Posted by : devil on Nov 24, 2007 - 12:20 AM Important News

Today one year ago was the official start of sidux with the first 2 users registered on the forum, with many more to follow in the days after.

I remember well the time about 15 months ago.
We were all working with and for this other distribution and we were all frustrated. Some had already left the project. No release in sight, nobody knew what was going to happen, communication between team and project leader was more or less non existant.
We all saw a basically good project going down the drain, for some of us after 3 years of work invested and we could not do much about it.
All of us were pondering on what to do and when and how to do it. What helped making a decision was the anouncement from the project leader to change the base of the distro to something other than debian unstable. After that, things started moving fast, hours later slam had set up sidux forum, irc to follow soon after, we agreed on the name sidux and off we went.
Attention as well as expectations on the project were high from the start so after a few days we set up this declaration which defines our goals and i think they were fullfilled and sidux went quite far in one year.

My idea saying happy birthday was, to ask people that were with the project from the beginning to give some personal insight of their feelings about our project. Some have found the time to do so and so here they are:

slam wrote:

.. We Had This Dream ...

When asked where and when sidux started, I usually just point to Article2.html because it tells most of the story. However, as with every birth there was a period of pregnancy before. So, here is the "unplugged" truth about it:

I remember very well those days between 2005-12-31 (Kanotix 2005-04 release day) and 2006-04-16 (the "Easter Preview"). This was the time when we started to become really international over there, teams found together for translating News and FAQ in several different languages. Artists offered their ideas and worked for the planned next release, several people started contributing money, work, important code, support and motivation. This was really "Spring", as it should be, a very encouraging time this was.

And then the large eared penguin sitting on his easter eggs hit us all by surprise. What was that? Well, it was "just" a preview, so we went back to work without much thinking. The next stable release had to be prepared, and everyone did what he decided to be his job at the project. It should have been a warning sign for us, however.

Summer arrived, and people started to get nervous. The long awaited and necessary release was far from ready, people started leaving the project, more and more people got involved into dirty "re-masting" in order to solve their problems. Many users left to other distros. Even the media started to speculate about the insecure future of the project. While communicating these problems with the project leadership was impossible (we had no democratic structures at all), the most active people still insisted an continuing to support the project.

Summer left, and the last stable version was not seriously upgradeable and supportable any more. Nobody had a plan (some might have had "visions", though), and everything was stuck. Before we really recognized, November was here. And then, out of a sudden, we got informed by the leadership that everything we did this year would be thrown away, and Kanotix will not be based on Debian Sid any more. Instead, it was decided to start developing the project as an additional layer onto Debian Stable - or Ubuntu!. For me this was the my personal kick in my ass to do something. This very 24th of November I speculated about a possible name for a new project based on Debian Sid, and "sidux" was found very fast. I bought the domains, set up some server space and a CMS with forum, and invited everybody interested to join the new project. An IRC channel was created - and there we went.

It's not easy to describe what happened then. It was like a creative explosion. Developers, supporters, artists, linguists, "normal" users rushed the forums and the chat. While we had nothing more to offer than an idea of a real democratic open source project, people instantly contributed their time, code, support and money to help the project getting onto it's feet. Between 24th of November and 2nd of December alone (before the official initial press release) 187 people became forum members!

We strived hard to do it right from the very beginning. We knew people would trust us and rely on us, so we did it carefully. The initial press release was the first example: It was done in real team work, written and signed by all team members who where interested in the discussion about the sidux philosophy. And that's how we continued, we did (and still do) everything in teams, no boss/master/leader was ever needed to be elected. Everyone does what he enjoys to do, and what he knows best.

Our dream, the "new star in the Linux galaxy" has become a serious and respected open source project. It is a well known Linux distribution now, and a place where people from all around the world meet, have fun - and contribute a fine operating system to the world. I am a very proud and grateful member of this community. Thanks to everybody who helped to make it happen! And never forget our final goal: World domination. ;-)

Greetings,
Chris (slam) Hildebrandt



h2 wrote on 2007-11-16:

Well, actually the birthday wasn't exactly today, but it was pretty close.

The official day was I guess november 24, but if I remember right, behind the scenes it was pretty much a reality about by today 1 year ago, give or take a few days.

So how does the first year anniversary look? Steady progress, livecd functionality better than ever, slh and company managing, just barely, to keep sidux users on cutting edge kernels and software.

