Re: Improving stability in Vinux testing repo by dropping GTK+ patches

[Bill Cox <waywardgeek gmail com>]

On Sun, Jan 23, 2011 at 9:15 AM, Halim Sahin <halim sahin freenet de> wrote:
> hi,
> On Sa, Jan 22, 2011 at 06:26:50 -0500, Bill Cox wrote:
>> consideration for moving to Debian Mint or any other distro.  The
>> primary reason, IMO, is that Luke is listening to us, and taking
>> action to improve accessibility.  We wont get that kind of attention
>> from any other upstream distro.
>
> I don't agree with you.
> Ubuntu's a11y is not more improoved as the debian one or gentoo, arch
> etc.
> Giving such statement will not bring you attention by other distros.
> BTW.: ubuntu is a commercial distro.

Hi, Halim.  I agree the ubuntu a11y list is not particularly
responsive, but I have many examples of where Luke has incorporated
ideas from Vinux, and lots of recent examples where he's taken
initiative on his own in moving a11y forward in Ubuntu.  For example,
I now simply back-port his gnome-orca packages from Maverick and
Natty, rather than having to get new releases directly from the Orca
site.  While he didn't enable speakup in Ubuntu by default, as we do
in Vinux, he did create an apt-get installable package, making
installing speakup in Ubuntu Maverick as easy as installing any other
package.  He even promoted his solution up-stream to Debian, but so
far as I can tell, his work went unnoticed.  He incorporated patches
to Ubiquity from both Vinux, and Hammer Attila.  Several critical bug
fixes we made in VInux/Lucid before the final release were
incorporated in Lucid in time to make Lucid one of the most accessible
Linux releases ever.  He's even gone so far as to declare an
un-official relationship with Vinux as an a11y testing ground that he
can pull from.  This is exactly the role Vinux devs like me were
hoping for.

Now, all that said, Luke has limited influence at Ubuntu.  Major
headaches, like switching to pulseaudio, and likely the upcoming Unity
Desktop, trash accessibility.  Ubuntu rolls out updates without any
a11y testing at all, so now and then we find that some critical piece
of Vinux dies after an update.  Vinux users are very gun-shy about
updating, and many think we should move to a more stable upstream
distro, like Debian-Mint.  However, a move like that would drastically
harm Vinux's primary reason to exist: to improve Linux accessibility
upstream.  It would also mean Vinux devs would stop worrying about
major shifts in technology like the Unity Desktop, and then of course,
they would never be accessible, and over time fewer and fewer Linux
distros would be accessible, as they tend to follow Ubuntu and Fedora
leads.  One day, when Vinux grows up and turns into more of a real
operating Linux distro, we'll be able to manage the instability by
having our own repositories that pull from Ubuntu into a Vinux testing
repository, so we could test Ubuntu upgrades before pushing them out
to Vinux users.  That would also allow us to start hacking GTK+, the
kernel, etc, without causing instability.  For now, however, I'm
forced to park GTK+ upgrades in an unused repository.

Bill