Possible future updates to SL website ?

[WarraWarra]

If you can help out with the wiki / forums / website / anything give us a shout , we can always use the help. The team working on SL, they are doing a excellent job but only has so much time so please help where you can if you have skill / experience in any field or on this.

Wiki:
It would be good if sometime in the future we can have version specific wiki articles say 3.5 has issue 1 2 3 and 4.0 has issues 2 7 8 then list them and links to fixes in the wiki / cross linking or something.
This way searching the wiki is more specific / organized to a specific version and if the user does not know / have a general clue to his version of SL he is using then there is no help for him/her.

Searching the wiki and forums can be fun and usually you have to have 300 links already just to remember where a fix is as searching sometimes can be a major pain with the results = too many same items = zero results.

We can eliminate extra postings on same bugs/fixes / merge more posts / topics if this is available.

More users can then add their hardware after fixing it to the list and or post more in the wiki / multi edit until complete save / good stable way to fix that problem. Work in progress wiki article.

Hardware list:
I have thought we could have a excel / frame looking layout for hardware in the wiki with links to problems and fixes linked directly or indirectly to the bugs pages for that hardware or software.
This way searching for specific hardware models or chips and their fixes from the install cd/dvd is easier and can just point / link from forums to already posted bug and fixes with variations on models.
We can also get more input about specific hardware to send bug reports upstream.
We would end up with the same answer for the same problem and users can then vote as to how effective the fix was = better input for SL team about fixes / problems.

This would make it easier for someone wanting to use SL = is my hardware supported = link to wiki or check in wiki page 987.3 = hardware list and issues + fixes.
This can have / sort by name of manufacturer / chip / drivers available or by version and 2nd sort = hardware manufacturers name something like this or software name.

Example:
motherboard acb model 17 3.5=no-problems 4.0 working+bugs 4.1=no-problems
ati general 3.5=no-problem 4.0=no-problem 4.1=driver bug 4.2=no-problem
ati model 1234 3.5=problem=legacy driver 4.0=legacy / latest 4.1 legacy-only

We will have more users posting in the wiki about fixes / hardware.
This should result in less same hardware bug and could update forums search / add floating side search panel or side search frame. "3 column layout = small side left, large text center, small side right"

Broken dropped software:
Problem software like networkmanager that we dropped for wicd, we could bug post to the developer of the software saying we stopped using your software = problem 1 2 3 , let us know or post in our forums about fixes so we can test it and re-incorporate your software = better for software developers and for us. 99% of the bugs in their software never reaches them.
This way they can interact with a bigger user base and possibly spread the word about us testing their software and or working solutions = new users ending up using SL as 2nd or main distro.

Example:
Software developers website shows
SL = problem with software = fixed.
Ubuntoo = problem with older software = bit yet fixed.

If a users searches a website like this = highly unlikely but would notice SL using version x.x = fixed they would definitely come to SL to check it out.

It is then up to the software developer to keep users informed about fixes even if just posting a link and fixes + they could possibly test it on SL / fix it for SL. Who knows.

I wonder why so few users make artwork or desktop backgrounds for SL or anything artwork nice if using SL ?

Please post problems / suggested fixes here or brainstorm this and other website related ideas.

If you can help out with the wiki / forums / website / anything give us a shout , we can always use the help. The team working on SL, they are doing a excellent job but only has so much time so please help where you can if you have skill / experience in any field or on this.

[Thev00d00]

Stuff needs to be reported on bugzilla too, then we will hand over to upstream if needed.

[kodiakmax]

The excel thing gave me an idea. there could be a mysql database that could be used to crossreference the hardware stuff when a user creates a new topic they use drop-down boxes to enter the hardware they are using/having issues with. maybe something like the following.