MiNT goes UNiX, invitation for mailing list

[itschere@TechFak.Uni-Bielefeld.DE]

Hello!

 I'm now using MiNT as a UNiX substitute from version 0.92 on, which must
be almost 2 years ago. In these years I've often found myself very happy
about being able to take benefit from the bunch of ported software and
thus the work of many people spreaded all over the world. :-)

 But I've also found myself very unhappy, yes, indeed sometimes quite
angry, about some software being ported for another setup, so that it
doesn't find the correct paths on mine, or isn't able to use standard
UNiX filenames with slashes, or sometimes breaks due to the memory
protection on my TT. :-(

 Clearly that's because of everyone does his/her own port with his/her own
preferences in mind. Not that I'm not gratefull for being able to use this
software, but I'd have liked a bit more standartization all the time.

 You may have made similar experiences.

 I've seen the great installation kits for Linux, and was quite impressed
about these ready-to-go bundles, where everything was really consistent.
That's how I came to the idea of making something like this for MiNT too,
and sporadically started talking to some net-friends.

 In the last few weeks, common interest seems to have risen, and in the
last few days we've exchanged quite a lot of mails, driving us to the
conclusion that it might be a good idea to establish a mailing list for
exchanging our ideas.

 Note: We're not (yet) going to distribute any software, but merely discussing
the way consistency could be achieved without paying the price of a great
maintainance work. We're not going to replace the MiNT Distribution Kit by
Simon Gornall, since we're going to concentrate a `bit' more on UNiX
features, programs and compatibility. That is in my eyes: We're not going
to make very big concessions to GEM or the TOSFS.

 All this may sound simple, but then: Why hasn't anybody done it yet?

 If you're seriously interested in discussing this topic and perhaps
willing to spend some work on it also, you're invited to subscribe to the
mailing list I'm running from today on. All you've got to do is send a
mail to <itschere@techfak.uni-bielefeld.de> with a quick note. You'll
soon later receive a summarization of our ideas so far... which isn't
very much so far, I'm afraid.

 Later contributions to the list can be done by sending mail to the same
adress, but ensuring that it has the string `MINTOS' anywhere in the
subject line.

 Since I'm running this on my normal student account, I'd like to ask you
to only subscribe if you're seriously interested in joining us and not to
send larger mails or binaries over it. We'll sure find other ways of
exchanging them :-)

 Additional remark: Or do you think we should run this discussion over
this list?

 That's it, feel free to reply... :-)

bye,
TeSche (Torsten Scherer), itschere@techfak.uni-bielefeld.de
--
PS: Sorry, but it's my style to express things preferably in longer words :-)

-- 
PS: If the above written looks weird, then that's probably because it _IS_.
Torsten Scherer (Schiller, TeSche...), University of Bielefeld, Germany
==> itschere@techfak.uni-bielefeld.de / tesche@hrz.uni-bielefeld.de <==