Lo everyone,
Seems progress is happening all over the place and I do know it's not yet time to release an Alpha. However, I'd like to bring up 2-3 things that will become increasingly important as this Alpha stage get closer.
1. Live CD
Not sure what the status is on this functionality but I definitely believe that this would be a brilliant way for people to test whether hardware plays along or not before doing a complete install. This is NOT meant to stress the issue. However, I would consider this a milestone, just as being selfhosting (even though it might not be the same size of milestone). How about adding a milestone in the Dev/Tasks section about this issue to make it easier to track?
2. HW DB?
The above also brings me to another point which I know has been discussed at occassions. Where is the official HW matrix so to speak? Is it the one at Haikuware? Is it Bedrivers? Something "official" would be nice. I believe this would also be a neat way of removing HW related issues from the bugtracker as that should consist of more Haikurelated bugs than driver issues, or perhaps I'm mistaken here.
3. HW Lookup
Which brings me to issue no 3. I know there been talks about a software that could "check" the users comp about what HW they have and track that info somewhere so that a HW DB would be possible to build up and even track amount of users in need of a certain driver. Possibly this software could also notify the user about the possibility to add a code bounty or add money to an existing code bounty. Maybe this 3rd issue and 1st issue already is what Haikuware is partially about. However, I think there could definitely be some more straight forward info about this officially from Haiku.
4. Roadmap
Milestones, roadmaps and bugtrax =). I would propose (Umccollough?) for someone to step forward and highlight a roadmap for the upcoming time ahead. Like what milestones to expect and what is the aim. Previously this has not really been a big issue (at least not for me) as there's been so much to do all over the place. Today, things seem to actually be working for some (however buggy) and I think it'd be wise to give some sort of indication of where the progress is headed. Not detailed, just roughly.
Like
Autumn 2007: Alpha R1 release which will basically be a selfhosting Haiku platform.
Late autumn 2007: Live CD release with decent network support
Spring 2008: Alpha R2 release which is expected to contain Browser (FFox?) and ability to play music with low latency
Summer 2008: Beta R1....
Gee, note that above was just an example, just to give a pointer to what I figure. I think this would also increase the perception that Haiku is ALPHA, in order to not make people disappointed.