Some thoughts

[Erik Walthinsen <omega@omegacs.net>]

This is the second attempt at this mail, the first having been cut short by a 
segv of my MUA.  This, you will see, prompted the last item.

First, there have been many articles about Linux.  All the technical articles 
have been good, but not all the 'community' articles have been.  The problem 
is that many people read something, even if it's only slightly incorrect (as 
in Bill Machrone's "Second glance" article in PC Week), and flame the poor 
guy.  IMO, this is because no one in the Linux community recognizes a single 
person or group responsible for press relations.

While I don't think we (SEUL) can do this by ourselves, we need to take an 
active part in such efforts, possibly as catalyst (for now).  There are 
enough groups out there that, if banded together, would do exactly what we 
need.  They just don't know about each other, or haven't tried to cooperate.

OK, second.  Recruiting: GLUE can point us to most of the LUG's around the 
world.  We should try to get these groups onboard, if for nothing else than 
to make sure people know that we exist.  Granted, it's too early to do this, 
but we need to prepare for it.

Third, I have offered to help out a person who's getting started with Linux.  
They want to get their machines set up with networking (with M$ systems), a 
nice user environment, etc.  What we should do is find a few people like 
this, with people in SEUL helping them out (preferable a single person for 
each 'newbie'), and document the entire process, finding out what's wrong in 
a practical manner.  Once these newbies cease to be newbies, they can help 
the project themselves.  This could be a valuable source of information.

Fourth, the web site.  It needs some work.  We need to decide what it needs, 
then decide where to put it.  I have enough stuff to do as it is, I'd like to 
get someone else involved in at least planning it and writing content.  The 
whylinux? pages will help quite a bit, but there's a lot to do.

Finally, testing.  We need to do testing of the software we use.  The crash 
of exmh I just had is enough to kill end-user acceptance.  Windoze does it 
all the time, I know, but people are used to that.  We have to be 
significantly better than doze on order to make the cut.  We can't just be a 
little better, or look cooler, we have to be materially better.  That means 
no leaks, segv's kernel panics, miscoded files, etc.  While I know this is 
impossible, we can come close.  There are tools out there to help, like 
Checker, ElectricFence, DDD(gdb), etc.  Just producing and/or packaging the 
stuff isn't enough.  We have to make sure it's done right.

More will be spewing later, but I want to get this written down and 
elsewhere, before my MUA crashes again.

TTYL,
    Omega

     Erik Walthinsen <omega@seul.org> - SEUL Project system architect
        __
       /  \                SEUL: Simple End-User Linux -
      |    | M E G A            Creating a Linux distribution
      _\  /_                         for the home or office user


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