[sword-devel] Re: Christian Debian distro talk / Report

[fournilgilles at free.fr]

hi everyone, hope you had a restful night ...

one very important thing I forgot to mention last night during the chat is :

the MAIN GOAL of Biblix is NOT just to be a distro for poor people, but
that christians learn how to study the Bible by themselves (hence the name) by
equipping them with the appropriate tools (i focus on the INDUCTIVE METHOD :
what does the Lord tells YOU and in order to APPLY it TODAY to YOUR OWN LIFE)
to help them out not to be mere listeners, but DOERS of the Word.

the kingdom of God is cramed with people willing to listen but not APPLY the
Word in their DAILY lives.

Other than that, Raphink, you are very gifted in organizing stuff !
congrats

Gilles (Biblix)

Quoting Raphaël Pinson <raphink at gmail.com>:

> Hello guys,
>
> The talk held today as planned (and even before the time it was
> planned). There were unplanned guests to it too.
>
> Took part in the chat :
> - biblix : head of the biblix project
> - daga : bug finder for the sword project (joined later)
> - glasseyes : administrator of the crosswire mailing lists
> - jansorg : head of the BibleTime project
> - pastorEd : head of the iXthus project
> - raphink : head of the ichthux project
> - scribe : head of the sword project
> - tee : head of the GnomeSword project
> - _mg_ : programmer of the BibleTime and Sword projects
>
>
> Were here as observers :
> - AnglX
> - n1637
>
>
> Presentation of the various linux distribution projects :
>
> * Biblix :
> Biblix is aimed to be a linux live CD easy to use and running on slow
> computers, so people with few money can run it.
> biblix : "Biblix started with sysresccd so that it was small and could
> be used by people who do not have big pc so poor people could study
> the bible by themselves. Then onto kaella because it saves me time to
> frenchize the distro [raphink : kaella being a french localization of
> knoppix, thus a Debian based distro]".
>
>
> * iXthus :
> The goal of the iXthus project is to create a whole Christian
> Debian-based distribution.
> pastorEd : "The iXthus Project is a Linux distribution intended to be
> an OS replacement for MS Windows. It is designed to be immediately
> usable by non-Linux users. Based on Debian, NOT a LiveCD (yet). We are
> working on a Kanotix - LiveCD version, but nothing released so far.
> iXthus Project has Sword Project files (Bibletime, Gnomesword), as
> well as regular Linux tools [...] The iXthus Project iso is really
> just SystemRescue CD with the iXthus system as a .tbz2 file on the
> CD".
>
> * LateDecember :
> Davy, the head of the LateDecember project, could not be part of the
> talk unfortunately, but he let me know that he was interested in the
> project, and I presented his project myself.
> raphink : "[LateDecember] is a DamnSmallLinux (Debian knoppix again)
> with quite the same goals [as the other projects] running christian
> apps under fluxbox".
>
>
> * Ichthux :
> Ichthus is a very recent project I started last week. It is a live CD.
> raphink : "Ichthux (almost as Pastor Ed's iXthus, although I didn't
> know about it at all) [is] based on knoppix 3.8 (CeBit version, as the
> official version is not out yet). It has many goals :
> 1) providing a nice live CD with christian apps for christian geeks
> used to knoppix
> 2) providing a nice way to christians to get to linux
> 3) providing a way of installing a full Debian system on churches' computers
> 4) hopefully, converting some non christian geeks that would download
> ichthux for a try and discover the Bible at the same time".
>
>
> The immediate conclusions are obvious :
> - all these projects are based on Debian
> - all these projects plan to include Christians apps (including
> obviously the sword project and GUI such as BibleTime and/or
> GnomeSword)
> - all these projects have too few developers and lack means of hosting
> their work
>
>
> It seems everyone agrees that merging the projects would make it a
> stronger one without modifying the goals of each one.
>
> The first question that comes is whether this project should be a
> whole independent distribution, or rather a distribution derived from
> an existing one (such as Ubuntu for Debian). Everyone agrees that this
> is not the goal to improve the technical aspects of the distribution,
> that the project should use an existing technical basis to build a
> Christian project with Christian apps. Debian is chosen as the core
> basis.
>
> Because of the different needs that various end users (young
> believers, old people, ministers, missionaries, etc...) might have of
> such a distribution, there comes the question of the existence of
> various subprojects aimed to different people. There is no answer to
> it yet. [Personal opinion : a live CD should be able to be used by any
> user, and a whole distro should leave the choice to install a system
> for various needs, during installation]. Everyone agrees that the
> distribution should contain also non-Christian apps for a general use
> (although they might be ``christian-tuned'').
>
>
> Once this is set, there is a need for :
> 1) a website to manage the project
> 2) a staff with tasks for everyone
> 3) a place to host the products (ISOs and packages)
>
>
> Scribe says crosswire is willing to host such a project and provide an
> official webpage, a ftp for the hosting, plus mail, servlist and ssh.
> For the organization of the project, the ichthux wiki
> (http://ichthux.free.fr) can be used as it is already set for this
> use.
>
>
> The last point is the name of the project. In the less than 10
> gathered so far, at least two have a named derived from the greek word
> Ichthus. Linc Fessenden from the L4C project seems to have thought
> about Icthux aswell
>
(http://www.thelinuxlink.net/pipermail/linux4christians/2002-January/000008.htmlhttp://www.thelinuxlink.net/pipermail/linux4christians/2002-January/000008.htmlhttp://www.thelinuxlink.net/pipermail/linux4christians/2002-January/000008.html).
> IXthus, Icthux or Ichthux are very powerful names [in my opinion and
> agreed with other people]. It is both meaningful for christian users
> (ichthus meaning Jesus Christ Son of God, Savior) and not
> ``agressive'' for non-christian users (as Jesux would be) so it can
> serve a mission goal aswell pretty easily.
> After a quick search on google and dynonames, we find out that iXthus
> domains are already bought (most of them at least) by a company named
> ``Ixthus Instrumentation Ltd''. Since such a project needs at least to
> own the .com and .org DNS of its name, it is safer to not use Ixthus
> as the name of the project. No vote has been held on what name to
> choose yet. Biblix reminds us that prayer is important in taking
> decisions to set such a project aswell :)
>
> Glasseyes says he will create a servlist for the project, and the
> other tools can be created later.
>
> Looking forward to your comments, and we'll set a new chat in some
> time to plan things further.
>
>
> God Bless
>
> Raphaël
>
>
> Links :
>
> http://www.crosswire.org : Home of the crosswire project, hosting
> Sword, BibleTime, GnomeSword, etc...
> http://www.latedecember.com : Home of the LateDecember project
> http://ichthux.free.fr : Home of the Ichthux project
> http://daga.dyndns.org/projects/backpack : Home of the Backpack
> Programmer's LiveCD (headed by Daga, although we didn't talk about it
> during the chat)
>