0.6 is out...and looking to the future, we see many things ahead, lots of ideas, and we even have a preliminary roadmap leading up to Shift 1.0. But, realistically speaking, we still have a long way to go. Shift 0.6 was a "rebirth" of the Shift Linux project, moving away from the old Morphix base onto the new Ubuntu base. 0.7 up to 0.9.x will be a time for shaping up Shift upon this new base, and making it ours. So, as an addition to Barney's call for help, I'm going to list a few things we'll need for the road ahead. This list is meant for the developers, the graphics team, the enthusiasts, the readers, and anyone with a spare minute or two. Most of these things are frugal, and do not require "membership" on the Shift team (but everyone will be given credit!) So, if anyone would like to tackle any of these things, please PM anyone with a Shift Linux badge (like me).

1. Shift graphics (Wallpaper, Screensavers, GTK themes, XFCE/Gnome/KDE4 themes, etc.)
2. Windows Applications. Examples are a dedicated ISO burner, and possibly a hardware-checker app.
3. Inter-version cooperation - All 3 versions share common art, screensavers, and so on.
4. A repository. With that, someone to "manage" the repository.
5. New ideas for applications. How to make them work would be nice too
6. Research, Research, Research. With all of these ideas in mind, how do we make them work?
7. More meetings and more community interaction.
8. A "real" timetable that ensures our releases flow smoothly.
9. Mega-easy installing application.
10. And, off in the Linux cloud - No Terminal "required".

Once again, this list is for everyone. Grab a piece, post about it, PM, and let's all make Shift perfect!

Looking into my crystal ball, I see a Linux-using ex-staffer joining in and helping (when he gets a new computer) with some of the items related to the "Lite" version. I can help also with getting a common look/theme (and keyboard shortcuts) into Flux (is there an XFCE user on-board the Shift team?).

If you're looking for an easy-to-use package management tool, I suggest using Smart. It's by far the most common one I've used, mainly because it's independent of the backend used (so which distro and which package system used doesn't matter; it can do apt, yum, YaST, urpmi, slack-pkg and so on).

I would love to see more people contribute to the wiki and such.

Please, add these things for 1.0! It would make me love this distro very much.

Inter-version cooperation you said. Something like a global theme manager would be nice then. This would be as customizable as KDE's themes (Color scemes, widget styles etc seperate, and everything configurable). Also, for this, the theme would "just work", no seperate settings for root programs surprising you. And by global I mean it should affect both Qt, KDE and GTK/GNOME apps. (Yeah, currently, Qt apps, and KDE apps have seperate settings). You could base the widget style on Qtcurve: http://kde-look.org/content/show.php/QtCur...9?content=40492

OSS4 by default for all applications. OSS is the standard sound system for Unix systems, should be easy to develop for (I don't know coding myself), "just works" and has real software mixing, and can put all programs in seperate streams so that you can select volume seperately for all programs (if you want). There is Pulseaudio wich Ubuntu has adopted in its new release, but the only way it wins over OSS right now are some network features, and OSS has support in most applications Now. OSS4 was GPL'ed a while ago. If we have it as a standard we can finally get rid off all sound problems.

Make it easier to manage Input Methods (for inputting japanese for example), and drives. There is a partition editor in Ubuntu, but it's only able to change partitions themselves. I would also like to be able to change mount points and such for all drives.

You mentioned windows applications. May I suggest helping out with WINE then? The are a few things that can improve it noticably, a part from the regular improvements:

Make msstyles work completely in WINE. There was some work on msstyles but right now if you select a theme it's very slow and not rendered properly. If you get this done, maybe you can make a fitting msstyle also?

Get antialiasing up to the level the rest of the GNU/Linux desktop has, for WINE's fonts.

Add more configuration options winecfg (There are still quite a few things only configurable in the registry), add support for icon themes, and improve the file picker (something like KDE's would be nice) in WINE.

Maybe this is a lot. You don't have to add anything. But these are all the ideas i came up with, wich I have looked for in all my distro hunting for quite some time.

OSS is the standard? On my openSUSE 10.3 system alsa seems to take presidence although both need to be enabled for sound to work in all apps.

I would appreciate tools for doing all the configuring I had to do to get my sound working! (all those config files)

Yes, it is the standard. Just about every Unix/Unix-like system uses it. But as you may have notice, for some reason GNU/Linux doesn't use it. That's what the point of the request was, to integrate OSS4, wich we should be using.

