How can we help?

How can we help?

[Logen Kain]

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This is intended to be a continuation of
 https://plus.google.com/u/0/+LogenKain/posts/LxkBfWqscxy 
<https://plus.google.com/u/0/+LogenKain/posts/LxkBfWqscxy>

So what can we do to make life easier for contributors and users?

Should we have a mailing list?  Just use Google communities? (does anyone 
actually use communities?)
Set up a discourse forum?  It's fairly easy to do on a Digital Ocean server 
for $10 a month.  Might need to upgrade at some point but $10 wouldn't be 
too bad to start with.
Is google groups good enough?  Or does it make Void look bad?  Personally I 
think Void should have a forum that promotes Voidlinux more than Google.

Things I know of that we can do to help void:
Raise awareness - more people = more potential contributors 
Contribute package builds
Contribute code to the package manager
Documentation, I still use the Arch WIki whenever I have a Linux related 
question.
If we could convince some North American Universities to host a void repo 
that would be wonderful.

Anyway, discuss.

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Re: How can we help?

[Stefan Mühlinghaus]

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In my opinion the Google Groups forum is adequate to use, it just needs a 
little more structure. At the moment all posts are just dumped into one 
giant list since it is either configured as a mailinglist or there just are 
no categories as of jet. As soon as there are more posts it will probably 
become very difficult to find relevant information. This can be changed 
however, which can be seen for example in the Hangouts Help Forum 
<https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/hangouts/categories>.

I think a simmilar kind of structuring would be absolutely sufficient. But 
there are other options. Several sites out there offer free forum hosting 
solutions (Free Forums <http://www.freeforums.org/> and others), complete 
with backup and support.

Of course neither Google Groups nor a free forum appear very 
"professional", but we should not forget that we do not need to appeal to 
the casual consumer. Void is clearly a distribution for the advanced user, 
who is comfortable with getting his hands dirty on the shell and wants to 
tinker with all aspects of his OS. These people, in my experience, prefer 
function over form and do not care one way or another about appearances.

It is a good idea to expand the the wiki, but it will be a looooong time 
until it gets anywhere near the Arch wiki :)

I do not know how the repositories are currently hosted, but as far as I 
can see there is no problem connection- or speed-wise. More mirrors 
certainly would not hurt, but that seems to be a topic for a later date. As 
these things go, I would assume that universities only get interested in 
mirroring a distro when it has gained a certain amount traction in the 
linux community.

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Re: How can we help?

[Logen Kain]

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I'm one to vote for function almost everytime, but even the hangouts help 
form is pretty ugly.  If we go with the idea that void is for technical 
users, much like Arch is, perhaps a mailing list would be more appropriate.

As for mirrors, the main mirrors seem to work fine for me as well, it might 
not be that big of deal but I am curious how universities decide who gets a 
mirror.  Would just be nice to have mirrors on other continents.

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Re: How can we help?

[Justin moore]

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"Of course neither Google Groups nor a free forum appear very 
"professional", but we should not forget that we do not need to appeal to 
the casual consumer. Void is clearly a distribution for the advanced user, 
who is comfortable with getting his hands dirty on the shell and wants to 
tinker with all aspects of his OS. These people, in my experience, prefer 
function over form and do not care one way or another about appearances."

What about function and form? This is something I see in Discourse which is 
why I am pushing it so hard and I think things are only going to get 
better. If we can get something installed sooner rather than later, that 
will allow us to get posts organized before it gets out of hand. 

On Wednesday, January 7, 2015 at 7:09:17 PM UTC-6, Logen Kain wrote:
>
> This is intended to be a continuation of
>  https://plus.google.com/u/0/+LogenKain/posts/LxkBfWqscxy 
> <https://plus.google.com/u/0/+LogenKain/posts/LxkBfWqscxy>
>
> So what can we do to make life easier for contributors and users?
>
> Should we have a mailing list?  Just use Google communities? (does anyone 
> actually use communities?)
> Set up a discourse forum?  It's fairly easy to do on a Digital Ocean 
> server for $10 a month.  Might need to upgrade at some point but $10 
> wouldn't be too bad to start with.
> Is google groups good enough?  Or does it make Void look bad?  Personally 
> I think Void should have a forum that promotes Voidlinux more than Google.
>
> Things I know of that we can do to help void:
> Raise awareness - more people = more potential contributors 
> Contribute package builds
> Contribute code to the package manager
> Documentation, I still use the Arch WIki whenever I have a Linux related 
> question.
> If we could convince some North American Universities to host a void repo 
> that would be wonderful.
>
> Anyway, discuss.
>

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Re: How can we help?

