We’ve made really awesome progress on the liveCD. As I speak, I’m uploading Yet Another Version to http://tieguy.org/misc/gnome-2.10-livecd-0.9.10.iso and http://tieguy.org/misc/gnome-2.10-livecd-0.9.10.iso.md5. If someone can download this and offer to host a torrent seed, that would be cool too- my home PC is getting rebooted too often these days to be a good seed. :/
I’ve made huge strides documenting the stuff I’ve done, all on the wiki under GnomeLiveCd. So this blog entry marks the point where I am ready to have help, also known as ‘the point where I start begging people for help.’ :) This is a really important project if we want to spread GNOME to new users, and for some of the TODO stuff, the barrier to entry is really low- no coding required. It’s a great way for anyone to get involved in GNOME and have a really high impact right away. Some of the highlights of the TODO:
Easy to do for basically anyone:
- Proof and make suggestions for the documents listed under medium priority tasks on the media files page. Don’t let the priority fool you; I wrote these in a rush and I’m sure they could use lots of love.
- Create the doc listed under ‘high priority’ on the same page. Should take someone 10 minutes to write and 20 minutes to verify.
For artists of all stripes:
- Check out the ‘art’ section under the TODO and start brainstorming for 2.12.
For people with a little bit of technical clue and time to download the CD:
- Audit the package list on the CD. There is still a lot of stuff that could be removed to make room for more GNOME stuff, like lots of the python environment. Someone who could go through package by package and test to see what can safely be removed can make a difference in the amount of cool software we can ship.
- Someone with gconf clue could advise on how best to create maintainable gconf settings changes, and create files reflecting the changes I’ve already made.
- Would be real helpful for someone to write the ‘add an icon to default panels’ script Mark was talking about the other day…shouldn’t be too hard, just needs someone with time to write and test it.
There are longer-term projects too, for those who want to get seriously involved- I won’t repeat the TODO too much here, but there are needs for someone who is decent at scripting, input from the docs folks for potential DVD-booklet content, and someone to investigate changing languages on the CD. Again, these don’t need to be GNOME experts necessarily, but people who want to get involved and have the right skills, or are willing to dive in and learn are more than welcome.
If you do some work on any of these, first off, big thanks :) Secondly, when you are done, or hit a roadblock, email me and/or marketing-list@gnome.org so we can get your changes incorporated ASAP- I’d like to see almost daily changes in the CD before 2.10, and hope folks will oblige :)
On that note… I’m off to collapse. Still hoping to cook dinner for Krissa on Valentine’s day, but that hope is fading… we’ll see, I guess :)