I'm running Debian Woody (stable), Squeak VM 3.6.3 and
Squeak3.7-5989-full.image, Squeak3.7-5989-basic.image, and
Squeak3.6-5429.

I downloaded 3.6, the sources and the VM from the "officialUnix" site,
and the 3.7 images from the link at squeak.org.  Each site provides
different information and versions, and squeak.org says nothing about
how files need to be organized on disk or how to install, though the
"Unix site" does, if one reads the comments at the beginning of the
INSTALL script.

Perhaps my primary interest in Squeak is collaboration and web services,
the educational aspect is also important, but without the others the
value of Squeak to me is greatly reduced.

I have been trying for two days now to get a web server running, either
Kom*/Comanche or Swazoo, without success.  I have in the process learned
a considerable amount, a good deal of which might be useful should I
continue with Squeak.

The KomHTTP simply won't install into any of the images listed - in the
3.6 image, I have tried 7.0.2 (after installing NamedProcess,
DynamicBinding and KomServices) and version 6.2.  The latter won't
install, the former will, but it won't run - ModuleAssembly does a
'super initalize', and no superclasses implement it, so I get 'Object
does not understand initialize' message.  If I comment out the offending
statement, ModCore does the same thing.  That is as far as I am willing
to pursue it - I am new to Squeak and KomHTTP, so either I don't
understand what the issue is here, or I am doing something very wrong.

I can manage to get Swazoo running in the 3.6 image, however when I
point the Galeon (Mozilla-based) browser at it, I get 'page contains no
data', if I try a text browser (I've tried 3) they all report an error
trying to read the socket.  I have Seaside loaded, and I if try to get
the /confg page, same thing.

I have looked through the both this mailing list and the Seaside list,
and can find nothing, Googled, etc. Any help would be greatly
appreciated.

In both 3.7 images, the Package Loader refuses to install anything - as
soon as I try, I get "UndefinedObject(Object) doesNotUnderstand: #<".

Furthermore, both the man page for the 'squeak' executable and the
output of the -help switch seem to be incorrect/outdated - the options
'-lazy' and '-xshm' cause the outpput of '-help' to be displayed.

Version 3.7 is certainly more attractive in appearance than version 3.6,
and the 'Smalltalk' kernel of Squeak seems to be fairly solid, but after
25 years of evaluating, installing and developing software in many
different languages on many different platforms, my instincts and the
experiences described above are urging caution about all the other code
in Squeak.

The Linux kernel would be pretty useless without all the rock-solid
utilities, servers, compilers that the GNU project produced, and
Squeak-as-a-platform community might wish to consider that.  Otherwise,
it may be quite a long, long time before Croquet becomes anywhere near
viable.

Based on what I've read in these newgroups, I wonder if the ability to
publish changes so quickly and easily via SqueakMap might not lead to
unwelcome interactions between components, or the tempatation to publish
without sufficient testing.

In the Debian community, package maintainers, usually different people
than the developers, do extensive testing before publishing anything - I
think this separation of roles might contribute significantly to overall
quality and fewer bugs released.  This may slow releases down a bit, but
the much improved quality has greatly enhanced Debian's reputation and
popularity.  Besides, whats the rush, anyway?  Don't get enough rushing
at work?

I have noticed that some Squeak packages do run SUnits test as the last
step of install, a practice I like a lot and wish were more widespread.

I sure hope that my difficulties are just my idiocy, or my bad timing in
trying to test the web servers just after a new bug was introduced or
something, so please feel free to let me know.

Three cheers for quality and care in software development!

-- 
I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when you
looked at it in the right way, did not become still more complicated.
-- Poul Anderson (1926 - )