Help needed

[DeX]

Hi!

I don't know who is still reading this besides me and perhaps vmiklos

For the last years I've been the de facto maintainer of FrugalWare.

I love this job and I think I learned a lot from doing so.
But I must say I sometimes reach my limits,  for example I don't own a Nvidia GPU and can only blindly package stuff around this.

Also there is currently no Build Server available, as the last one (ant provided by crazy) had some drive issues.

FrugalWare has been listed discontinued by DistroWatch (I guess due to the Fallout of Genesis breaking som years ago and also no Release).

My Point is: I need help. As maintainer, Testing stuff, working on the Toolchain, providing a Buildserver or talking to people mirroring FW how to repair things.

I use FW day to day and it is quite stable an very competitive to say Arch. Would be a pitty to make it just end 😉

Waiting for your Feedback
DeX

[Miklos Vajna]

Hi Daniel,

On Mon, Jun 23, 2025 at 10:01:52AM +0200, 'DeX' via Frugalware <fruga...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
> I don't know who is still reading this besides me and perhaps vmiklos

Heh yes, I do read it. :)

> For the last years I've been the de facto maintainer of FrugalWare.
>
> I love this job and I think I learned a lot from doing so.
> But I must say I sometimes reach my limits, for example I don't own a Nvidia GPU and can only blindly package stuff around this.
>
> Also there is currently no Build Server available, as the last one (ant provided by crazy) had some drive issues.
>
> FrugalWare has been listed discontinued by DistroWatch (I guess due to the Fallout of Genesis breaking som years ago and also no Release).
>
> My Point is: I need help. As maintainer, Testing stuff, working on the Toolchain, providing a Buildserver or talking to people mirroring FW how to repair things.
>
> I use FW day to day and it is quite stable an very competitive to say Arch. Would be a pitty to make it just end 😉

Unfortunately I also have my time limits, so one thing I can offer is to
continue maintaining the xoffice category.

The other thing I can continue to offer is genesis: I almost moved on
everything personal from that server, so we can almost use it fully the
way the project needs it.

To save you time, what about being a more liberal about removing things
which you don't personally need and may be a bit exotic by now?

At least if you collect what are the most painful parts, we can discuss
what looks useful and what could perhaps go.

Regards,

Miklos

[Miklos Vajna]

Hi Daniel,

I see that in the meantime, apart from rare commits from me, 15th July
was the last commit, so sounds like you lost interest in continuing,
which is sad, but of course I understand.

Do you think this is temporary or you are not interested anymore?

If the later, I would suggest to archive the project properly:

Put up a news post on the website that we'll archive the project by e.g.
end of year.

And then we can plan the rest afterwards.

Thanks,

Miklos

[Viktor Berke]

Hey Miklos and everyone,

How funny life is sometimes. How I ended up here, right now, by complete accident, after all these years. I just read the 2nd Dune book (in English) where the word "frugal" came up. And I just wanted to check the meaning, then I remembered there was a distro called like that once. Frugal Linux, nah... Frugalware, yup, that's the one. Wiki said "dormant", as one would expect, but then out of curiosity I went to the website to read the farewell message, which I couldn't find. Just some random dev news, like PPC being EOL'd... PPC, remember that? Damn, time sure flies. Then I checked for any community platform, where I might still find some answers, an explanation, stories of the hows and whys, anything. And this Google Groups page was pretty much the only relevant link, still full of automated reports, but somehow the 2nd message from 2 days ago was from an actual person.

And guess what, it's pretty much about that overdue farewell. What are the odds, really. In any case, I find it fascinating that after all these years there was still a person actually doing maintenance, that really is admirable, DeX, you are a trooper. But suddenly all sorts of memories popped up. I'm not 100% certain, but I think I ended up on your IRC channel for a while because I tried to push HexChat to the Frugalware repos. Maybe someone from #PC_muhely @ Gyaloglo Chat suggested it (cvk, rescu, deta, braindead, you know who you are). And of course, to my surprise, your IRC channel turned out to be a whole bunch of Hungarian folks, or friends, even, talking casually about anything and everything.

I remember I lead that freakschat turned XChat-WDK turned HexChat project out of frustration by the fact that XChat for Windows was not free, even though the code was GPL. That little pet project ended up granting me my BSc as it ended up being my thesis, and it also turned out to be the final push that landed me in my job - the CEO explicitly stated that in the end me leading that project was what made him pick me over the other candidate. And guess what, that job was also terminated this year, after almost 12 years. Again, what are the odds.

And now that project is why I'm reminiscing about Frugalware, because without it, I would've never even talked to you. I remember you regularly went on cycling tours, and I mentioned I'm a runner myself, to which someone said he liked running too, but his knees couldn't take it anymore, and that they started acting up even during biking. How I remember such random stuff, don't ask. It was at least 12 years ago, but somehow this bit got imprinted into my brain. Those were the days, as they say.

In any case, all this babbling at 2 AM is just me trying to say I'm grateful to have met you guys, even if just for a short while. I appreciate and understand the way things are, people get serious jobs, kids come, life happens, all that jazz, so most of the time it's probably inevitable, but we're not doing it to conquer to world, it's a journey, not a destination. I hope all the Frugalware folks are doing fine, I wish everyone to live long and prosper, and thank you for everything you've done.

All the best,

Viktor

[Miklos Vajna]

Hi,

On Wed, Oct 01, 2025 at 08:12:40AM +0200, Miklos Vajna <vmi...@vmiklos.hu> wrote:
> Put up a news post on the website that we'll archive the project by e.g.
> end of year.

As a heads-up, this will happen soon, see
https://frugalware.org/news/268/ and
https://web.archive.org/web/20251007235917/https://frugalware.org/news/268/
for details.

Regards,

Miklos