Nice going. The decision to split from kanotix was clearly the right one for sidux and the team members who decided to pursue this route.

What does the future hold? Who knows, with sid, every year running is a victory as far as I'm concerned, so count this as probably the most victory filled year since kanotix started. Closer to sid, cleaner code, faster boots, better debian compatibility, those pesky 'keep your version or use developer version' questions in dist-upgrade beaten back significantly, thus solving a long standing problem for users.

Most team members seem reasonably well motivated to this point, and the team is bigger than ever, with much more work being done independently, for example, the bluewater manual project comes to mind as a real success that is referred to a lot in the media and reviews, and that's basically all the manual team's doing.

The site has been solid, very few disruptions, so that side of thing is handled well.

Etorix did a nice bit of work setting up the mirrors globally, which also took off very quickly, and that's already becoming very useful, smxi for example recently switched to using the mirrors as primary download location for default kernels, and that saved my butt from some pretty major bandwidth costs, especially now that user base is expanding.

There's a lot more, kelmo's coding wizardry continues to convince me I should probably be doing something else for a living ;-), slh of course continues to be churning out kernels demonically, always struggling to get that perfect blend cooked up in the testing labs.

A good year, all in all, more and more fixes handled by sidux repos now, fewer hacks to core system stuff that might cause long term decay.

So happy birthday.


kelmo chimed in to that:

devil recently e-mailed me to say some words about our project we started a while back, so I'll add my 2c worth here to compliment what h2 has already said.

h2:

So how does the first year anniversary look? Steady progress, livecd functionality better than ever, slh and company managing, just barely, to keep sidux users on cutting edge kernels and software.
Nice going. The decision to split from kanotix was clearly the right one for sidux and the team members who decided to pursue this route.

By becoming a democratic-like project, we are able to follow our own heads, plot our own course and work freely. It was a great move, I agree.

We are still somewhat frowned upon by a few projects and people, I think. We are sometimes considered as being a little hostile, defensive and hackish; at least at no point we were considered boring or lazy. Fun still seems to be had by all involved.

h2:

What does the future hold? Who knows, with sid, every year running is a victory as far as I'm concerned, so count this as probably the most victory filled year since kanotix started. Closer to sid, cleaner code, faster boots, better debian compatibility, those pesky 'keep your version or use developer version' questions in dist-upgrade beaten back significantly, thus solving a long standing problem for users.

I honestly have no idea what may come next. For me personally, I've pretty much exhausted what I set out to do 9 or so months ago (overhaul/design the live-cd creation + boot process). Time to find new stuff to work on in the realm of sidux desktop usability maybe...

Interestingly, one of the debian honcho's have commented[0] recently that no "wow factor" developments are advertised by recent debian releases, or even persued as part of a particular release's goals. Most each release notes focus on technical advancements that may or may not be noticed by the average user.

I think this is even true for sidux at this point in time. While I don't think we can really actively develop and deploy really large and "beta" quality enhancements like compiz-fusion (nor should we, we should allow debian to sort out the big things, and help out with that where we can), we could spend more time focusing on the look'n'feel of some of our toolkit for performing certain system administration and maintenance tasks. Other ideas escape me atm...someone can help here? What are things that _you_ would like to see improve in the future?

http://gonzo.dicp.de/~he/blog/archives/33-Still-not-campaigning-for-DPL.html

h2:

Most team members seem reasonably well motivated to this point, and the team is bigger than ever, with much more work being done independently, for example, the bluewater manual project comes to mind as a real success that is referred to a lot in the media and reviews, and that's basically all the manual team's doing.

The manual is really something that surprised me when it took off, and continues to do so. I never thought such a band of random strangers could collaborate and create something so useful and valuable. Even more amazing is that the ring leader is a kiwi...didn't think he had it in him...

h2:

The site has been solid, very few disruptions, so that side of thing is handled well.

Etorix did a nice bit of work setting up the mirrors globally, which also took off very quickly, and that's already becoming very useful, smxi for example recently switched to using the mirrors as primary download location for default kernels, and that saved my butt from some pretty major bandwidth costs, especially now that user base is expanding.

There's a lot more, kelmo's coding wizardry continues to convince me I should probably be doing something else for a living ;-), slh of course continues to be churning out kernels demonically, always struggling to get that perfect blend cooked up in the testing labs.

A good year, all in all, more and more fixes handled by sidux repos now, fewer hacks to core system stuff that might cause long term decay.

