News

[hopp58902 Member]

I haven't posted much here in a while. In fact, I haven't really been around Neowin very much in a while. Real life is completely biting out of my social and online life - I spent 5 hours writing a 9 page chemistry lab and am up at 12am doing calculus, and right after this I'll do my English and then Economics...

The point is, I'm sorry. I'm sorry for neglecting this project for so long, and am sorry for not putting out an actual product. We've (I've) promised a public test release to be out last weekend, but that never occurred. I'll be honest with you, we only got to the point where we've chosen a wallpaper (which I don't like :p ). We have ideas floating around but no clear vision of what's to come next.

So I quit. I've sent a PM of resignation to the Neowin News Staff to be with Shift (my beloved!). I've spent a good deal of time on these forums and the majority of my posts are in this subforum, and I call it home. I browse it whenever I can, although I don't reply too often. I apologize for that as well, for neglecting the community behind Shift.

I also read every single post and comment about Shift and hey, to be honest, after hearing and reading it 1000 times, "Why Shift?", it does get to you. Why use Shift? Why make Shift? Why bother? Can't we just join another Linux distro? This is a Windows site!

True, this is a Windows (7) site. I won't even attempt to argue with that, but we do have a Linux (and Apple) community filled with experts. Why Shift? Most Linux fanboys would say "Why not?". I've got a better personal reason - because when you've got a few people, ideas, and a place to share resources, it's almost a waste not to put it all together. There are people who design, people who code, people who research, people who write wiki documents - people willing to spend their time to make something. We also don't get paid a dime (we don't get paid with anything to be honest...:p ).

That brings me back to the main point: Where is the "something"? That something is an alpha or preview of Shift. I could give excuses and excuses galore as to why it's not in your virtual machines yet, but I'd rather just say that there will be a basic developer preview out hopefully this weekend. I will put in a great amount of time to get the components together. I can't promise it will work on your hardware and will not even attempt to prove it better than Ubuntu or Fedora (or any other Linux).

And, I will pick a better wallpaper.

However, there is another aspect to this: you. The users. I've had the feeling before: "Who AM I developing for?!". There haven't been a great deal of Shift users, which I can partly blame on myself as well - hey, there's no actual Shift. I just hope that once the switch to Arch Linux is complete, we will have some permanent users, as I can't recall anyone (including myself) who has Shift installed.

So, here's what's going to happen: I will devote more time to Shift. I will release a preview this weekend (hopefully), and I'll post more on this forum. I also hope that the Shift Linux website revives and the strong following bears with us as we prepare a great Neowin operating system.

Thanks for reading, and don't think of this as one huge excuse or bs to buy us more time.

P.S. Shift Linux will include Flash by default. Thanks for voting and commenting. More of those are coming soon!

[Barney T. Administrators]

Thanks for the update, Crimson. (Y).

[MindTooth]

If Shift after the move to Arch can be as good as Arch (wiki, forum, packages, etc.) but with a better art work, I would use Shift for sure.

Birger :)

[hopp58902 Member]

Well, Shift Arch will be based on Arch in terms of packages and their overall releases, but we don't know if we'll use the rolling release. The plan is to pull all of Arch's packages on to our server, effectively making a set of Arch repos, but we'll modify some packages. In another folder, we'll make ANOTHER copy of the Arch repos (mirror) and update those continuously. So, Shift won't have too many daily updates, as someone has to manually go in and post packages to the Shift repo. Maybe a "patch Tuesday"?

[Dance.]

Are you doing your IB DP :/ ?

[hopp58902 Member]

My what? Today is a work day for Shift, any free wallpaper ideas?

[LTSmash]

Well, Shift Arch will be based on Arch in terms of packages and their overall releases, but we don't know if we'll use the rolling release. The plan is to pull all of Arch's packages on to our server, effectively making a set of Arch repos, but we'll modify some packages. In another folder, we'll make ANOTHER copy of the Arch repos (mirror) and update those continuously. So, Shift won't have too many daily updates, as someone has to manually go in and post packages to the Shift repo. Maybe a "patch Tuesday"?

Wouldn't it be easier to use Arch repo's and simply ignoring Arch branded packages?

I mean, for example we could make pacman ignore default arch gnome packages, and in our own custom repo, have Shift Gnome packages. That way, we wouldn't have any problems with the brandings, and pacman wouldn't have any updates until we updated our custom repo with latest Gnome (or KDE, or anything that is Arch-branded)

This is simpler to archive, and has the benefits of having a real rolling release system.

Of course, we could make trimestral ISO updates, so when someone needs to reinstall, they won't have to be so outdated (not that important, I have a separated pacman cache partition, so to me, reinstalling is really fast.