A long time ago (until Nov 2004), there was this good blog which described one cool Debian package every day. It allowed to discover a lot of interesting software, but it suddenly stopped being updated.
It would be nice to resurrect this. A team of editors could work on this, and readers could submit new entries. Editors wouldn’t need to be Debian users : we could have Ubuntu users too, and it would be a nice way to determine what are the things that have been packaged in Ubuntu that we should (but don’t) have in Debian yet.
Leave a comment if you would like to dedicate some time to this (either as an editor, or as a regular submitter of entries). If there’s enough manpower, I’ll try to setup a mailing list or something to discuss the minimum infrastructure we would need.
I would like to submit entries. My first candidate: timeout. I use it to capture radio show real audio streams with mplayer
I would be interested, and would happily host it – either alongside my existing Debian site or as part of it.
There have been several resurrenction attempts but finding the time / volunteers is the hard part.
Steve
Sounds fun! Not sure if I have the time to serve as an editor, but I would like to submit entries.
There already is a new site, it even updates hourly.
For some reason the link did not work – http://potd.redsymbol.net
Randy: Well, the site you are pointing to seems to just fetch the Description of the package. debaday was explaining was the package was useful (describing use cases, etc). There was a lot more editorial work.
I’d be interested in helping out with this.
Sounds like a nice idea! I’m mainly an Ubuntu user, though I do manage a Debian server as well, so maybe I could contribute a few from that side/perspective. :) Could very well be interested in helping out, though it is hard to promise that I could do something *every* day at the moment… on the other hand, if it was possible to work a few days ahead now and then in the system, that would make things a lot easier. (Also true even with multiple editors).
Apart from that, I would think it would be cool if such a list/feed was available in more formats than just blog/RSS, such as Google gadgets and more. This is a typical thing that people interested would like to add here and there for fun. :)
Sounds cool, yeah. I’d like to help with suggestions, at the very least.
Sounds like a cool idea. I am pretty new to Ubuntu and linux but have 10+ yrs of experience in IT support and training. I’ve created and edited newsletters and stuff in the past and would love to help manage this great idea.
There used to be a replacement site at http://debaday.debian.net/
But that’s down. Don’t know what happened to it. It would be cool to resurrect it though.
Sounds like a very good idea. Count me in!
I have nothing against allowing people who don’t use Debian submit entries, but covering stuff not available in Debian would be boring. We already have RFPs for stuff which should be packaged. These don’t have any priority though. Perhaps a wnpp-rfp could be split from wnpp, and bug severities
against wnpp-rfp could then be used to reflect importance.
You may want to contact the person(s) who were managing debaday to ask them why it was stopped. I suspect that it was generating low interest. Personally I would never check a website once a day just to learn about one new package.
The format DWN uses to present new packages was good for me. I’d perhaps click for the extended description of one or two packages each issue. Now DWN is basically discontinued. I have two suggestions:
1) revive just that part of DWN
2) since most people who would be interested in debaday are testing/unstable users, make it easier to check new packages in repositories. Synaptic can already do this a bit, but the interface isn’t really adapted (the short description can be truncated if the columns aren’t adjusted). Also, rather
than forcing users to check new packages each update, there could be a date stored, and Synaptic could display all newer packages until the user explicitly sets the date to the current date.
On Adept’s side, everything needs to be done.
I discovered the site through Liferea’s defaults rss feeds, and enjoyed discovering “new” packages (well, “new” for me, obviously). I’d be glad to help to resurrect the idea again.
Filipus, I’m reasonably sure that the reason debaday was stopped was due to time constraints — not because of lack of interest.
I submitted a few of the writeups to debaday. Beware that doing a good job is a LOT of work. I found writing a decent review of one package took around an hour, even though debaday wasn’t including screen shots or videos.
Joey S has repeatedly requested help getting a “package of the week” feature into Debian Weekly news. That’d be 1/7 the work of a daily review. There’s still some WML code in the http://www.d.o CVS to automate it.
I can be a enrey submitter. Really wonderful thing it is to learn new things about debian.
I’ve submitted a little story just a minute ago.
(It’s about “scli”, for all you nosy folks :-) ).