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RFC for the programming tasks page
This is a somewaht incorrect HTML page, the text is not definitive so
wait before you send me fixed HTML. However your comments about what
is told in it are welcome.
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<Title> Tasks for programmers</Title>
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<H1>Now is the hour for every good man...<H1>
...and woman to do something for Independence, Linux and those Linux
users who are presently abandonned to their fate.
<br>
These are the most urgent tasks available for programmers.
<ol>
<li><H>Fix and improve the installation</H3>
<p>
The installation of 6.1 has several annoying bugs like the fact it
drops you to console mode in case it does not autodetect the mouse
(serial mice are not detected) instead of asking, in addition the
console install allows selecting the national keyboard but does
nothing about it and the fact it provided <em>no</em> package
description in console mode. In addition RedHat installs packages
mostly in alphabetical order and that means that sometimes the install
scripts of invidual packages break because the utility they neeed
installs later.
</p>
<p>
In addition add to it the features of Indy 6.0-0.8: a "Personal
computer" install class (like Workstation but with a different
software selection), configuration for dial up networking at install
time. In future releases we would like graceful handling of
conflicting packages: until we have this we will unable to provide
alternatives to some servers we feel are an overkill in small
companies.
</p>
<P>The installtion is mostly written in Python with some C parts.</p>
<li><H3>A curses based PPP config front end to Wvdialconf</H3>
<p>RedHat provides an X based tool but this cannot be used for people
who have problems with X and for people havng to use the console
installation. In addition the RedHat tool does not allow the user
choosing PPP autoconfiguration. Someone has promised to do the job.
</p>
<li><H3>Kernel compiling</H3>
<p>This time it looks like RedHat's kernle is bigger than usual so
someone must investigate about stuff who could have been built in
modules and wasn't. Indy's philosophy is shipping kernels of
performance closwse enough to a hand built one that the user does not
need to spend time recompiling it unless this is his idea of fun . In
addition it seems that the 2.2.12 kernel shipped in RedHat has several
annoying bugs who have been removed in 2.2.13. This is a relatively
demanding job.
</p>
<li><H3>A front end to install-news</H3>
<p>Install-news allows easy configuration of a news server in the way
install-sendmail allows easy configuration of sendmail. But it would
be better with a front end. By the way the front end Donovan Rebecchi
wrote for install-sendmail needs to be upgraded for newer versions of
install-sendmail</p>
<li><H3>Write Liberators</H3>
<p>They are called assistants in some systems but what would you
expect of a project called Independence. :-)
</p>
<li><H3>A good Samba browser</H3>
<P>We would like providing a tool for exploring the network
environment and mounting SMB shares with a mere mouse click. There
are four tools available for Linux and none is satisfactory:
<bd>knetmon</bd> seems to quite simply not work, <bd>Gnorba</bd>and
its close cousin <bd>Knorba</bd> use a teminantly brain damaged method
of exploring networks. All of these are written in C or C++. The
only tool who mostly works is <bd>TkSmb</bd> but it has several
drawbacks like the fact it creates mountpoints on the fly without ever
removing them, lack of a graceful termination method or the fact it
allows mounting but not unmounting. In addition TkSmb looks like it
is no longer maintained. <bd>TkSmb</bd> is written in expect and uses
Tk.</p>
<p>Pick one of these four and make it work like it should</p>
</ol>
</ol>
<H2>Things will not just happen...</H2>
<p>...if people dont work on them. A small team will be unable to have
Indy making significant progress. If you are tired of getting
distributions who don't pay attention to your problems, if you want to
help in making a distribution made for the people, if you think Linux
is a good thing who should be available for everyone instead of a
minority then <HREF Joining page>
</p>
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--
Jean Francois Martinez
Project Independence: Linux for the Masses
http://www.independence.seul.org