From: Ralf Mardorf <ralf mardorf rocketmail com>
To: evolution-list gnome org
Sent: Friday, 23 August 2013, 13:41
Subject: Re: [Evolution] downloads page
Arch Linux does use a real rolling release model, not such a pseudo
thingy as Debian calls rolling release, so it's always the current
release, resp. too keep Arch stable, stuff first is
in a testing
repository, so there might be a short delay. I don't know if apps like
Evolution are in testing too, or if it's just for important core stuff.
GNOME is a project available by quasi all distros, it isn't something
like e.g. MATE, so it's wise to use GNOME stuff from the distro's
official repositories, to avoid issue.
There's nothing bad with distros that ship with "outdated" software, as
long as it's ensured, that this software does work.
<snip />
It would be in the interest of an user to chose a distro regarding to
needs and not regarding to fan base emotions. All major distros with a
huge community are good, when chosen regarding to the needs. No user
base, no community = crap.
2 Cents
Hi :)
That was the problem with Ubuntu's version of Evo. It didn't work.
Ubuntu always had such an ancient version of Evo that ancient bugs still
existed and crucial features were missing. I've seen both fixed on this list by just helping people to upgrade to newer versions of Evo. However we weren't proactive enough and the rest of the Ubuntu project seems to have built-up such a bad impression of Evo that Ubuntu 'had to' drop Evo from being their default email-client.
A better fix for them would have been to simply use a less ancient version of Evo but they didn't go the sensible way. People generally don't.
In LibreOffice they have had a similar problem with "Base", their equivalent of MS Access. Despite being hugely more powerful than Access they have been hampered by an internal back-end that was so ancient and heavily tweaked that it failed to perform and even appears to have lost data on occasions. To make Base really blossom they cold have done any of 3 things
1. cut away the back-end completely (thus making it very
alien to people familiar with Access)
2. get the newer version of the back-end and do less tweaking
3. get a different back-end and do less tweaking
They finally seem to be going with option 3. Their 'old' back-end is a very successful project in it's own right and when a newer version was used externally rather than internally then Base was brilliant. The problem was that users baulked at the whole internal vs external and just went with the option that was easier to set-up.
I used to use an excellent distro called "Wolvix". Really quite awesome but suffered from 3 things
1. not many devs so when 1 of them had to quit (Wolven's wife had their 1st child) the whole project died
2. not very well known and couldn't understand how to "promote" itself
3. tiny community with extremely limited conversions from user to dev (and most of the conversions were to theming or alternate DEs)
It did have some awesome features though, some of which are only just beginning to appear in other distros several years later. Others are just lost to time. Hardware support was better than Knoppix. Installer was noob-friendly (and fun) without being patronising and highly educational without being slow and without any "dumbing down".
So i don't think a lack of community necessarily means a thing is crap. I don't believe Ralf really believes that either, otherwise we would both think Evo was crap and that is clearly not true. It's just that the few of us that were in the Wolvix community were all very aware the whole project could collapse without warning and that it couldn't do all the developing that it's devs wanted to do.
Regards from
Tom
:)
