I'm not sure this community can create a worthwhile distro, that would be a really big task. Maybe we could create a browser, like a few people have suggested. Perhaps we could go for something even less ambitious, like a simple init system, IRC client, or browser add-on. We can't just sit back and throw ideas around, we need to start throwing code around. If you see an idea that tickles your fancy, make a repo and solicit bug reports and patches to whatever code you have.

Of course, before we do that, we have to reach a consensus on what the project will actually be. What do you think we should be working on?

An init system would be useless, there are plenty around (sinit, init, cinit, ...). Same goes for the Window manager. Moreover, we already got venam's 2bwm, which is fully working and just need more people to work on/test features.

My personnal bet would be a game, especially a King of the hill, like core war or this stack exchange game. I was thinking of something where the players could create their warrior in the language they want. Everybody could contribute then (but we'll have to choose a language for the core though).

You know what, that is actually a good idea. I wanted an init system mainly for personal practice, so I'll write one anyway, but a game in that vein sounds like a good community project.

If you go through the previous thread, there was talk of a game, and I think it'd probably be for the best. It's easier to contribute to imo, I think other stuff sets the bar too high, when people have to do a lot of background reading it simply won't get done.

Linux/Unix has plenty of browsers, plenty of WMs, and plenty of distros... We should make a utility specialized in something like CAD or something else meant for professional use... something that's actually needed. Make it minimal and make it competitive with existing proprietary alternatives.

I myself think we need a more decent competitor to the Adobe Creative Suite, but that may be a bit of a large project for our community.

Perhaps an ultra-lightweight and well-polished CAD suite would be worth attempting?

IMHO, a CAD software would be a really good idea for the UNNIX world, as there are very few around here. But definitely not a good bet for our first project...

It involves advanced mathematics, graphical libraries, 3D rendering... And a CAD software has many features (textures, constraints, friction, ...). I don't think we're ready for such a huge challenge yet.
We'd better start with something really easy, polish it, then start a new one, a bit harder, and so on.. It would make us more confident, as well as improving our programming skills. But your idea is worth keeping for later :)

Another cool project could be collection of X setups. Just git repo with bunch of setups which all includes install scripts.

I think the most easy thing to pull together would be, like vompatti mentioned, a collection of scripts. Maybe multiple repos with different collections of scripts used in different situations. If we can do that then we can move to a more mature project.

What about a decent alternative to Guitar Pro?

I think doing something like a collection of scripts would be good, too. It's a lot less ambitious than a distro, CAD software, or a game, so a lot more realistic. Whoever is in charge around here (cough yrmt cough) should make a Nixers GitHub org and we should start putting our own setups on there and working out some way to standardise the install scripts.

(11-04-2014, 12:16 PM)pizzaroll1 Wrote: I think doing something like a collection of scripts would be good, too. It's a lot less ambitious than a distro, CAD software, or a game, so a lot more realistic. Whoever is in charge around here (cough yrmt cough) should make a Nixers GitHub org and we should start putting our own setups on there and working out some way to standardise the install scripts.

Maybe just rename the UH github group to Nixers.

We can't rename the group. I'll create a new one ASAP.

https://github.com/nixers-software

Anyone can have an invite!

Invite me, please (http://github.com/pizzaroll). Thanks.

https://github.com/berkoz

invite me pls

Added you!

https://github.com/vompattix

me toooo :P

Quote:You must be a member to see who's a part of this organization.

You forgot to make the group public (as well as the repos)

So when do we get repo making privileges? After we decide on a project? Pshh, we don't need to decide what we're doing, we can just start doing shit and maybe it will turn out well. All this deliberation over what we're going to do is annoying (ignore that I was the one who started this thread), let's just do it! Bazaar, not cathedral, right?

Invite please?

https://github.com/kirbyman62

So we basically forget the idea to make a new project. Everyone will just dump their script to the nixers repo. Am I right ?

OpenSSL alternative?

we can make a shell, can call it nix shell.

A standalone process supervision tool to go along with sinit etc. would be nice. I am personally a big fan of process supervision as I prefer processes that crash and/or stop for whatever reason to not be restarted until a human operator has diagnosed the underlying issue.

It might however be something that you guys are interested in, I know of several people who would like this.

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s/I am/I am not/

When we push our private keys to the private key repo, how should we encrypt them? ROT13? XOR? Changing the extension from '.txt' to '.encrypted'? Should we just not encrypt them and put them on ftp.nixers.net? I mean, what are the chances someone would guess the IP, right?

These are all very serious questions.

You can upload your keys on the default keyservers.