This is off the topic of group dynamics, but something I would like to ask/throw out/mention. I am personally concerned that "Open Printing" on the Linux Foundation infrastructure has apparently fallen off the end of the world.
- The Linux Documentation Project was beyond helpful. The latest contribution was on 2015-03-17.
- LinuxPrinting.org was absorbed by the Linux Foundation.
- In February 2007, Apple Inc. hired chief developer Michael Sweet and purchased the CUPS source code.
- MIcrosoft joined the Linux Foundation with little notice, I think, and meanwhile the linux foundation has become a behemoth industry organization to leverage "open source" for projects many of which I could not explain for my life.
- The Linux Foundation posted the following under the Events tab on its web site (while Open Printing has become mostly inactive, as far as I can tell):
"Over 35,000
of the world’s leading technologists and open source leaders will gather
at Linux Foundation events in 2019 to share ideas, learn and
collaborate." These events are for the most part unreachable by anyone who uses GNU/Linux as a tool.
I have spent a great deal of time over the past few weeks, and especially the past few days, trying to run down printing issues. I have searched far and wide. What I have found, mostly, is that the mailing lists and forums that I have relied upon, and niche sites like Linuxprinting.org and Open Printing have diminished to the extent I was unable to figure out whom to query.
This is undoubtedly on me. I have contributed too little. Well, I used to post almost everyday to the debian mailing list, until I realized that my suggestions were mostly useless, since I don't know what I am talking about.
This failure of those who WANT to help to comprehend adequately the issues they are posting about (even to the absurd extent of posting a response "I don't know anything about < >") is an affliction that infected the Ubuntu lists some years ago, and was one reason I abandoned Ubuntu. I have mainly been using arch lately, by way of Manjaro. I don't have a week to spend trying to tweak a system, should I install Arch, and even then it would take much longer to get my head around issues like setting up drivers, networking configuration, and so forth.
Am I missing something?
Manjaro installs well, and easily. But the kind of support that other distros have had through email lists is not strong, and forums haven't worked well. So I tried IRC, but that has always been a useless option for me. If I could figiure out how to register a moniker, and start chatting, I have gotten help in the past, but maybe I am posting wrongly. On the other hand, when I signed in, here was a mention that one may need to watch for 30 minutes or more. I was in the middle of an issue that required me to reboot frequently.
Mailing lists were excellent. The LDP was the greatest, even if many articles were out-of-date or arcane altogether.
These are a few of the issues that I have noticed. Over the years, the systems "just work" to a great extent. GNU/Linux is often derided as not a desktop system. The corporate world is using it for all manner of technologically advanced purposes. Automobiles, phones, spacecraft, movies. Sadly many feel fine about using Macs for their work. CUPS works fantastically on an Apple, but I was miffed when the community in which it had been incubated was left to languish, while the work of many seemed (AFAIK) was not paid forward.
Any thoughts? What can I do, as a mere "user"?
Alan Davis