Hello Reader,

the good thing about Sid is that you can upgrade an ‘outdated’ release. The good thing about this, AFT, is that I can take a break from the grill. Not that it’s tiresome, or boring (quite the opposite), but there is indeed something called Real Life (you know, meat on two legs) that requires a bit more attention than this hobby project. In the next weeks I won’t be able to engage too much in the BBQ (due to technical reasons, more or less, and geographical borkage or dependency hell) and I have to leave upgrade-warning, troubleshooting and bug-fixing to the community. My fellow forum-grillers are reliable and dedicated people – I should especially mention my better halves rhowaldt, ivanovnegro, pidsley who have always covered my ass – thanks guys! I also want to thank the dedicated users of the grill (no matter if they run BBQ on their machines), it’s you who keep the project alive, indeed. In May we will continue, and expect some hefty surprises!

So, for upgrade warnings please check the forums section and don’t rely on the Upgrade Warning app (for those who use it), because it will only notify about *grave* or *critical* packages. Generally, be careful with upgrades and better delay them if you are in doubt. Pretty sure you don’t need the newest revision of glibclit-6.205-uber-0.1-rc (y’ know)

Wish you all a sunny springtime, and see you soon, hopefully in good health!

Dear to whom it may concern

Well yes, happy new year, first of all. The last two weeks of December were extremely busy, mostly due to the unplanned submission to DW. Personally, I spent even more time in front of the computer than doing anything else, to build up an infrastructure (that would have been built up anyway in January) and I am still unsatisfied with it. For what it’s worth, the Standing Committee of the BBQ (myself) has decided to change quite a few things for the future (to get the original idea of Roast your Own back into the game)

1. The positions of Saltimbocca/Escargot (the Openbox Base releases) are going to be replaced by LinuxBBQ “Boner” and “Virgin” (see posts below). Technically, the difference is a “sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-video-<yourcard>” but makes stuff easier for me to maintain. It also ensures that the user digs into several configuration files and learns to maintain a (working) system from the command line. Keep in mind that Boner/Virgin already use tmux and applications for production, so the user is not completely lost anyway. There are enough resources that can be used (wiki, forums, cookbook, integrated help, Aunt Google) to get things configured the way the user wants them to be, from scratch. Saltimbocca/Escargot will move to Trollinger. So the motto for 2013 is: “You can has boner!”, “Y U NO Virgin?” or “Trololol!”
2. User contributions will be collected and packaged as .deb files (downloadable as one-click) rather than being included in the spins. This helps me to maintain the horde of releases we have in the BBQ now.
3. The graphical browser in base releases (except MATE, which is a suite) is removed, keeping only “Roaster” as GUI browser (for a quick search) and “lynx” which is anyway the first browser in Boner/Virgin. I have had enough of discussions about Y U NO Iceweasel/Iceape/Firefox/Chromium/<any other browser here>. “Roaster” works on most websites, it can be used to get information from the internet, and is perfect as a temporary browser. Just to explain the obvious: some people download a Desktop base edition and forget that they are trying to ride a bicyle without saddle. The full-featured editions will ship with something nice, depending on the mood of the cook (with Weasel, it seems)
4. Talking of full-featured editions, there will be no new additions, only some changes and removals.

• It is very possible that LaTex gets an upgrade (to be available on 32 and 64 bit) with a different Tex suite behind it and some Stud applications, and that
• Mother will get a Father (so, a 32 bit version).
• SpeckDrum will be removed from the active releases (it was anyway only an i486 experimental release).
• The future of the GNOME base editions is unclear. I don’t really want to drop them, but given the fact that GNOME is still at 3.4 I think it is better to wait until the repos catch up to 3.6. Thanks to sid the users can roll up to newer versions even from “old” release candidates.
• It’s decided that there will be no KDE base (my last try to build a barebones KDE ended up with a 620MB image, and this has definitely nothing to do with bare or BBQ).
• The good experience with Trollinger means that a 64bit version is around the corner.
• Threesome (featuring i3) will remain 32-bit only and the build-script for 64-bit (to start from Boner) will be uploaded some time.
• The development of Rocks! (the recording studio) and Free! (the Linux for visually impaired) is slightly delayed, mostly due to lack of feedback from users regarding hardware support.

And now just one wish: please, please – don’t bother me with ‘additions to the base releases’. There will nothing be added. The list of the defaults is short and hopefully stays this way:

• GUI file manager PCManFM (except XFCE – Thunar, MATE – caja)
• GUI text editor Mousepad (except MATE – pluma)
• GUI web browser Roaster (except MATE – Iceweasel)
• GUI media player GNOME Mplayer
• GUI music player DEADBEEF
• GUI radio player Radiotray
• GUI screen temperature switch gtk-redshift
• GUI FTP client gFTP
• GUI download manager uget
• GUI mail client Sylpheed
• GUI network-manager-gnome
• CLI file manager mc/ranger
• CLI text editor nano/mcedit
• CLI web browser lynx/elinks
• CLI media player mplayer2/mpg123
• CLI music player mocp/mpg123
• CLI radio player BBQradio
• CLI screen temperature switch redshift
• CLI FTP client wput
• CLI download manager wget
• CLI mail client mutt
• CLI network manager ceni

plus the CLI apps that are anyway in Boner/Virgin (wordgrinder, sc, abook, wyrd). Of course desktop-specific helpers (obconf/obmenu or XFCE4-panel applets) are there, too, depending on the base. I hope this satisfies most users. Please remember that everything is an apt-get away, and the stuff that is provided on the stick should be good enough to get things done even if there is no network available.

I want to thank everybody who has contributed and helped so far in the development of the Q. Many people wished us to get a ‘larger user base’, which would be a nice side effect, but most of all I am very happy to have dedicated fellow barbies and grillmeisters who invest their time and knowledge, their talent and their trust into our collective BBQ, and I will give my best not to disappoint anybody

Thank you all, and thank you for reading! Happy 2013, let it roast!