Subj : CentOS 8+MBSE+Virtualmin
To : Nicholas Boel
From : Sean Dennis
Date : Sun Sep 27 2020 12:13 pm
NB> Sounds interesting. I'll have to setup a VM to check it out, as I've
NB> been hearing good things about it lately. It's been awhile since
NB> I've used a Debian based system, so aptitude is probably
NB> much different now. Everything systemd related that I've
NB> ever encountered using Archlinux has never given me any
NB> issues. When it first came around I was skeptical as well,
NB> but seriously.. no issues at all and was a smooth
NB> transition, and setting up services is just as easy as
NB> writing a sysvinit script.
I simply don't like the idea of a single program controlling the entire
system. If I wanted that, I'd use Windows. I ran Slackware for 20 years
and I still have that opinion of how things should work. The main reason I
switched from Slack to Devuan is that it's been nearly five years since a
Slackware update (though 15.0 is coming soon, I'm told) and I just wanted
something that was more up to date but not a rolling release a la Arch.
NB> I do this with Arch also. It's a little bit of manual labor
NB> for a better system, imo.
I like to pick and choose what is installed though Devuan does not allow the
granular selection of programs during the install process that Slackware
does. It is, however, easy enough to remove programs that aren't needed.
NB> And to stay on topic, I haven't installed MBSE for a few years
NB> (probably more, but it's hard to count in BBS years these days).. Was
NB> there any major updates? Or just mainly bug fixes?
There's been a bit of both. I have slowly been completely redoing the
documentation. There's a lot of incorrect sections in there now that have
to be redone. With the addition of Mike to the team, the code has been
getting a rather thorough review and we have been fixing major bugs. We're
working on removing a lot of the proprietary code that is in MBSE and
replacing it with standard libraries to improve portability.
There's entire sections of code that were ripped out for unknown reasons,
removing particular functionality, and we're working on getting it put back
in. I recently discovered that the NNTP server in MBSE is missing 90% of
its advertised functionality.
Work is going slowly as Andrew and I are quite busy. I have had my life
flipped upside down recently as I was declared permanently disabled and
unemployable due to a rather severe case of Charcot foot (easier to look it
up than for me to explain it here). So now I am working on applying for
disability and fighting the Veterans' Administration for disability with
this.
Hopefully when things settle down here in a bit for me while I'm waiting for
all of these processes I am starting to finish, I will have time to do a lot
more work on MBSE. It's something I can actually do and will keep me
productively busy.
On a related note, I am working on learning C and porting my Cheepware BBS
doors to using MBSE's "doorkit" (it's designed to work specifically with
MBSE) and make my doors an add-on package to MBSE. The reason for an
"add-on" and not included is MBSE uses the GPL and my doors are released
under my own BSD-like license, so the licenses are incompatible.