"smxi", the maintenance program, is very much responsible for climbing popularity and the extra demands that come along with that. You have done a top job with it h2.

Happy birthday team and community.

Thanks, Kel.


cleary's post:

that's a great summary h2 - just a couple of further people in the background who I'd like to mention:
* devil, vedawalter and cobra for looking after the financials and corporate front to sidux with the sidux e.V.
* slam for keeping the forums humming

As kelmo mentioned, devil asked us to provide a personal view on the state of sidux, past present and future:
It was a year of surprises and proud moments for me, from doing a talk on this great distro with no release (at lca2007, january), to having my rudimentary art skills contribute the wallpaper on the debut sidux release, as well as managing a corporate rollout of ~80 sidux based desktops at my work (which has been a huge success :D ).

I've been doing a bit of distro hopping the last few days (something I haven't done for a good 18 months or more), checking out what other distros are doing and how their vision of the perfect desktop is looking. It's been very comforting to realise that this community driven, volunteer maintained distro has a rightfully deserved place amongst the big guns of the linux world (helped in no small part by our parent distro of course ;) ) - with it's excellent blend of support, ease of installation and maintenance, and current software.

The future, well it's a modest outlook for me. From a personal perspective I'm happy as long as I can keep easily maintaining a suite of current software on my desktop :)
From a professional perspective, I can see sidux gobbling desktop share up to about 70 or 80% of total desktops in my work environment over the next 12-24 months (currently running at about 45% sidux 55% win).
From a developer perspective, as kelmo discussed I'd like to work on consolidating the sidux toolset into a consistent "suite", as well as formalise more of the artistic requirements, processes and contributions for sidux and the e.V.

Lastly, I'm adamant the sense of community is the thing that sets sidux above all other distros, so thanks to everyone for making sidux good :)


bfree wrote:

It's been a fun year! I stupidly lost my original reply for devil so here we go again!

For me everything started just over a year ago when I decided that I wanted to get some sort of iso builder into fullstory to make it complete. I didn't really expect anyone to use it, but I wanted it to exist freely for anyone who wanted something to work on. I had gotten as far as writing a very basic hackish outline when slh announced sidux and suddenly fll-builder was a real project.

Quickly my hack was let lose in fullstory and, thanks to the work of all the initial sidux team members, became usable if ugly. This hack helped bootstrap sidux while kelmo started the hard work of putting together a nice builder. It didn't take long before my hack was surpassed and deprecated by the real fll-builder and I could be happy that fullstory was complete. Not long after sidux proved that to the world with it's first release.

Since then the 4 releases have each improved on things both from a developers and a users perspective. It has shown that the initial rough release cycle plan has been realistic and achievable and that's no small feat for a community volunteer project. Congratulations to everyone who helped make this all happen, from coding to bug-reporting, documenting to helping support it, you have all helped make sidux what it is today.

Like others I have to mention the manual. Not only did it come into shape very quickly but it continues to keep up with the ever changing state of sidux, add more useful knowledge and to gather up more translations. Congratulations to everyone in the sidux docs team for this superb achievement and keep up the great work.

As to what the future holds, possibilities abound but as always it depends on who is willing to work on what. A group has started to form around creating a xfce release and the possibility of creating release images for different languages is there also. sidux will never run out of work though even just sticking with the current release images, not only adapting to the latest packages from debian such as the new xorgconfig but also improving the sidux tools both in terms of look and in some cases improved integration with the debian tools they interface with.

I can't stop without saying a big thank you to all the debian developers who provide most of the packages in sidux.

So Happy Birthday sidux and a big personal thank you to everyone who made the first year such a spectacular success at least in my eyes.


locsmif's insights:

Hi. My ISP fucked me over on August 16, just when I was about to pick up speed with helping out with development here and there. Too bad. I'm still offline and in the middle of legal proceedings to get damages for that and get back online with a different provider. The price for resistance is high. Thank you Klaus Knopper for being the pioneer. Thanks Fabian Franz. Thanks Jörg Schirottke for Kanotix, too bad things worked out the way they did.

