On May 8, 2008, at 11:38 PM, Andreas Raab wrote:

> Keith Hodges wrote:
>>> Squeak is not welcoming anymore... first time I met Squeak it was  
>>> on 3.4 I think, and the overall first impression was great, lots  
>>> of things to discover and wonder at. these days there is a dull  
>>> grey background with a few windows opened on technical text,  
>>> details of last updates... it could not be more different.
>>>
>> Thats the whole point of derivative images such as Fun-Squeak or  
>> Squeak-dev image. Its horses for courses.
>> Those of us who want to actually use squeak for something in  
>> particular find unloading packages harder than loading them.
>> So I support the goal of trimming down the main image (though its  
>> still a bit fat)
>
> Then how come that 3.10 basic is larger than 3.6 full? Where is the  
> "trimming" in that? Isn't it much more accurate to say that the fun  
> bits have been replaced with boring bits? A quick comparison between  
> 3.6 and 3.10 shows that games, speech and 3d are gone, and traits,  
> monticello and universes have been added (there are probably more  
> but those are obvious major differences).

+1 Andreas

I personally think it is a great loss that the fun bits are gone. I  
can reload them but most users can and will not.
But more importantly, the fun stuff are the things that will get  
Squeak and Croquet adopted by the large majority of users.

Only developers fret about fat images and unloading stuff, but for  
them there will always be a developer image next to that where some  
fun stuff has been removed
But there is no good release that appeals to end-users anymore.
See the NSF project and the lecture at Intel about that from Alan Kay,  
he seems to feel that the funs stuff is essential and I totally agree.

Merik