On 19/10/11 16:16, Derek O'Connell wrote:
>  On 19/10/11 15:56, Chris Cunnington wrote:
> > As I understand it, we don't have the same kind of present and
> > immediate control over distribution of the vm and the image, as we
> > do with Mac and PC. I think with Linux it's more likely you'll
> > download the image and vm separately, from different sources. Say
> > you get your vm from apt-get, rpm, or yum. And then we release a
> > new image. Maybe people will just see everything fail. The Cog vm
> > is a big jump. You use it, and you can't readily go back to the
> > interpreter. Jecel is going to look at what vms Linux users are
> > using. Are they still 3.x vms? That sort of thing. The mechanism
> > for Linux users to get what we make is a little different. But
> > since you clearly are in the loop, I don't think any of this kind
> > of delay would apply to you. I'd say its more a communications
> > thing than a technical challenge.
> >
> > Chris
> >
>
>  Thanks for the explanation. I don't have a complete overview on all
>  distro's but the main packaging formats can surely handle
>  dependencies so that end-users don't end up with a mismatched
>  vm/image. If more safety is needed then why not have
>  cog/start-up-script do a one-time back-up of the image automatically?
>  I'm guessing package maintainers would be more than happy to quickly
>  get to the point of sourcing one vm for Squeak/Etoys/Scratch, etc.
>
>  -D
>

One exception springs to mind, the olpc maintainers are currently 
packaging the VM to include the XO-1.75 which is ARM based IIRC.

Would be a good idea to get a working group together that includes 
package maintainers since they best know their own requirements.