The sorry state of sound in Linux: http://insanecoding.blogspot.com/2007/05/s...d-in-linux.html

Thanks for all the input, everyone........... if you have more, keep posting it here. We will use all of these suggestions to make the best Shift Linux version possible.

Also please do not ruin package managing. Using a package manager is one of the things I absolutely love, and going back to installers now, like in Windows, would not be very pleasant. I know for example PC-BSD did something like this with their .pbi files, and that's the main reason I refuse to use PC-BSD. And especially in Debian/Ubuntu the package managing (apt + dpkg) is really good. I would probably not mind if you decided to integrate SMART PM though. But what was the problem with apt, since you listed that installation should be simplified?

The only reason why ALSA is so popular is because
a) they showed up while actual OSS was still closed, while the open source clone of it was left rotting.
b) they have a lot of people in the right places.
c) still spread FUD about OSS, basically claiming it's feature-wise as crap as the rotten clone.

From the few steps in Linux land, the thing I've noticed is that ALSA sucks balls. And developers coding against it say the same. They prefer the OSS APIs.

No... we have nothing at all against apt.... as a matter of fact, this is the primary reason we use a Debian oriented OS. The installation we are talking about is small scripts that will help facilitate installing the OS; we do not want to change the package management.

@Tom Servo: I can't say I disagree with what you're saying at all. I am glad to have another supporter of OSS. Having distros migrating to OSS4 would make me very happy!

@Barney: Thanks for clearing that up. I didn't even think about the OS install. If I find anything I think needs improvement on that front I will post it.

I reckon you should do a $5 donation to have someone mail a CD to them. Like someone in each country does it. That would be a good way to get a little extra cash for hosting and stuff like that.

Not OS related, but still.

Ohh yeah, for cash, maybe you could offer commercial support for a fee also. I think that's how many other FOSS companies get their money.

It's the only real option for me, as Solaris user.

What I've always missed in GNU/Linux is a simple search program. I'm not interested in searching contents of documents, emails, or whatever. Just a simple file search program, wich searches the file system directly (not searching through a database or anything), looking for files containing your search argument in the file name.

So, you don't like locate and you don't like find?

There's a GUI frontend for locate for KDE...

http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php/K...)?content=54817

... and I guess this might do for Gnome...

http://gnome-find.sourceforge.net/

I agree. I am sorry that I have been lax lately. I've been involved in other things and now am in England on a holiday for a week or so. But I will have a blitz before long, promise.

However, it'd be good, as you say, to get more people involved. People who could contribute based on their special expertise. If we want to sell Shift to lots of people with lots of different interests, then we've got to get the wiki speaking to all those sorts of people, with information on things like using Shift for dtp, music, programming, video, animation, etc. Not just the standard things like web browsing and internet and basic office functions. Shift can be a one-stop shop for just about anyone with any needs. That all needs to be there in the wiki. Kreuger and I can only contribute where our own expertise is strong, but there are heaps other areas where specialised input from other people would really move us forward.

I suggest that we actually open things up a bit, advertise the wiki more to people we think can make it better, get them involved too. Keeping the Shift wiki as tightly 'closed' as Shift itself is not, IMO, the way to go.

As far as I know, they only search through a database of some sort, am I right? I could never use locate correctly. I don't know about find though.

locate uses a quick database lookup.

find will look through your filesystem.

Give me some time and I'll write a find GUI frontend in Python and wxWidgets for Shift Linux if the developers need one.

Could you also make a Qt4 version? ^^;;

We do... that would be fantastic!

Yes, that would be great!

for sound support i would like to see full support of The Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) - http://www.alsa-project.org & Open Sound - http://www.opensound.com/ but also you shold look in to working this in creative sound cards and other crative devices http://connect.creativelabs.com/opensource/default.aspx

Is Shift already using KDE4?
I have some time to do plasma widgets or some app interfaces if there is need for those.

I'll get with the team and see what we need. Thanks for your offer!

Nice to see the project is still going.

does shift linux supports wubi in it?

if i can, i wanna install it with windows without doing serious partitioning on my hard drive.

What about implementing this for terminal users?

There's the Archlinux wiki, its great and complete.

Can I suggest that shift should use archlinux wiki and also it should have access to the AUR?
I mean, the web should be a frontend for this, it should say that it's shift linux, but must show up the archlinux web contents... maybe ask for some kind of merge?