Talk:Current events

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Date formatting

Some countries use DD/MM/YYYY (e.g. the UK) for dates and some MM/DD/YYYY (e.g the USA). To avoid confusion I think it would be better to write the name of the month out (i.e. instead of 08.26.2005 write 26 August 2005) --Friedgold 28 August 2005 10:43 (EDT)

Dates used in the wiki should be in standard US format (mm.dd.yyyy) -J.P.
Why? Imagine that someone who hasn't visted the wiki before (and so doesn't know what format the dates are in) comes across an article with the date 01.07.2005. How do they know if that represents the 1 July 2005 or 7 January 2005? They'll probably have to find other pages with dates on to compare. Writing 7 January 2005 removes all such ambiguities. It fits in better with the Wiki software itself. Look at the bottom of the page, it says "This page was last modified 03:32, 27 August 2005", and this date format is also used in Special:Recent Changes. It's not just the UK which doesn't use US format, it's the majority of the world (see here)--Friedgold 28 August 2005 15:31 (EDT)
I suggest YYYY.MM.DD - it is unambiguous, concise and sorts properly when used for folders etc.

Porting DSL to Nokia 770

Now that the Internet Tablet from Nokia has been released, and because it is running a version of Debian Linux on it, wouldn't this be greate if DSL was ported to this device? Unfortunately, I am not a programmer so I am not sure where to even start. But I know there is an SDK available at http://maemo.org for the nokia 770. What do you guys think?

Tigan (December 14, 2005)

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Sources for DSL Users New to Linux

How about compromising by linking to wikis which DO have knowledge about FAT, Bootable CD, GRUB, Linux, etc. And I mean putting some effort into it, not just saying go to xyz.com & leave me alone. But linking to the actual sections which have good information of particular interest to DSL users. I'd be willing to participate in that wiki maintenance. I can honestly envision DSL getting 10 times more marketshare just because of this. Because I think there's just such a HUGE opportunity for people who struggle with it. For example, when I look at the learning curves I've just mastered, FINALLY getting my DSL notebook on Wi-FI, and it sat there unused for a couple of years, but it would have been in use if it were easier. So why not make it easy for new users? Why not be the starting point for new DSL users? Give them what they want. I'll help, if there's a more helpful attitude from this wiki. Lastly, the huge red sign on the current events page, DSL is Not Wikipedia, is a keep-out sign to newbies, written by somebody with an attitude. You don't really think newbies are going to donate anything to you, do you?


