Entropy in 2010: here we are (almost)!
As you all may have seen, I’ve been really busy lately producing some very awaited new releases together with our small but powerful development team.
So, we’re close to 2010 and Entropy is about to celebrate its third birthday. It’s been a very long road, full of obstacles but hey, we’re getting closer to 1.0! 2010 will be the year of Entropy 1.0 bringing a basic set of features and ideas tossed into the wild software jungle.
What can we all expect from Entropy 1.0 and perhaps, 1.0+? Well, first of all let’s list some features that are not yet available for public consuption which I am working on, I mean, minor and major things. Of course, everybody could read my cryptic TODO file inside the Entropy git repo, but as written, it’s cryptic because it only has to fit my purposes, not yours 
.
During the end of 2009, Entropy went through a lot of refactoring and speed improvement work, not yet complete though. All the core modules have been redesigned, a lot of code (around 2 millions of line changes, I’m close to the 5000th commit) has been rewritten with beauty, coolness and ZOMG in mind. Starting from the latest entropy.graph code to entropy.cache (Entropy async on-disk cacher there). Even the equo old and dusty codebase got a rewrite. The only parts missing are Sulfur (usability & speed), entropy.client and entropy.server modules, which are set for rewrite during Entropy 0.99.40 development cycle (we’re at 0.99.19 now, getting closer to the 0.99.20 milestone).
During Christmas holidays, while studying Calculus and Algebra for January exams spin, I am focusing on adding GPG support to Entropy, which is almost complete already, I need to commit some last bits to connect my newly created entropy.security.Repository class to the rest of the world . So yeah, another cool feature is coming to town! For the paranoid part of you!
A few lines above I mentioned Sulfur, what is going to happen in 2010? Let me tell you in a few words, bring {Google Market, Apple AppStore, Nokia Ovi, You-Name-It} apps design and concept to the Linux Desktop, defining a protocol for producing $HOME resident applications and a service platform hosted @sabayon.org.
I spent 3 years to make an almost perfect rocket-science-ready package manager, now it’s time to innovate (funds apart).
Entropy is really powerful tool. When I saw it firstly I was nicely surprised. It has a lot of functionality, it is flexible and it works with binary packets but your system still stays Gentoo!
But Sulfur is something uncomfortable at first look. Especially for beginners in linux. If Sulfur will become so handy like equo – Sabayon will be the best distro.
Also I wish all Sabayon team the best of everything in new year! Let your work bring the good it the world.
Be happy!
What do you find uncomfortable in particular?
@lxnay
At first look I can note some of items:
1 – annoing Notice Board without new items appearing by default
2 – no context tips (you should understand looking on titles only)
3 – no explanations about “system files” – this is good idea don`t allow automatical merging non-trivial modifications, but user are not ready to do it without some experience
4 – you should choose program in “application” and then apply it in “installation” – it is not clear that you should go there and apply changes
5 – tbz2 files opens by Ark (in KDE – have no time check it in Gnome) – should be opened by sulfur.
It is not only my opinion. I prefer using CLI. Equo is great there. I’m working on sabayon-based distro for Ukrainian schools (educational set of programs and old hardware optimisation). That’s why I recommend using Sabayon to many people. And I have a lot of feedbacks. Many of peoples are newbies in Linux and here is mostly their opinion.
The main issue I think: Sulfur is not intuitive enough for not very experienced user. Experience with portage or entropy I mean. Because experience with apt-get or synaptic wouldn’t help.
After NY I will make opinion pool on my cite. Because I’m interested in making sulfur more comfortable. But as I think make GUI more comfortable is much easier than write so perfect backend like equo is.
thanks for that, I’ll make sure they will be all fixed.