Re: Plans for Ubuntu Release and GNOME download?

[Dave Neary <bolsh gnome org>]

Hi,

Thilo Pfennig wrote:
> I like to know or suggest that GNOME will also announce the availability
> of GNOME 2.24 in Ubuntu - as this will be AFAIK the first major distro
> which will give the users the new GNOME. I think at least this should be
> mentioned somewhere on the homepage.

Thanks again for your suggestion Thilo. For completeness, Ubuntu 8.10 is
due to release on October 30th (just before Hallowe'en... scary).

GNOME 2.24 will also be included in OpenSuse 11.1 and Fedora, major
distributions both, due for release respectively on Dec 18th and Nov
25th. It will also be in an upcoming Mandriva 2009 (due out on Oct 9th -
before Ubuntu, in fact).

> I also like to indicate that there seems to be no obvious link to how to
> actually get GNOME.

Good idea! Indeed, the idea of the Torrents page (maintained by Ken van
Dine for the past few releases) and both garnome and jhbuild were to
allow people to get their hands on GNOME before it was included in other
distributions. I can imagine that we could have a page split into 3
sections:

For the impatient who want to test drive:
 * Download KVM and VMWare images [link to torrent pages]

For application developers and enthusiasts:
 * garnome [link to documentation on installing GNOME with garnome] -
description of garnome
 * jhbuild [link to jhbuild instructions] - description of jhbuild

For users looking to install a GNOME-based system:
 * Foresight Linux [link to Foresight download - given the work they do
on torrents.gnome.org and integrating GNOME straight away into a
release, I think they're due the props]
 * Mandriva 2009 [link] - due out on October 9th!
 * Ubuntu 8.10 [link] - due out on October 30th!
 * Fedora 10 [link] - due out on November 25th!
 * OpenSuse 11.1 [link] - due out on December 18th!

For other GNOME-based distributions, see Footware [link to Davyd's list
of GNOME-based distros]

Would you like to propose appropriate content for gnome.org/start/2.24
which we could use & carry forward to future releases?

> As to the mentioning of some work being done on Plone I like to get a
> specific date - as "its being worked on" is being said since years and
> doesnt help at all. I still think some fixes should be done as soon as
> immediately.

I haven't seen anyone say "It's being worked on" in quite a while. In
fact, on several occasions I've seen people saying "It's not being
worked on".

I think there are a few reasons for that - getting the beta site onto
gnome.org infrastructure seized up (not sure why), Quim dropped the
project (he went to work for Nokia and had no more time), and as far as
I know, no-one has picked up the ball. The ball is there, if anyone
wants to pick it up, but let me be as emphatic as I can be:

    No-one is working on updating www.gnome.org now.

There, it's out there.

I'll happily accept patches to the content on the front page or any
other page on wgo. Please suggest some.

A few people have been pushing paper over the past while (adding some
news, updating splash, etc) but the website is now a void. There are
resources there - people who are enthusiastic and invested in the plan
to revamp the site - but I have no idea what the roadblocks are, what
needs doing to raise them, and what plans, if any, those people who
worked on the site 2 years ago have for that work now.

Let me just say this also, Thilo: while you have many appropriate
comments and the things you point out do indeed need work, what is
notably absent from your numerous mails criticising the way things are
is a proposal to improve things and do some of the work yourself. More
than comments on what's wrong, the GNOME website and the GNOME marketing
effort in general needs people to make improvements, to stand up and
lead the effort and impose a vision.

Would you care to help do some of the heavy lifting? [this goes for all
those subscribed to marketing-list who are waiting to be told what GNOME
marketing will do to address the many issues we have - please help, pick
one thing, and do it - it could be suggesting new content for a web
page, doing some research on a GNOME deployment, writing an article
about some GNOME technology...].

Cheers,
Dave.

-- 
Dave Neary
GNOME Foundation member
bolsh gnome org