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#1 2015-06-19 14:44:04

ayekat
Member
Registered: 2011-01-17
Posts: 1,589

Future of Arch Linux BBS/FluxBB

Hello

I was interested in what the Arch (Forum) admins plan for the future of this forum, given that the FluxBB people plan to merge the project with flarum.org, which appears to become mainly a Javascript-ridden social network thing where things move around and are interactive, and people are modern and trendy. (Source)

... in short, it removes about everything that made FluxBB FluxBB (and thus the Arch Linux BBS the Arch Linux BBS).

There has also been a proposition + discussion last winter about switching the Arch Linux forums to Discourse, but I was relieved to see that the majority of the staff opposes change for the sake of change itself, and prefers a barrier-free form of communication (as in: works without Javascript, paged threads/forums, an interface that doesn't get into your way, etc.)

So yeah, do you have any plans or ideas?

(I was actually just waiting to get an inline code element for forum posts, but I guess I won't be seeing that in any near future)

Last edited by ayekat (2015-06-19 14:55:50)


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#2 2015-06-19 15:11:05

genEric
Member
From: Sweden
Registered: 2013-09-26
Posts: 38

Re: Future of Arch Linux BBS/FluxBB

ayekat wrote:

I was interested in what the Arch (Forum) admins plan for the future of this forum, given that the FluxBB people plan to merge the project with flarum.org, which appears to become mainly a Javascript-ridden social network thing where things move around and are interactive, and people are modern and trendy. (Source)

... in short, it removes about everything that made FluxBB FluxBB (and thus the Arch Linux BBS the Arch Linux BBS).

I hope it won't be an update to Flarum. Though the markdown support was nice. ^^

But, nothing prompts for an update just because they do? If it's a stable version, running well... I'd guess one could stay on Flux. If not, perhaps PunBB instead? Looks like it's simular lightweight and reminds about Flux in “look & style” and layout.


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#3 2015-06-19 15:20:58

frostschutz
Member
Registered: 2013-11-15
Posts: 1,409

Re: Future of Arch Linux BBS/FluxBB

Hard to make a decision about unreleased software.

I'm very happy with these forums, except when it shows me old already read posts as unread new posts - sometimes even when my own post is the last reply on a thread, it says it's unread, on the list of active threads (show_recent).

Last edited by frostschutz (2015-06-19 15:22:34)

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#4 2015-06-19 15:30:28

ayekat
Member
Registered: 2011-01-17
Posts: 1,589

Re: Future of Arch Linux BBS/FluxBB

genEric wrote:

Though the markdown support was nice. ^^

I agree that this is the one major thing I'm missing in the current forum. BBCode was nice at the time it was introduced, but it's hard to beat Markdown, especially for this usecase.

frostschutz wrote:

Hard to make a decision about unreleased software.

I was just bored and interested what the admins think about it smile
It's true that for now there is not much reason to be concerned. But I guess at some point one would like to keep things up to date, and if the update means a major change in functionality, it's worth talking about it, even if it's a little early.

frostschutz wrote:

[...] except when it shows me already posts as unread posts - sometimes even when my own post is the last reply on a thread [...]

I also noticed this, today, for the first time. However, my browser had crashed, so I assumed it to be some undefined behaviour. Otherwise I majorly rely on mail notifications to subscribed posts and forums, so it doesn't bother me much.


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#5 2015-06-19 16:16:09

progandy
Member
Registered: 2012-05-17
Posts: 5,184

Re: Future of Arch Linux BBS/FluxBB

genEric wrote:

But, nothing prompts for an update just because they do? If it's a stable version, running well... I'd guess one could stay on Flux. If not, perhaps PunBB instead? Looks like it's simular lightweight and reminds about Flux in “look & style” and layout.

That is no surprise. FluxBB is a fork of the 1.2 PunBB branch. It is interesting that a new PunBB version has ben released just after FluxBB has announced the merger with Flarum. I wonder how long this effort will last.

genEric wrote:

I hope it won't be an update to Flarum. Though the markdown support was nice. ^^

I'd rather see a vanilla based forum than flarum. I just don't think this pure javascript approach is healthy. Use it to make endless scrolling and partial refreshs possible, but please keep the forum accessible from a text browser.
Edit: There is always the possibility to write a second frontend for Flarum. If the devs keep to their goals, then the forum core should be independent from the access method.