Fiodor: The wiki is open (except a few controlled pages). You shouldn't have mayor problem in contributing to it. Linking to the outside world is OK and already done in a lot of pages. Just go ahead! Welcome on board and if you need any help ask for it. You can even change the "This Is Not Wikipedia" part yourself! :-)
I hear you, but the overwhelming attitude here seems insurmountable. From my perspective, this wiki is a hostile environment. Because in addition to the aforementioned, DSL IS NOT WIKIPEDIA, the very first section on the home page is, DO NOT USE THE WIKI TO ASK QUESTIONS go to the forums. Here's the deal, some people like forums, some people (myself included) like wikis, some like mailing lists, etc. And why shouldn't they ask questions anyway? Why not just give them a QuestionsAndAnswers page? What makes you so smart? How do you know if somebody isn't going to answer them? Loosen up Jack, get a grip.
Personally I deplore forums, especially this one. My notebook has a 1024x768 resolution, and the top 55% of the screen has no substance to the visitor, it's just full of crap, crap, crap. Yes, I realize you need the advertising dollars. But really, 55%??? It could be done in 10%, and you'd be giving people what they want, without ANNOYING them. And then the first part of the bottom 45% is a nasty arrogant continually spinning animated E (or whatever), and he had something like 1100 posts. I sort of think that guy must be a plant from Microsoft trying to kill you off. And the best way to do that is to insure that all of the DSL support is hostile.
Look from my perspective, forums suck, wikis rock. I'm not putting a dime of my time into a forum, especially your extremely nasty arrogant forums. But I would spend my time borrowing/stealing information from your forums, and implanting it into the wiki -- IF you'd GET RID OF THE ATTITUDE!
Yes, I know what you're thinking, bi***, bi***, bi***. But I trying to determine if it's even worth my time to lift a finger here, or if it's not worth the effort. I think you're just missing the boat. You could be 10 times larger than you are. You could be #1 in the world. Don't you understand how significant that is? Number 1 in the world. You're hot, extremely hot. The dirtsuckers in Redmond must be shaking in their boots every time they think of you. And they must be really pleased that DSL's support is so hostile. Both the wiki AND the forums -- both are hostile.
I won't put a dime's worth of my time into the current hostile system. But I would be willing to invest some of my time if you'd look at it from the visitor's perspective for a change. And by the way, I don't want a thin dime, I just want to use the best supported OS in the world, from the best supported source, and I absoletely LOVE-LOVE-LOVE the 50mb limit. That is just so profound I want to go outside and shout it to the world. So would you PLEASE LIGHTEN UP, PLEASE!!!!
So what's the deal? Don't you want more money? Change your hostile attitude, and you can have so much money, you'll have to hire a couple of young boys to haul it away in wheel barrels. No kidding, I honestly believe it. The one and only reason you're NOT occupying the top spot on DistroWatch.com is that your support is so aggressively nasty and elitest hostile. My recommendations are as follows:
  • DECREASE the top fluff of the forums to 10% of the screen real estate -- in other words, SOLUTIONS start at the 11th percent -- you'll probably immediately start making more money on advertising -- but for sure, you will increase your market share & hits by 10 times, which will in turn increase you advertising revenue.
  • PLEASE get rid of ALL animations, hopefully there's a way in the forum & wiki software to do that.
  • Consider a MUCH smaller DSL logo in the top left corner; possibly 88x31 pixels.
  • GET-GET-GET RID of the hostile attitude on the wiki by rewriting the arrogant pages -- make people feel at home -- rather than driving them away. (For crying out loud, the first paragraph on the homepage is GO AWAY!) Your Honor, I rest my case.
If you do these things, I think your market share will grow dramatically.
It seems like the spammers of the world are effecting the direction of the DSL wiki, a barrier for sure, but so as not to give up... Is there a way for you to let anybody edit a small number of pages, such as the question & answer page -- WITHOUT having to create a login account. Then let verified users create new answer pages, and edit MOST OF THE existing pages with the questions, with links to these new pages? (That's actually pretty profound when you think about it, if a user wants an answer on the wiki, they have to edit a q&a page to get it, and hopefully some will stick around, become verified, and contribute what they do know about. Personally I'm not going to stick around the current hostile attitude, it will never be number 1, but DSL could be the OS used on the coming hard-diskless notebook. Although I have to tell you, I've contributed many facts to many wikis worldwide to the ones that let me do it anonymously, but I understand the spam thing.) I think the wiki is the greatest invention since sliced bread, a social breakthrough, and you've hedged your bets by offering both wiki & forums. I'd just like to see the DSL wiki have a chance at being used like wikis were meant to be used. Because the concept is sound & revolutionary, but takes some thing. BTW, I think you're in some pretty good company, I'm so happy that you chose MediaWiki, I see it at major sites all over the place & I participate all the time. DSL merges so many profound principles; open source, knoppix technology, squeazed down to 50MB, wiki, forums, it just needs a concentration on support. I'll bet there people all over world hoping to see you stiffle yourself, and are releived to see the lack of support, the attitude on the wiki & the gross infliction of pain on the forums. Why not lighten up on these issues? I the current locked down article oriented state of the DSL wiki, I find it of limited use. Somewhere on this wiki I read how magnificant these articles are...not my opinion though, they may address the answers that the author provided, but what about the questions that countless newbies have? I think a lot of the people who know the answers don't like wikis, and don't respect the newbies enough to want to hear from them. But guess what, it's because of these gurus that the newbies have so many questions in the first place. And the wiki is a great step in the direction of resolving that. Ah, but the catch-22 is the gurus control the wikis. So do they give up the power, or not, that is the question.
I also like wikis. I think documentation is very important for every project. That, along with my liking DSL, is why I volunteered to be the wiki master here.
It sounds like you've had a bad experience in the forums. I'm sorry about that. As for the wiki being locked, it isn't. You don't even need an account to edit pages. Looking at the "Recent Changes" page, most people don't create an account before editing, or just don't log in. You do, however, have to have an account to post in the forums. If that is what you are refering to, I agree that anonymous posting in the forums would be a good addition.
You talk a lot about the money rolling in. Most of the people you are scolding do not get paid. We make our volunteer contributions when we can. I erased the current events that you said were hostile, partly because I agree that they appeared hostile, and partly because they weren't current. If you see anything that you think shouldn't be in the wiki, or should be changed, go ahead and change it. Don't be shy. You don't even need an account. On a side note, I don't think anyone was really trying to be hostile. Saidin especially has an unusual sense of humor.
Sorry for the mess. The wiki certainly isn't as organized or as helpful as it could be. We're doing the best we can (we as in this small community). I understand that it is hard to help out in the documentation when you don't understand the system, and difficult to understand the system without adequate documentation. We're working on it. If you can help, please do.
As for the forums being distracting and ad-ridden, I didn't even notice. I don't download ads or play animations. The forums are John's department, and if it is really that ugly, then I agree, he might do best to fix it.

