[SPAM] Re: [Newbies] Beginner's List Question

Mateusz Grotek unoduetre at poczta.onet.pl
Wed Jan 28 08:56:52 UTC 2015


Dear Squeakers,
As a long term Linux user let me add a couple of remarks to the  
discussion.

"The Linux way of doing
things focuses on the super old school UNIX mentality that the person  
using
the system knows what they're doing better than any program or developer
can guess, and so the power, and responsibility, is in your hands."

This do not apply to e.g. Ubuntu.

"How do I get <insert_program_name_here> to run?"
isn't really a question for the squeak community if you're on a Linux
machine."

IMHO there are two separate questions to address:
1. "How do I get Squeak to run on Linux?"
2. "How do I get Squeak to run on <put here any Linux distro>?"
The Squeak community should address only the first question and it  
should do it with the One-Click Image. If there are any Linux users  
around, who want to maintain packages in some distros, let them do it,  
and help them with that. Then you can link to their work, when the  
question concerning a particular distro arrives. Some links for  
potential maintainers:
https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/developers-reference/new-maintainer.html
https://help.launchpad.net/Packaging/PPA
http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/handbook/handbook.xml?part=1&chap=2

"You cannot claim to support Linux because Linux is not an operating  
system but only an operating system kernel."

IMHO it is false, but a part of it is true :-P
Yes, Linux is only an operating system kernel, but does it mean you  
cannot claim to support the kernel? I think you can. Additionally you  
can claim to support Linux with X Window System. And it is more or less  
what Squeak does in the One-Click image afaiu.

"In order to support a Linux distribution you need to compile the VM  
against the library versions that the distribution uses."

Well, it is desirable, but not strictly necessary.

"Real support for Linux (distributions) would be a lot of work: build  
and test the VM for a multitude of Linux distributions (there are  
hundreds if not thousands of them) and for many versions of each. Every  
variation of involved library in any involved (incompatible) version."

And it is not the task of Squeak developers to do that. It is the task  
of each distribution's package maintainers (which of course might be  
the same people, but in different roles). Squeak developers are  
something called "upstream" :-P
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upstream_%28software_development%29




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