Re: Secondary architectures and marketing

[Oliver Falk <oliver linux-kernel at>]

Hi Steven!

Sorry. Business kept me busy...

Steven Moix wrote:
> On Sat, 2008-12-13 at 21:15 +0100, Oliver Falk wrote:
> > Oh yes. Jay and I are still very active. :-)
> > There are some people who contribute CPU power from time to time. And 
> > others who help compiling things...
>
> That's another point I'd like to talk about. I have no idea how I can
> help if you don't ask on the list ;). As far as I can tell, you need CPU
> time to recompile the "older" packages from the "F9 alpha vs. F9" tree
> on http://buildsys.zero42.at/status/, am I right?

Yes. CPU power is the most relevant. I do have a few boxes now, but not 
too much time to dig into every build problem.

> What is this tree anyway, is it compared against the Fedora 9 base DVD
> only or the current Fedora 9 + all the updates?

It's always *with* updates.

> > I've introduced myself to Paul at LinuxTag2008 in Berlin and asked him 
> > regarding SecArch. I don't remember exactly what he said, but the last 
> > information I have is, that there is a space problem...
>
> Are you talking about Paul Frields?

Yes. Sorry for being imprecise. :-)

> > I also had a (mail-)conversation with Mike (McLean) a few weeks ago, 
> > because I've seen some scripts in koji git. Script that will help to 
> > "mirror the list of packages to be built to SecArch koji's" - I hope 
> > this way to describe it in one setence isn't too wrong. :-)
>
> Great, as long as you keep pushing the idea regularly I'm happy. :)

:-)

> > > The wiki page [2] seems completely outdated
> > True, true. My fault. I'm very busy and Jay is trying to fix X most of 
> > the time. Again. We could really need some help. Especially in 
> > organizing, documentation and fixing packages... 2 People for (what? 
> > 6.4k pkgs is *hard*!).
> >
> >  > and alphacore.info doesn't
> > > even work anymore (is Mike Barnes gone?), which leads me to the second
> > > proposition.
> > I've asked Mike via mail some time ago. No reaction yet.... /me is 
> > thinking about talking the domain... And maybe just redirect it to 
> > SecArch pages on fpo.
>
> Frankly, I don't think that Alphacore is an appropriated name anymore,
> since Fedora dropped the Core part. If you really want a domain name to
> get some visibility until we get integrated in Fedora as a secondary
> architecture, I suggest alphadora.org. It isn't a bad name after all.

Well. I guess it would be fine to have some Links from alphalinux.org to 
zero42 and vice versa... Alphadora.org would be nice, but someone still 
has to maintain it...

> > > The bottom line is that currently there is no way anyone can even know
> > > that an alpha port for Fedora exists, wouldn't it be more fun to have
> > > more visibility and users?
> > True. True. We are quite 'hidden'. On the other hand. We are not really 
> > hidden, because we are talking on IRC (at least me) in #AlphaCore and 
> > #alpha. We are also having conversation via the alpha mailinglist. And 
> > we are visible via bugs (rh bz, gnu bz and others)....
>
> We are not that many, so I that that the mailinglist is still the
> central place to be, but a small Wordpress-based website could be cool
> too to get some visibility. I can take care of this if you want.

That would be great, but I think alphalinux.org would be the best place, 
don't you think?

> > AH! One thing, that is currently a BLOCKER. There's no glibc alpha 
> > maintainer any more... I've already asked via bz what skills someone who 
> > would takeover this job would need, but no answer yet.... If it doesn't 
> > depend on hardcore-deep c knowledge, I could do it myself... If they 
> > want me to do so. :-)
>
> I'm sooo not a C programmer, can't help much :)

Well. I expected this :-)

Best,
 Oliver