---Winter Knight February 19, 2007

Thanks for taking the time to read let alone respond to my post, and mostly for removing the keep out signs on the wiki home & current events pages, huge steps in the right direction, I think. Here are some things I think DSL should work on, which would be of almost no cost:

  • Reduce the page tops at the forums down to 10% & get rid of the fluff.
  • Get rid of Sadine's spinning logo on 1000 pages, it's EXTREMELY annoying, completely amateurish, and as far as I'm concerned reason enough to never come back, and I'll bet you'll never know how many people that alone has driven away.
  • The sentence at the top of the wiki homepage is VERY improved, I suggest changing it to something like, "your answer may already be present on the forums, you can also add it the the QandA page on this wiki, and hopefully someone will answer, so check back." In other words, rather than dictate what they're gonna get, let people decide what they want, let the market decide.

I still can't live with what I see. I was looking for a place to hang my hat, donate my energy, but you guys are out of touch, the people in power have an attitude, and seem proud of it. I can understand and respect that, but you ain't gettin a dime of my money, and NONE of my donated time. It has become a less hostile environment, and hopefully it will improve.

Two years ago my notebook was a gimme, and I've had it in the closet since, because I couldn't / didn't take the time to get it usable at coffee shopes, finally I've got it working, just great on a 50MB OS (which I'm not willing to use because of the people in power) so I went out & researched numerous live OS's. I feel like I've been driven away to Knoppix, or wherever I call home for a while, but just so I won't have to listen/wait for the CD to spin up/down all the time, now I'm going to order a $700 to $1000 for a notebook with 1-2GB RAM. I could get 256K notebooks all over the place FOR FREE, but then I'd have to deal with the nasty arrogance of DSL, and I just can't do it. In the interest of full disclosure, my notebook keyboard has issues anyway. But please know, when I stomp on it, I'll be thinking of DSL's hostile forums, and a wiki that dictates what people are gonna get, as expressed by the wikimaster, for a wiki in name only, a wiki that's a partial wiki, which I suppose they all are. I'd pay a million dollars, if I had it, to not deal with DSL's arrogance, I expect DSK is going to keep moving down the DistroWatch list, and every time you do, I'll be thinking of this exchange. But there's nothing I'd love more than to be wrong about this. Tell Sadine with his childish animated logo that he inflicts on the readers of his 1000 posts, and whoever's responsible for the top 55% of the forums being useless, "all the best". I'll stop back every few months, I genuinely hope I'm wrong about DSL committing suicide. Please know, it won't bother me at all, if you wipe out my comments above. I'm going to go out and find a home now. With somebody who doesn't have the nasty fowel attitude of DSL, somewhere that I can make a difference, for open source. All the best.

whats going on right now?

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Current events

Hi. I'm fairly newbie and all, so don't really know so much what I'm talking about here, but I was surprized to see the database in MyDSL Browser hasn't been updated for more than a year. So I looked in Wikipedia to see what they're saying about DSL Linux. According to them, developments are currently slow because of "infighting among founding members" or something like that. I wasn't too glad to read that, since I am hoping for continual improvements on this particular Linux distro which I use and like. However, the following information from the DSL forums wasn't too encouraging:

Forum:
Site News
Stuff going on with DSL and this web site.
...
Last Post Info:
Dec. 09 2008,22:06

Nor this:

Forum:
Release Candidates
The place for testing the future of DSL.
...
Last Post Info:
June 08 2008,22:48

Of course, the page itself here, called Current events, does have its newest message dated "2007". Which is what I mainly want to comment on. What I am thinking is, perhaps it would be nice to offer just some small notification as to the age of the most recent content in the page here (Current events). It's pretty weird to just see the two years "2006" and "2007" in a page called "Current events", and then no comment about that situation. Gets to feeling slightly like an abandoned village or something, ghost town. That's not, in my humble opinion, too stylish in a wiki.

DSL Linux certainly isn't dead, yet, so to speak. There's a lot of activity in the forums, and I'm assuming many more than me who actually use DSL Linux on their computers. I would say that for this reason would it be appropriate to put up something in the page here about what is the state of, precisely, current events. I'm guessing people do come by here for information. Like they also should.

Anyway, just my two cents. --Captain Chaos 28 September 2009 20:13 (UTC)

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The future of DSL (or: 'Current events. Part II)

As I've not ever been following the forums very closely, I haven't been too updated on the general status of DSL's situation at this or any other time. Through a link I found in the Wikipedia article, I'm learning that the people behind DSL were originally two individuals called John and Robert, and that they also had some kind of cooperation with a third person, also called John. Apparently this changed at some point. Towards the end of 2008, it seems.

I'm referring to this link.

That's not a very long thread. It contains only the first post, by John, posted December 6, 2008, plus one additional post that's a comment added three days later, also by John. But it seems that thread describes the current situation of DSL, as well as points out how developments are going to be in the continuation and future of DSL. Shouldn't this general topic, addressed in the thread, be presented in some way in the Current events page? I'm not sure what the wiki policy would be on that, but my immediate thought is this would fit nicely in Current events.

Any and all responses to this discussion post would be much appreciated. :-)

--Captain Chaos 9 October 2009 21:23 (UTC)

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