Sad state of web site

[tomoverlund]

1) Forum registration has been broken for almost 4 months: https://github.com/tinycorelinux/Core-scripts/issues/50

Thankfully some kind soul put a detailed workaround in the comments, so I was able to register. But most people will probably never find that page, but instead just give up. Even if they do, this is a very poor look for the project.

2) That's bad enough, but even worse: http://packages.tinycorelinux.net/ ("RepoBrowser" linked from the main page) has been hijacked! It links to some Hungarian site selling tires. This has also been like this for several months.

I understand people in charge get busy, lose interest, or have other things going on in their lives, but this is untenable. These responsibilities need to be taken over by people who are able and willing to maintain the site. If the people in charge with the keys to hand over responsibility can't be contacted, then the site needs to be forked.

The situation is that bad. There's no way I'm trusting any code from Tiny Core when a portion of the site has been hijacked, and important functions such as forum registrations are allowed to languish for months.

[andyj]

Are you offering to help, or just complaining that the few people who are central to the project aren't doing enough with their own time and money? I've tried for years to get help with some of the hundreds of extensions I maintain and not one taker. If nobody wants to help, who do you think is going to maintain a fork?

[tomoverlund]

Are you offering to help, or just complaining that the few people who are central to the project aren't doing enough with their own time and money? I've tried for years to get help with some of the hundreds of extensions I maintain and not one taker. If nobody wants to help, who do you think is going to maintain a fork?

I'd be willing to help, but as somebody completely new to Tiny Core, it would be odd for me to jump in and take control of admining the site. Presumably there is somebody with a history willing to step in to take over such a core function? There are still releases being made, after all.

This is a comment from the GitHub bug I linked to:

" Sorry this is broken. The official IRC on Libera and the tem there has been disconnected from the forums devs and the rest of the team for more than a decade. We try our best to help but when it comes to the forums we (the irc team) are not able to help much regarding this issue. I hope this issue will get resolved by the forum admin."

The thing is, you aren't going to get new blood when people can't even register for the forum, and the site looks to be hacked. My point isn't to disparage anybody, but stress the need to pass the torch.

[gadget42]

@tomoverlund,
here are some quick links to get you started and somewhat up to date on current happenings:
https://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/board,88.0.html

[tomoverlund]

@tomoverlund,
here are some quick links to get you started and somewhat up to date on current happenings:
https://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/board,88.0.html

What I gather from that is @CentralWare is the administrator with backend access. His profile says his last post was in October of last year, but he last logged in on May 24th of this year. There was an option in his profile to send him an email, which I did.

Hopefully he responds soonish, but I noticed there are several active "Administrators" posting here. I think a good short-term workaround would be making a message in Announcements with a link to the GitHub issue I mentioned in my first post, if that's possible.

[neonix]

I realy support the idea to fork tinycorelinux to 5 different projects and we will have another 5 new Linux distributions with divided community.

But seriously, this project will naturally die some day, simply becouse it will be replace by something else, like Newos, Hurd, Android, SymphonyOS. Before this happen let's enjoy what we have now. Some day this forum will be outdated (PHP) and will dissipear.
 
What we can do is to archive the knowlage accumulated in this forum.
Tiny Core Linux have to evolve just the same like Internet is evolving. Modern websites require new web browsers, and minimalistic web browsers will vanish from the market. Let's consider this place as do-it-yourself club. Many distributions orbiting toward Debian/Ubuntu philosophy.

And pandemic lockdowns and economy turmoils decrease free time that people can invest in this project.

Maybe "packages.tinycorelinux.net" was not hijacked but simply someone don't pay for hosting.

[tomoverlund]

I realy support the idea to fork tinycorelinux to 5 different projects and we will have another 5 new Linux distributions with divided community.

Forking would be a last resort. I have tried to contact the admin of the forum. I have tried to get the administrators who do actively post here to make a post in announcements to help people register. But it seems this community would rather die on the vine than grow new roots.

Fine with me, I do have other projects to invest time in.

[CNK]

Maybe "packages.tinycorelinux.net" was not hijacked but simply someone don't pay for hosting.

I can't be bothered trying to find where, but I remember reading here that bmarkus was last running that but didn't want to keep maintaining it. He offered to direct the sub-domain to anyone else who set up a extension repo browser on the web, although he's not very active now so that offer may have effectively expired.

Writing such a repo browser website is one of my 'one day' projects, although I probably wouldn't use it much myself so I proritise my various other Tiny Core projects ahead of it, and that list just keeps growing lately.

[gadget42]

did a forum search for "packages.tinycorelinux.net" to offer some light reading:
(note: these are just some of the threads but not all of them, this is NOT a new issue)
https://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/topic,22249.0.html
https://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/topic,25277.0.html
https://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/topic,25548.0.html
https://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/topic,25630.0.html

[gadget42]

more light reading(especially for those who remember the gopher...lol):

https://www.google.com/search?q=forum.tinycorelinux.net+sdf.org+Super+Dimensional+Fortress

now i am curious to boot-up my last Damn Small Linux LiveCD on an old frankenbox and do a little poking around...ha!
(perhaps a little music also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqoyKzgkqR4)

keyword(s):
Super Dimensional Fortress
sdf.org
bbs
nix
unix
gopher
gemini
floodgap

20230710-0604am-cdt-usa-modified-added keywords