done, you should check what what
> applications do you need in your language - saidly as far as i see we
> have zero language packs for your language, even not for KDE (it has
> 50+ langpacks) or OpenOffice.org (70+ langpacks)
>
> so i think that mainly depends on how much time will it take to
> translate the necessary texts
>
> there is an other issue: we do not add features to -stable, hence the
> name of it. this also means that adding new languages to the installer
> in -stable is not possible. there are two choices:
>
> - creating a separate package reposithory that would contain backports
>   from -current
>
> - waiting for our next stable release (see http://frugalware.org/roadmap
>   for more info)
>
> i would recommend first just do the work in -current, then you can
> decide if you need such (not official) backports or not
>
> > Most importantly, this Nigerian distro will have to look like its a
> > home grown solution,
> > so that we can get easier inroads into the powers that be for
> > distribution where it pays, and is most needed. Therefore, your
> > involvement will be as our technical partners. Would you have any
> > reservations to that?
>
> changing the artwork to contain your name instead of Frugalware is okay,
> why not. removing our names (copyright lines) would be of course a gpl
> violation, but i assueme you would not like to do so :)
>
> > How do we start talking, and who will spearhead this discussion for your
> team?
>
> is private email okay to you? then we can discuss off-list, then the
> necessary/public informations can be sent to this list
>
> one question: what charset do you use? utf8? or is there something
> specific?
>
> thanks,
> VMiklos
>
> --
> developer of Frugalware Linux - http://frugalware.org
>


-- 
Best Regards,

Sina Owolabi

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01-7203257