I want to show off some maps....

Jonathan Roberts jonathan.roberts.uk at googlemail.com
Tue Jan 29 13:36:45 UTC 2008


> Well if you really really want.. you can do all of it :->

OK, I've had a shot at the top one but it might not be what you had in
mind - it might not even be factually correct!! Have a look and let me
know what you think, I can try and change it a bit if needs be, or maybe
somebody else wants to take a shot? (Ughh I just added to the first
paragraph and maybe broke it a little!! :S)

As for the second one...well see below :)

> 
> short article about why smolt matters


Why Does Smolt matter?

Free software developers only have a limited amount of time and cash,
which makes developing software that runs on a wide variety of hardware
a challenge. This is a challenge that free software developers have had
impressive sucesses in up to this point, but in which they are by no
means perfect: two of the most significant challenges they've faced is
getting enough information about hardware, and communicating to
end-users how well they're particular hardware combination will work
with particular pieces of software; now, thanks to Smolt, developers can
do even better. 

Developing free software makes use of the paradigm that enough eye balls
will make any bug shallow; in the same way Smolt works on the paradigm
that the more users who submit information about their hardware, the
easier it will be to develop software that works well with a wide
variety of different systems. Smolt also goes beyond just being
beneficial to developers, potentially aiding the developement of a
ubiquitous hardware database which would allow users to quickly
determine how well their system will work with particular pieces of
software.

Obviously this relies on lots of people being able to submit information
about their hardware, and this is where Smolt is particularly strong. In
the case of Fedora, Smolt automatically gathers some information about
the user's hardware during installation and asks whether they would like
to share this with the Smolt database where developers will have access
to their annonimised information. At this point all the user is required
to do is agree, or not agree, to this and move forward in the first run
wizard; everything else is autmoated by the system. Not only does this
make it extremely easy for the user to contribute information about
their machine, becoming part of the free software community, but it
maintains their privacy by being an opt-in system.

This is not something that is limited to Fedora: thanks to a responsive
upstream other distributions are encouraged to work with us on this and
make the best possible system for end-users, helping the benefits
already described a reality. 

> 
> short article about registering (static ip) mirrors with mirrormanager
> on a netblock so that default yum configs will pull your mirrors for
> your clients (even dhcp clients as long as they are in the netblock).
> If people who can do this do this instead of just editting the yum
> configs on their clients, then I can continue to count them in the
> mirrorlist maps.

Hmm, I might need a bit of help with this one! If you could point me in
the direction of where I can find out a bit more about what you've
described I'd be happy to try and help again (that is if the last "help"
from me doesn't put you off!)

Jon




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