What do you want?


Recommended Posts

I've been mulling over this for a few days now. Firefly targets the netbook crowd. Ubuntu and it's derivatives target the "new" crowd. Ubuntu studio is out there for the audio/visual folks. I'm not really sure what niche is in need of a home. Maybe providing a structured set of tools for web development that are known to work well together, but that's a very minimal direction to head. There are tons of security and intrusion detection distros. If we have enough application developers involved, maybe take a good run at fully integrating the web into the desktop experience? I'm rambling here, but the thread was empty so sue me :p.

  • 2 weeks later...
Bump? Anyone else have any interest in Shift?

I have been watching the Development of the New Shift Arch Distro. Its been a month sense Alpha 3 was released. The Swift web site has not been updated, and there is little info out their for sparking interest in this project.

Where does everyone stand on further development??????

Thanks

  • 2 weeks later...

I personally would like a Distro that is for Media playback. HTPC use. Something that comes with MythTV, Boxee and stuff with lots of infrared receiver support built in.

But I don't really see Shift having momentum. As others have said there isn't a lot of updates and not a lot of discussion. I personally couldn't use Shift in any meaningful way because its updated to infrequently, not that I'm putting you or any of your team down I understand the perils of projects like these having been involved with quite a few myself.

I think one of the main problems with the project is it has no direction. You seem to have the sense of wanting to make a Distro but without an actual reason to do so. I don't really think that is a good reason to make a Distro. You should first identify things that you need/want that are lacking in other Distros for which you can improve on. Or find a niche that has yet to be filled before starting work on the Distro. It seems right now that you have built a car without anywhere to drive it.

As I say I'm very interested in the Home Theatre PC sector which could do with some nice tight low-powered Linux distros that can run happily on a low-performance silent ITX/M-ATX system with a slick UI and good functionality like that offered by Boxee.

For me, as a developer, the only thing I want is good KDE support, especially 3.x, as this has all the features I need, especially when developing in C++. KDE 4 support would be good, but the main problem I have with Ubuntu is the awful KDE support (vanilla KDE does suck big style). I think Mandriva 2008.1 was the perfect example of an immensely built KDE system, I just can't do with the restrictive functionality of Gnome (from a developer's point of view), and need all the tools in Konqueror and Kdevelop as they're not available in other tools for Linux.

I couldn't care less how good the system looks, just that all the necessary tools are available when I want to be able to quickly get my work done, and they actually work and have all the necessary libraries available. I don't use Linux for web browsing, email, audio/video, syncing or office work, as my laptop deals with all that fine. I do need to to be able to quickly develop a C++ app and to take advantage of the QT toolkit - as this is by far the most advanced and easy to use (and cross platform) kit for Linux development. I also want the option to be able to use things like Mono, as I personally don't need it and can't stand that so many distros slow my computer down by including Mono apps (it's got monster overheads).

Just please keep in mind that a good number of Linux users want to use it as a workstation for development, not necessarily a desktop for home use.

Well, we have no *real* access to the website, only ability to edit the text. Can't post about new releases or modify download page either. Pretty limited, eh? Consider this another bump. Should we just stop making Shift? What's the goal here?

ditto that having a distro that come with boxee and a media player that play dvd & blu ray if possible on Linux and something like songbird and vlc and have a good stand alone app that support a tv tunes card to watch tv and a play fm radio would be nice and to see love to see it this distro have good support for netbooks and http://www.gupnp.org/ and very good support for the openChrome http://www.openchrome.org/ driver and via linux drivers the GFX driver http://linux.via.com.tw/support/downloadFiles.action and easy to configure networking wired and wireless

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • Posts

    • My favorite file manager for Windows 11 finally gets a long-requested feature by Taras Buria Files is among the best File Explorer alternatives for Windows 10 and 11. This free app is packed with all sorts of features and conveniences, but there is one crucial feature that is still missing—Tree View. Fortunately, the latest update in the Preview channel finally delivers it. With version 4.1.4, which is now available for download in the Preview channel, developers implemented Tree View, a new mode that displays folders in an expandable hierarchy. Windows 11's stock File Explorer always had this feature, but it was nowhere to be found in Files until now. Starting with the latest preview update, you can expand each drive and its nested folders without leaving the current location and then open the folder you need in the main view. To try Tree View in Files, update the app to the latest preview version, then click the small arrow next to a drive to expand its content. The developers say they are rolling out Tree View in Preview first to gather feedback from users and improve the feature before bringing it to all in the stable channel. In addition to Tree View, Files 4.1.14 improves the Windows Fonts folder. You can now preview each font directly in Files with no need to open the built-in font viewer. For now, these two features are only available in the Preview channel. For those using the stable release, developers recently released version 4.1.3, with improvements for the built-in tag system, on-demand folder size calculation, and plenty of various fixes. You can check out the full release notes here. You can download Files from the Microsoft Store (paid version) or its official website (free).
    • Who is paying for this 30x scale-up? Its sounds expensive.
    • Millions of users to benefit from Windows 11's new performance boost on Adobe Photoshop by Sayan Sen Despite the advent of AI-generated imagery, Adobe's Photoshop remains one of the most popular tools on this planet. Adobe does not have a publicly reported total user count but it's probably not wrong to assume there are millions. As of 2025, Adobe Creative Cloud has had approximately 41 million paid subscribers, many of whom likely use Photoshop. In addition, more than 166,000 companies worldwide are apparently also using the app. These figures are according to a very recent report by SQ Magazine. Out of them, it is fair to assume that many are probably running Windows. As such, there is good news for these users as Microsoft has announced Photoshop is getting a big 20% performance boost on x86-64 (AMD64) systems and a 13% bump-up on Arm devices. This is definitely great news for them as many have complained about the slow performance and general sluggishness of Photoshop on Windows 11 ever since the advent of the latter back in 2021. If you are wondering how Microsoft managed to do this, the answer lies in a combination of compiler-level optimizations and a technology called Sample Profile Guided Optimization (SPGO). According to Microsoft, Adobe worked closely with the company’s Visual C++ team and adopted the latest MSVC toolchain enhancements together with SPGO to squeeze more performance out of Photoshop’s CPU-bound workloads. Unlike traditional Profile Guided Optimization (PGO), which requires developers to create special instrumented builds and run lengthy training workloads, SPGO gathers performance data directly from optimized release binaries. This means Adobe could collect real-world usage information which gives a major advantage to this technique, as companies could leverage data collected from actual customer workloads rather than only relying on synthetic benchmark runs. In theory, this should allow optimizations to better reflect how users interact with software in the real world. Thanks to this, there are improvements to code layout, function inlining, hot-and-cold code separation, and other low-level tweaks that help processors execute instructions more efficiently. Essentially the compiler is better able to identify “hot” code paths, those which are most frequently executed, and optimize them accordingly.
    • "The 2TB Samsung 990 PRO NVMe SSD hits lowest price in over three months¨ I'd prefer to see the lowest price in over a year
    • Glad these prices are starting to come down, but that is still crazy. I bought the 2TB 9100 Pro (slightly more expensive version with PCIe 5.0) last year for $240.
  • Recent Achievements

    • First Post
      Jocimo earned a badge
      First Post
    • Week One Done
      suprememobiles48 earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • One Month Later
      Windows Guy earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • One Month Later
      Prasann earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • Week One Done
      Prasann earned a badge
      Week One Done
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      521
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      174
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      90
    4. 4
      Steven P.
      81
    5. 5
      ATLien_0
      70
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!