Hello nixers,
Keeping in touch with the Self assessment of last year, I thought it would be good to create a thread for "orphaned" community-driven activities ideas.
Whoever likes them or wants to adopt them can discuss things here. For example, phillbush is now in charge of the book club we're running, and it's pretty fun so far.
As usual, we try to keep all the ongoing and past activities in this thread.

Here are a couple of currently orphaned ideas that have been running lately. Please share your own too and I'll add them.

• Try and review an older Unix system in a VM each week
  
• Try and review different tools a week, similar to what kmandla's blog was doing
  
• Try and review a different window manager or compositor every week
  
• A joint article and proofreading concept
  
• A weekly get-along to chat on an audio server
  
• Gaming server hosting with weekly/monthly game
  

Alright, so what do you think? Are you interested in any of the above? Do you have other ideas?

(09-02-2021, 06:37 AM)venam Wrote: Try and review an older Unix system in a VM each week

I like this idea. But not only for old Unices, but modern niche/obscure Unices too.

(09-02-2021, 06:37 AM)venam Wrote: A weekly get-along to chat on an audio server
Gaming server hosting with weekly/monthly game

Weekly/monthly game with audio chat.
Here are some lists of free online games:

• List of free massively multiplayer online games
  
• List of open-source video games
  
• OpenBSD gaming resource (if it runs on OpenBSD, the game will certainly run on other Unices).
  
• Another list of FOSS games (CTRL-F for "online")
  

I agree with phillbush on trying out Unix systems in VMs. Seems like a fun thing to do every once in a while. Maybe we'll even discover some useful feature and port it to newer systems? Who knows.

One thing I think would be cool would be to collaborate making a zine. The people over at lainchan made the lainzine, for example. Maybe we could try something in the same vein, but more focused on *nix?

For the weekly/monthly game, Battle for Wesnoth seems to be a popular option on IRC.
There's also Hedgewars, which simulate the Worms game.
Xonotic has also been proposed.

How about 0 A.D. for a game?

(09-02-2021, 01:12 PM)phillbush Wrote: Xonotic has also been proposed.

I have a private Xonotic server if we want to use it.

I like the game idea, too. Well, for voice, not that much for voice chat while playing, because it depends on which game you're playing to.
For example, for a FPS, I tend to use voice chat mostly for team-based things. When I was in Sco team (an old team on BF2142) we used to chat more friendly too, but we were all french, chatting does not require as much brain time when it's mothertongue.
For a RPG, chatting's ok, even in english I guess.
For turn based games... well, maybe if turns are fast. That means: not for wesnoth, because I tend to do something else then.

As for the list of games... let me give you other places:

* https://libregamewiki.org/Main_Page
* https://www.lebottindesjeuxlinux.tuxfamily.org/

Those days, I'm playing mostly to Unvanquished (https://unvanquished.net), a team-based (humans vs aliens) FPS with strategy elements (aka: building bases). Aliens are a bit hard to handle though, especially for newcommers.
Games can be between 5 minutes (1 good player versus 2 newcommers, for example) and more than an hour (balanced teams).

I've played a lot to redeclipse 1.x too. Fast paced arena shooter, technical moves. Game time is set to 10 minutes on most servers. There's a fork named "blue-nebula" and a 2.x branch, which requires a lot better hardware and have drastic mechanic changes.

I know wesnoth pretty well, but I don't think it would be interesting for community playing as in "let's do a game from time to time" because it's a game which requires at least 1 hour for even fast games.

I don't know many FOSS RPGs, MMO or not, which I would like to play. There's Ryzom, but I fail to install it.


Another activity idea (which was why I logged initially): hackatons.

[edit]

About games... https://smcameron.github.io/space-nerds-in-space/ someday, I'd just love to try this one

What tools or window managers do you like to try and review?

I would like to test mblaze, a set of utilities for handling mail. I'm still looking for scripts based on mblaze.
Other tools I'd like to try, but I have no idea of any, are unixy organizing/todo/pim tools. Nothing monolithic as emacs orgmode, but something like mblaze: a set of tools. Do you have any idea of a set of tools for self organization and scheduling?.

For the wms, there are some non-conventional wms out there: wmii (which I have never tried, but like its features), z3bra's glazier, and I also just wrote a wm: shod. ctwm is also a wm I'd like to test.

I can open a thread for those try-and-review activities and get in charge of them.

(18-02-2021, 03:57 PM)phillbush Wrote: I can open a thread for those try-and-review activities and get in charge of them.

Sure, that would be fantastic. Maybe try to keep the threads separated, one thread for one type (VM/WM/tool).

We can start with one of them, test the ground, and see how it goes.

For the tools we can get inspired by kmandla's list or the onethingwell list.

Freem gave the idea on irc for we to review tools made by us nixers, and then I gave the idea for we to maintain a index of personal projects on our github in the style of the sites list. Can we create such a list on github to index our personal projects?