[Stefan Mühlinghaus]

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I agree completely, function *and* form would be nice. Discourse certainly 
seems capable, although maybe a little cluttered. There are several 
problems however:

   1. A Discourse hosting plan costs $100 each month, currently even $200. 
   Who is going to pay for that?
   2. To self-host Discourse a server is needed, and both the server and 
   Discourse need to be constantly maintained and updated. Again, who is going 
   to pay?
   3. What if someone graciously provided the money/server/work and then, 
   after a while, decides to drop out again? Xtraeme would either be stuck 
   with the costs of has to let the forum perish. Not good either way.

Google Groups may not be the best solution but certainly one of the most 
practical ones (and it is not sooooo bad). If you you really want something 
else I'm sure nobody would object if you set it up and called it 
"Unofficial Void Linux Forum" or something along those lines. It could be a 
valuable asset.

As I wrote before, there are other free online services available as an 
alternative. I have to say though that I would personally rather stick with 
Google than to entrust my data to some dubious free hosting company.



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Re: How can we help?

[Juan RP]

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I agree completely with Stefan.

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Re: How can we help?

[Logen Kain]

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Aye, I was thinking hosting it on a Digital Ocean server would be decent so 
long as we are small.  If we grew then it would be an issue.  Fundraising 
might be a good idea, but being a technical distro, the number of possible 
contributers is pretty low.


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Re: How can we help?

[JD Robinson]

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I think I'm going to jump on the bandwagon here. I just installed void to get away from debian and systemd variants. I have had a hard time finding how-to's just to get over the technical hump of learning xbps but am not the least bit dissapointed. I may query some of our local higher education institutions locally to to see what their polocies are on mirroring.

Re: How can we help?

[bougyman]

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For those of you who are looking for a place for real-time collaboration 
the freenode irc channel #xbps is the best place for that now. As far as 
adding more structure to the contribution flow I would like to recommend a 
phabricator instance. I've been using it at work to manage a team with many 
different projects and it has proven to be the best collaboration system 
I've yet used. I have an install at http://phabricator.rubyists.com, feel 
free to dig around and read the phabricator overview. It's like having your 
own github but with additional collaboration options available and easy to 
implement workflow strategies (code review, ci integration, workboards, 
tasks, projects, teams). It puts everything in one place and seamlessly 
integrates wtih github to keep the public face there.

On Thursday, February 26, 2015 at 11:42:51 PM UTC-6, JD Robinson wrote:
>
> I think I'm going to jump on the bandwagon here. I just installed void to 
> get away from debian and systemd variants. I have had a hard time finding 
> how-to's just to get over the technical hump of learning xbps but am not 
> the least bit dissapointed. I may query some of our local higher education 
> institutions locally to to see what their polocies are on mirroring.


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Re: How can we help?

[Cassie B]

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Getting on linuxquestions.org would be nice 
On Wednesday, January 7, 2015 at 5:09:17 PM UTC-8, Logen Kain wrote:
>
> This is intended to be a continuation of
>  https://plus.google.com/u/0/+LogenKain/posts/LxkBfWqscxy 
> <https://plus.google.com/u/0/+LogenKain/posts/LxkBfWqscxy>
>
> So what can we do to make life easier for contributors and users?
>
> Should we have a mailing list?  Just use Google communities? (does anyone 
> actually use communities?)
> Set up a discourse forum?  It's fairly easy to do on a Digital Ocean 
> server for $10 a month.  Might need to upgrade at some point but $10 
> wouldn't be too bad to start with.
> Is google groups good enough?  Or does it make Void look bad?  Personally 
> I think Void should have a forum that promotes Voidlinux more than Google.
>
> Things I know of that we can do to help void:
> Raise awareness - more people = more potential contributors 
> Contribute package builds
> Contribute code to the package manager
> Documentation, I still use the Arch WIki whenever I have a Linux related 
> question.
> If we could convince some North American Universities to host a void repo 
> that would be wonderful.
>
> Anyway, discuss.
>

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