Hi, I started using CRUX GNU/Linux in October 2006. I was fascinated by its simplicity and decided to continue using it. I especially liked pkgutils and the ports system. I am exacting regarding package management, because I think it is the main aspect that makes a distribution unique (all distribution provide roughly the same software, but have a different package manager and design philosophy). My first contribution to CRUX was the libarchive support for pkgutils (FS#121). I took a month to get this feature into the git repository. There were some trivial problems with libarchive, but it became apparent to me that CRUX had maintenance problems. I was not really happy about this fact, but I pretended myself that this was not a real problem. At the same time I started maintaining my own ports collection which consists (after a cleanup) over 30 ports. I tried to merge some patches for ports in the opt repository and sent them to the port maintainers, but I never got a reply. Therefore I maintain them now in my own repository. But all these incidents never discouraged me from using and liking CRUX. I was not happy about the situation, but I neither wanted to fork yet another distribution nor I wanted to switch to another. In May 2007 tried to integrate libtre in pkgutils without any success. This was not a matter of great importance to me, but I had real doubts about the organisation of CRUX from that on. I tried to get a developer account and proper e-mail address on the CRUX server in order to be able to participate in development, maintenance and organisation, but nobody replied, my e-mails were rejected. I contacted Per and told him about my plans, but he could not really help me, because he was not a CRUX developer anymore. That was all in the past. Today I think CRUX has reached its zenith. It will die a slow and silent death. Perhaps this will take months or years; it is just a matter of time. CRUX lost its importance, its fans and community. It is hierarchically structured and slowly developing. When I recognised that the C++ version of pkgutils was going to be replaced by a C version, I knew that this would have far reaching consequences for the design and philosophy of CRUX. I think it is not longer the great design philosophy of Per Lidén; it is not longer the thing I liked about CRUX. But generally speaking we (the community) bear the guilt for its death. We did not stop the death, we agreed with the decisions and decided to support this development. Nevertheless it is not to late to stop this process and revitalise CRUX. Everything depends on us! I thought about the future of CRUX and conceived some ideas and demands: * restructuring of the development process (patch queues, better issue tracker, more transparent development and release process, public discussions, development teams, ...) * open ports system (easier updating, submission and maintenance, open to anyone) * entirely public wiki * (perhaps) merge with CRUX-PPC * automatic version, standards and integration tests for Pkgfiles * more precise and stricter packaging standards * no more footprint mismatches (isolated builds, USE flags like system) * complete localisation (no --disable-nls, ...) * (simple) Pkgfile standard library (common mirrors, functions) * multiple architectures * improvement of pkgutils (attribute, hooks/events, pkgutils library) * redesign of prt-get * git repository cleanups * ... Let us (the community) take over the development of CRUX! We are the people, we can change our distribution! The future of CRUX is up to you! You can decide on your own! -- Matthias-Christian Ott