Dead Distros?

GTrax · 12-25-2006, 09:06 AM

Well .. they may not be dead, but there are some that have not had any postings for some time, and do not show any signs of life when one tries to get a look at them. There are also some in the top 15 at Distrowatch that do not feature here at all.

Maybe LQ might me ready for some promotion/relagation sometime soon.

XavierP · 12-26-2006, 01:23 PM

Weirdly enough, you are not the first person to wonder about this. You are not even the first person to wonder about this this year. You may well be the last one of 2006 though

I have moved this to LQ Suggestions and Feedback as it fits better there. In the meantime, do a search for "why is there no forum for" and read the many many responses about this.

jeremy · 12-26-2006, 01:51 PM

Indeed - it may be time to sticky a well worded answer to this in the distribution forum.

--jeremy

XavierP · 12-26-2006, 03:55 PM

Good idea - I'll get onto it.

XavierP · 12-26-2006, 04:27 PM

The thread is now created and stickied at the top of the forum in Linux-Distributions. See it here.

I have also closed it without replies so that it will appear in the zero replies list and be autobumped.

jeremy · 12-26-2006, 05:09 PM

Looks good. The one exception I'd say is that "support" isn't really the requirement - participation is. Anything beyond that is great, but people have assumed in the past that "support" meant some kind of monetary compensation, which is very much not the case. Thanks Ray!

--jeremy

tuxdev · 12-26-2006, 05:40 PM

This specific question is a bit different, though. It is asking "Why support an abondoned distro?" rather than "Why not support X distro?". The sticky only deals with the guidelines of acceptance, not the converse.

jeremy · 12-26-2006, 07:27 PM

We have removed a distribution forum before. Typically the critia is that the distribution is no longer maintained and supported. In the case of fairly inactive forums for active distributions, I don't see any reason to remove them.

--jeremy

trickykid · 12-26-2006, 08:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jeremy

We have removed a distribution forum before. Typically the critia is that the distribution is no longer maintained and supported. In the case of fairly inactive forums for active distributions, I don't see any reason to remove them.

--jeremy

I'd agree and even if the distro no longer exists, perhaps just a closure of the forum so they are archived is in order.. shouldn't be any reason to just wipe a forum away.

jeremy · 12-26-2006, 09:04 PM

To clarify, the forum doesn't actually go away or get deleted. The posts are still accessible, as is the forum itself - the forum is just removed from the main list.

--jeremy

XavierP · 12-27-2006, 08:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jeremy

Looks good. The one exception I'd say is that "support" isn't really the requirement - participation is. Anything beyond that is great, but people have assumed in the past that "support" meant some kind of monetary compensation, which is very much not the case. Thanks Ray!

--jeremy

Mmm, I agree that that needs to be clarified. Leave it with me and I'll come up with something.

XavierP · 12-27-2006, 08:49 AM

OK, how's that?

makyo · 12-27-2006, 10:19 AM

Hi.

As long as you are working on this -- what is the ordering scheme for the distro sub-forums? ... cheers, makyo

jeremy · 12-27-2006, 10:25 AM

They are in order of when they joined the LQ.

--jeremy

makyo · 12-27-2006, 10:51 AM

Hi.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jeremy

They are in order of when they joined the LQ.

Which is, then, essentially random from a visual perspective.

I seem to recall that most behavioral tests identify a sequence of 4 random strings, numbers, etc., beyond which most people cannot repeat the sequence.

So I suggest an alphabetical ordering for the sub-forums ... cheers, makyo