Clean-room Adminmenu implementation

[danieldk]

Now that it seems Libranet is really gone, some of us are left wondering if doing a clean-room Adminmenu implementation is viable. I had the same questions seven or eight months ago, and started with an Adminmenu-like tool written in Python and Qt. Development stalled[1], but it already has some components, and expanding it to a full-blown configuration tool is certainly doable. The sources live at:

http://koala-config.berlios.de/

Some screenshots:
http://developer.berlios.de/screenshots/?group_id=5730

[1] Mostly due to the lack of confidence of me and my brother in the state/stability of Debian (stable is too old, testing and unstable are unstable).

[shivandeveloper]

I'm a passable Java developer, I can read most other things and analyze structure and the like for design. I also have experience organizing big projects (though I don't pronounce myself to be exceptional at it, I merely get the job done). I do not have a copy of 3.0.

I do think a white room adminmenu can be done. I also think it will be a ton of work and should be delivered in iterations (chunks of complete functionality at a time).

If any of that helps, let me know.

[danieldk]

The Python code is easily understandable, and quite short and clean, thanks to Qt. If you are willing to join in, that would be great! Benjamin helped a great deal in discussions and started translating Koala to German. I am willing to get this of the ground again, if there are enough people that want to contribute in one way or another.

[ammo]

I'm willing to test it and make comments about the look&feel, usefulness of the tool.

I have partitions with stable and Parsix(sid based) to play with. I even have a spare LN3 partition I could use. I like multi-boot. :)

[Mike]

Sorry -- but I'm not free to work on other projects till after the end of the year.

I'd need a couple months (not more) to get fluent with any language I don't currently know (that's "writing" fluency -- I could read most anything in a couple of days for the purposes of analysis)

[mdevour]

I'd be willing to give a relative Linux newbie's view of things as they progress. I can write well and copy edit the writing of others.

Anything more technical will require hand-holding to get me up to speed. <sigh> I'm just getting my brain around PHP, modern HTML, CSS, and javascript, as in being able to read them with effort.

Mike D.

[benjaminq]

Translations to German over here! French maybe also, but a native Franco-Canadian soul might be better for this, although I had my two years of France in Paris and Grenoble (but NOT dealing with french Computer language).

Testing also.

Debian stable is not toooo old, thanks to backports and Stosberg repos. Testing is about to stabilize. But I am not deeply into Debian internals. One should can keep it as distro-independent as possible (most of the time the /etc/$configfile should be exchangeable, no?).

BEnjamin

[danieldk]

One should can keep it as distro-independent as possible (most of the time the /etc/$configfile should be exchangeable, no?).

No, even simple things like network settings are done differently. Let's not get started about handling alternatives, etc. :)

[danieldk]

Debian stable is not toooo old, thanks to backports and Stosberg repos. Testing is about to stabilize.

If we are going to move this forward, I propose to aim for the next stable release (Etch). And track the stable releases after that.

[drahcir]

I would like to propose that the kernel conf module be one of the first. I find it is the one I miss the most.

Richard

[autek]

Daniel, I'm only an end user, my Linux knowledge is very limited. But, I will be glad to help in any way that is possible. I'm just getting started with Perl, but not much headway. I learned early on to RTFM and Google is my friend.

Ed