[Ichthux-devel] New website, release plan and more

[Raphaël Pinson]

Hello!

It's been a long time since some news were posted on this list. Indeed, I have 
been very busy in the last year, studying, finding a work... I have also 
become an Ubuntu developer, which has taught me a lot of about packaging and 
distribution development in general.

Some months ago, I began to work again on Ichthux. Now it's getting a bit 
faster. Here is a summary of the current development state and plans.


== Current state ==

  * A new homepage was set [0] . I wasn't reactive enough when ichthux.org 
came to be sold again, and some company bought it to try and sell it to me 
again. There's no way i'll buy it to them ;) The new homepage uses drupal, 
and the wiki has been put on [1]. I'm hopping to set a new wiki since this 
one is not really great.

  * As you probably have seen on [0] if you've checked it already, we are now 
focused on developping Ichthux based on Kubuntu. This is pretty easy to 
understand given that I'm a Kubuntu developer, but you'll also notice that 
the development team now includes Jordan Mantha (Laserjock), an Ubuntu MOTU, 
and Richard Johnson (nixternal), involved in Ubuntu quite a lot, too. 

  * I have been working on metapackages, the (K/X)Ubuntu way. The result is a 
set of packages, available on http://archive.ichthux.com (when my server is 
up), that will turn any (K/X)Ubuntu Dapper installation into an Ichthux one 
by simply installing the ichthux-desktop package. Most of the Ichthux work 
will now be done in these metapackages. The great news is that it seems we'll 
be able to put these ichthux-* packages in Ubuntu itself, so we do not have 
to keep a separate repository and we can work in upstream directly.

  * New beta CDs were released. I released new CDs based on the Kubuntu Dapper 
6.06.1 (new revision after a few months) Desktop CD. Ubiquity, the new Ubuntu 
installer, makes it very easy to modify the live CD and installer. The 
current CD contains the following features: 
        - based on Kubuntu 6.06.1 LTS "Dapper Drake"
        - bibletime with multi-language support
        - kio-sword for Bible study integration into Konqueror
        - several Bibles installed by default for English (KJV), Spanish 
(SPARV), French (LSG) and Hebrew (WLC)
        - Christian console tools: verse, bible-kjv
        - a Christian emoticons theme by default in Kopete
        - improved settings for a better Christian experience of the computer 
desktop (konversation, wallpaper, throbber icon in Konqueror)

  * The Ichthux-dev team is listed on Launchpad, the Ubuntu development 
platform [2]. Launchpad provides bug management, team management, 
specification writing and tracking, bzr as a VCS, translations, etc. It's a 
very good development tool that we're going to try to use to the best.

  * The greatest needs right now are graphics and documentation. If you feel 
you can help with this, you're welcome :)


== Future plans ==

Given all these things, here are the current development plans for Ichthux:

  * First final release in September. The current tools we have allow us to 
release a first final version very soon. It is currently planned for the 10th 
of September, under the name of Ichthux 6.09 "Amazing Grace". The choice for 
this date is due to the fact that Ubuntu Edgy's Feature Freeze happens on the 
7th of September. We hope to get all our packages in Edgy by this time, and 
backport them to Dapper on the ichthux repository to release this Dapper 
based version.

  * A second version will be released in October. Yes, that's a very short 
time after the first release! This release will be the first one included in 
Ubuntu. Ichthux 6.10 should thus be fully integrated inside Ubuntu 6.10.

  * After these releases will be out and running, I plan to add an 
Ichthux-lite version to it, based on Xubuntu, for people who have old 
computers.


God bless
<><

Raphaël


[0] http://www.ichthux.com
[1] http://wiki.ichthux.com
[2] https://launchpad.net/people/ichthux-dev


-- 
Raphaël Pinson
<raphink at ichthux.com>
http://www.raphink.info
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