sidux 2009.02, waiting for antiX M8.2

I was going to wait for both sidux 2009.02 and antiX M8.2 to come out, since there were test versions of both out earlier this month. antiX has been in public testing longer, but anticapitalista wants to get a few things just right before releasing. Meanwhile, the public test versions, including the Pre Final 1 for antiX M8.2 look very good.

There was some sad news on the sidux front, because there were unfortunate conflicts within the development ranks that caused quite a stir, and I was accidentally involved in some of it. I hope that the fences have been mended, and peace is being restored in the community, because for the past two years, sidux has been my favorite distribution. It is cutting edge, fast, and it has done a good job of "taming" Debian Sid. The test team for sidux does a great job looking for defects and packaging mismatches, and they advise on which packages to put on hold.

The smxi project, which provides a tool that works with these package holds, was once an integral part of the unofficial, yet very common extended software that was often added onto sidux. Unfortunately, that has been an area that has become increasingly contentious, and, as it turns out, completely unknown to me, that was the major, and probably primary, source of the fireworks that recently touched off on sidux irc channels and in the sidux forums.

The unfortunate fact is that sometimes these things have to happen as the directions of projects and individuals take on differing priorities. At one time, Harold Hope, also known to many as h2 on sidux forums and as Tech Admin over at Tech Patterns, was considered a "developer" at sidux.com, something that the sidux team recently denied. Harold has been finding himself at odds with the objectives of the sidux project for some time now, but it recently came to a head.

Things were said and done that I hope can one day be mended, but suffice it to say that sidux and smxi have absolutely no ties any more, and the sidux community and h2 have parted ways.

We've seen an awful lot of this kind of thing happen this year - sparks flying at Puppy Linux, where a project manager resigned after leading only one release, a number of developers leaving the PCLinuxOS project after poor communication during the absence of the founder, Texstar, then the sidux conflict, and it seems I am forgetting one or two others.

h2, I wish you well in what you do; you know how fond I am of smxi. sidux developers, know that I am also fond of the work that you do. May each project find new energy and direction as you take different paths.