I used to hang out in the Knoppix channel in Freenode when etorix (as he always does) was maintaining his large network of connections all across the world ;) He asked me to join #kanotix. I think this was early 2004 or so, right after the X-mas release. Many things have happened since then. Infobash was created when, I think it was kelmo, mentioned konversation lacked a good info script. I got the hang of Bash, then Sed, Awk, and Perl. Regular expressions were, and are my thing. One of the best memories I have is of the lot of us, Kano, slh, etc hacking on grub to create a workaround for buggy Acer bioses. But things have a habit of changing. Lilo fucked up freenode to the point it became undesirable to be there. And Kanotix bit the bullet when it became too undemocratic too bear for the developers. That should be a lesson, and we must not forget that lesson.

Debian however is almighty. Afterall, without Debian there is no Ubuntu, and they both rank in the top ten of Distrowatch. Sidux is climbing. The work ethic of people like Stefan (slh) is something I'll never completely be able to understand. It's out of this world. And yet, while he's buried in livecd's, network cabling, and other miscellaneous computer equipment, working his butt off for Sidux, he manages to surprise congratulate me every year on my birthday on irc. I tend to forget it myself. That's the kind of person slh is. And the kind of person I am ;)

Kelmo came on board a little later (@ Kanotix). At first, I was a little put off by his typical rude ozzie humor. Now, I'm used to it, and actually I think it's the best kind. There's no stopping you Kel. You learn stuff as quickly as you are shown stuff. You guys keep up the good work. Thanks to the team, you know who you are. If I named names, I'd only leave out people who are just as important to Sidux as everyone else. After all, Sidux to me proves that 'peer directed projects' are possible, and even succesful. In fact, this whole free software collabo-thing might be one of the few joyful, hopeful things in the world today. Let's hope it never becomes practically illegal to do this thing we like to do. Happy Birthday Sidux, and many years to come, as we say where I come from. :)


bluewater sent me this:

The sidux-manual 1st year
devil put some questions to me as per the following:

• where did we come from?


• what did we expect?


• what have we achieved?


• where are we going to?

nontech level, more personal feelings on the project

So here I go, firstly really it should be 'we'

One year already, sometimes i thought it was 3 months ago hahaha

When the idea to form sidux was mooted, I took the leap, stating 'count me in, although I know zero about computer languages, however I will do what I can'

An idea I had for a manual to actually be on a live-cd, at another distro which was accepted and implemented (KANOTIX) came to haunt me, as I always thought it was daft for a sophisticated distro not to have proper documentation for the user, ..

Maybe this is where my contribution can be ....... Except this time it will be better. (I have looked at what I did then,, and thought oh god , did I do that horrible mess?!!!)

My expectations,, I had none, I have never been involved in a start up of this type, it was new , exciting, and challenging
First step, what documentation is/was available, and secondly, what strategy to employ.?

Looking at the on-line editing formats that seem to be in use , and the way they locked in someone 'on-line' to do anything, i thought hmm that's not good, (I also hate editing on-line per se, as working in those stupid scroll boxes is a major PITA) Also it was envisaged that this would not be a 2 lang document, It wasn't to be an FAQ it was to be a manual for sidux

The upshot was I posted a strategy on the forum with the basics being that the manual had to be modular and able to work on a live-cd as well on a website,

At this point h2 press ganged into action to write the css/menu-css and js. He was locked into a tool shed, and all requests to let him out refused until a draft was ready (He was provided with meals and a sleeping bag)

After several days of banging away in the back shed with hammer, anvil and a blow torch, we had the first draft of the css ready along with several files coded up to test the thing out, and get the strategy approved by the rest of the team.

Liftoff!!!!! for the next month file after file was coded up, and two weeks into it, moto started the translating to German and on December 28 2006, sidux-manual went 'live' and consisted of 28 text files per language , German and English

Achievements
One year from the start-up of sidux, the sidux-OS-manual is in 11 langs with another 3 being translated as I write this, and now consists of 39 files per language and if printed would run to probably 250 pages. The meta-package manual is also up and running and is just about fully translated up in Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese-Brazilian

The core members of sidux-manuals team are:

Adriana, ceti, cobra, eislon,damir, hamburger, harzG, hubi, koslow, LjanA, ladepa, maslot, mikes, moto, muchan, Richard, RoEn, th-poul, von_Selbst, zerby, zonker, Zophod, zulu9, xouzouris, and great assists by captagon and arno911

To the sidux manuals team, I am in awe of your discipline and effort.

sidux is a total team effort, The manuals would not have been possible without the extraordinary imput of the
core live-cd team and the website team, ,and all the users in on the forum and
wiki to ensure the manual remains current and relevant. and to think that the entire sidux team came together
from all parts of the world and in differentt time zones, with 99% of us never having met is and always will be amazing

Where to now
For me, Its ensuring that the manual keeps on being on top of whats happening, exploring ways to develop the manual
over the next 2 years, and to ensure its validity as core component of sidux, and constanttly looking to provide tangible benefits for the sidux user base.

