| Freenix 15 Status Update [message #86] |
Sat, 19 February 2022 11:15  |
locutus
Messages: 16
Registered: January 2018
Location: US
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Junior Member |
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Has the development of a 15.0 release begun?
If not how could I and/or we as a community help to make this new release happen?
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| Freenix 15 Status Update [message #89 is a reply to message #86] |
Tue, 23 August 2022 14:43  |
connie
Messages: 28
Registered: January 2017
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Junior Member
Freenix Ninja |
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My response to a recent email asking me what's up with Freenix 15, which I thought was verbose enough to be useful for the wider audience.
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The project is not officially abandoned, but you are correct in the perception that little is being done. I know this first hand because my own role has been up to this point in combing through the licenses and writing the necessary code.
At the moment of writing this, I am personally served by Slackware 15, which I was too lazy to even re-build the kernel for, because none of my hardware requires blobs to work. The auxiliary package repository for 15 is actually up, and I announced it on IRC, but even there things are moving pretty slow.
https://freenix.net/fxp/freenix64-15.0/
Overall, given a very low level of interest towards Freenix as a stand-alone distribution, as well as complete stonewalling by FSF's FSDG compliance team, I am not sure anyone even needs it. Any Slackware user can easily get rid of non-free packages, and rebuilding the kernel is not rocket science. My current efforts are focussed on improving freepkg and populating the auxiliary binary package repo, which is what I actually use for myself.
From my discussion with Matt I know that he leans towards the opinion that the distribution should be eventually clean-forked, not merely deblobbed on the fly, like we did with Freenix 14. This means, we build ALL the packages, we start exercising complete control over every technical aspect of the distro, and it also means we have to do a huge work of rebranding the whole thing.
I agree with Matt in principle. Not only this is a future-facing solution in technical terms, but it might actually generate a lot more interest than a quick repack we put out before. But the amount of time and effort required for such a project is way above my means, and given the same low amount of public interest in this project, I know of no one else who would want to pick up the slack 
tldr: The project is alive, but is de facto scaled down to what we started with: documentation + extra free software packages, and the progress is very slow.
On 8/22/22 14:52, [email redacted] wrote:
> Greetings,
>
> It's been a little bit since the release of Slackware 15.0, is it slowly coming along or has the project been abandoned? I haven't been able to find an official statement anywhere on it. I'm also not sure how great of a role you play regarding the project
>
> Regards,
> Trklntry
[Updated on: Tue, 23 August 2022 15:51] Report message to a moderator |
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| Re: Freenix 15 Status Update [message #90 is a reply to message #89] |
Tue, 23 August 2022 15:48 |
connie
Messages: 28
Registered: January 2017
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Junior Member
Freenix Ninja |
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Actually, re kernel, one does not even have to rebuild it. It is enough to remove the upstream firmware package to get rid of blobs and get something similar to Debian-style free kernel, which is to this day not entirely banned by FSDG, afaik. In other words, the functional equivalent of Freenix 14 can be created by an end user of Slackware 15 in minutes by simply uninstalling and blacklisting a handful of non-free packages. In light of that, I simply ended up spending my summer on Xonotic and other free software projects, where my work seems to generate orders of magnitude more interest and participation. Again, I am not saying we are giving up, but I am kind of stuck looking around and evaluating options, more than churning out a full release.
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| Re: Freenix 15 Status Update [message #94 is a reply to message #90] |
Wed, 03 May 2023 00:55 |
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FSF FSDG compliance team isn't stonewalling you; they just lack people or a person, such as a manager, to update the list. This was mentioned on FSF's forum. They said if someone applies to manage or lead part of that project, they can move forward.
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