I thank you all for allowing me to work with you

Trevor Walkley
(bluewater)



here comes Cathbard:

Sidux's First Birthday

When sidux was first conceived I was asked to come up with some artwork for the project. I had just finished doing the artwork for KANOTIX so I launched into it as a new project with quite a deal of enthusiasm.
We discussed in irc what sort of image we should be presenting for sidux in general and it was decided to make high impact art that jumped off the page and screamed sid! We wanted something that was cutting edge, futuristic and exciting. I drew the sidux logo in red for that reason and included the planet mars to represent the future of technology. The logo was accepted with glee and was immediately adopted.
The next phase was to create a futuristic looking theme that would fit with the image we were trying to achieve. Unfortunately there was some confusion at first regarding the licensing of the space shots I was using so we placed it on the back burner until that could be sorted out. In the meantime we created themes based on the red and black logo.
The licensing issue was eventually resolved and I dove headlong into the creation of a massive library of artwork that could be used as time went on. I worked full time on the project creating themes, skins, icons and all manner of things (well over 100 items altogether). My overall goal was to build upon the general theme over time and make everything look fully integrated like no other distro out there. My vision was for an exciting, futuristic distro that would put the shiny distros like pclos and sabayon to shame.
However unbeknown to me, while I was working my ass off to create a library of artwork, the creative direction was usurped and changed to something plainer and far more bland. It was a much less dramatic visage that was totally opposite to everything I had been working on up to that point.
This left me with a decision to make. I had to either pursue my original artwork independently and offer it as an alternative for those that had been supporting my vision all along or else trash an entire years work and pursue a new line that I totally disapproved of. I chose the former and created my own repo which I am still populating with my artwork as we speak. Roughnecks graciously provided me with a server for my site and repo and for that I am eternally grateful. Makke taught me how to create debs which I am also very thankful for. I now provide kthememanger debs that install entire themes along with matching application skins, grub screens, icons and other things. I still have a lot to do but persistence will hopefully pay off in the long run.
It was a fairly disheartening scenario at first but the support I received spurred me on and it has actually turned out to be quite satisfying. The popularity of my site has astonished me beyond my wildest dreams. I am now looking towards branching out in to more generic debian art as well and although that means I will not be concentrating on sidux quite as much as before it promises to provide a lot more exposure for my work.
So that is where it stands at the moment; the official artwork that I no longer have anything to do with and my 3rd party rebel art. I may no longer be part of the official project team any more but the work continues regardless.
So that is sidux for me at this the first birthday of the project; a leading edge distro that has been extremely well built on a technical level that I create alternative artwork for. And onwards into the future I proceed .....................

Cathbard.


hjt wrote:

Where did we come from:
As a user of Kanotix i did a frontend for VDR (Video Disk Recorder)
After it was clear, Kanotix would change its base i moved on to sidux as sid was always my priority because of it being bleeding edge and its enormous amount of software.

What were my expectations:

After it became obvious that the programmer of Kanotix installer was not going to work for sidux, it was my goal to provide an easy installer frontend for sidux (install-gui). Here i want to thank x-un-i for his perfect job maintaining the installer backend and for helping me resolve some problems.

What have we achieved:

• The best debian-sid based distribution.
• 
  

I was able to help with:

• VDR frontend
• 
  
• installer frontend
• 
  
• metapackage installer
• 
  
• making most sidux-scripts usable with GTK2 (using ssft instead of xdialog) and added support for languages
• 
  
• install-sidux-to-usb frontend, where again x-un-i did the script itself with some modifications by kelmo
• 
  

Where are we going to:
I am personaly very happy about the improvements made with the sidux-edu project and wish it success.

I wish for sidux to be spread lots more and that everybody will keep working with the same amount of motivation.
It is just sheer fun to work for such a project.

Horst Tritremmel


from x-un-i, short & crisp:

It's a honour and pleasure to be allowed to contribute and learn from
this project. (sorry I learned more than i could ever give -;) )
What an amazing team!!!
I have savoured each minute.


So, lets all raise a glass or 3 to this fantastic project and to an even more fantastic community!

on behalf of the whole team:
devil