Edit: By the way, many people prefer the current FluxBB, so there are plenty of forks to choose from, too. (e.g. luna

Last edited by progandy (2015-06-19 16:52:27)


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#6 2015-06-19 17:04:24

Ledti
Member
Registered: 2010-07-31
Posts: 122
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Re: Future of Arch Linux BBS/FluxBB

I think Flarum looks/runs quite nice for pre-alpha software. And it seems like it's intended to be easy to theme/mod.

From the announcement post:

First of all, nothing should change for you. We will continue to support the 1.5 branch, providing regular maintenance releases as we used to. When Flarum hits beta, we will start providing an upgrade path for users of older FluxBB versions. But don't worry, we won't leave you alone with your FluxBB forums. As long as a significant fraction of users still run FluxBB, we will continue to support the latest version, at least with security fixes.

Seeing as they'll support 1.5 for the foreseeable future, I don't think this is a problem the Arch forum maintainers will need to worry about... at least for a few years.

Who knows, maybe Flarum will mature into something worth migrating to.

Last edited by Ledti (2015-06-19 17:05:51)

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#7 2015-06-30 07:33:59

thgs
Member
Registered: 2015-02-26
Posts: 2

Re: Future of Arch Linux BBS/FluxBB

flaurum looks good

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#8 2015-06-30 07:45:49

Awebb
Member
Registered: 2010-05-06
Posts: 6,275

Re: Future of Arch Linux BBS/FluxBB

thgs wrote:

flaurum looks good

[snip] not everybody likes redundancy.

Mod note: Please avoid potentially offensive subjects -- WorMzy

Last edited by WorMzy (2015-06-30 11:26:35)

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#9 2015-06-30 07:46:50

Ashren
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From: Denmark
Registered: 2007-06-13
Posts: 1,229
Website

Re: Future of Arch Linux BBS/FluxBB

flarum looks horrible.

Why this obession with twitteresque designs?

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#10 2015-06-30 08:32:54

AaronBP
Member
Registered: 2012-08-06
Posts: 149
Website

Re: Future of Arch Linux BBS/FluxBB

You can't even read it without allowing both js and cookies. Turn that on and the fancy JS blocks the ui when you're trying to scroll, causing annoying jumps.

I can't really judge the final project, but I'm not a fan of the demo.

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#11 2015-06-30 10:29:04

Allan
Pacman
From: Brisbane, AU
Registered: 2007-06-09
Posts: 11,365
Website

Re: Future of Arch Linux BBS/FluxBB

No plans until something happens upstream beyond planning.

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#12 2015-07-22 04:46:34

tech4david
Member
From: UK
Registered: 2015-05-24
Posts: 17

Re: Future of Arch Linux BBS/FluxBB

Before you discuss this any further, let me just share this – take note of the hostname...

[david@david-extensa-5230 ~]$ ping -c 4 bbs.archlinux.org
PING luna.archlinux.org (5.9.250.164) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from luna.archlinux.org (5.9.250.164): icmp_seq=1 ttl=52 time=34.5 ms
64 bytes from luna.archlinux.org (5.9.250.164): icmp_seq=2 ttl=52 time=32.5 ms
64 bytes from luna.archlinux.org (5.9.250.164): icmp_seq=3 ttl=52 time=34.2 ms
64 bytes from luna.archlinux.org (5.9.250.164): icmp_seq=4 ttl=52 time=30.0 ms

--- luna.archlinux.org ping statistics ---
4 packets transmitted, 4 received, 0% packet loss, time 3004ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 30.074/32.867/34.540/1.776 ms
[david@david-extensa-5230 ~]$ 

So, I think we can see which platform the devs have chosen.

Last edited by tech4david (2015-07-22 04:48:45)


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#13 2015-07-22 05:03:56

fukawi2
Ex-Administratorino
From: .vic.au
Registered: 2007-09-28
Posts: 6,217
Website

Re: Future of Arch Linux BBS/FluxBB

tech4david wrote:

So, I think we can see which platform the devs have chosen.

The server names the Arch SysAdmin's use have nothing to do with what each server is hosting. "luna" also hosts the wiki and the AUR.

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#14 2015-11-09 01:31:36

wil93
Member
From: Italy
Registered: 2013-09-15
Posts: 72

Re: Future of Arch Linux BBS/FluxBB

I was the one who started the discussion about switching to discourse... I just recently discovered flarum and I think I like it smile

ayekat wrote:

I was relieved to see that the majority of the staff opposes change for the sake of change itself, and prefers a barrier-free form of communication (as in: works without Javascript, paged threads/forums, an interface that doesn't get into your way, etc.)

Discourse works even without JS, by the way smile And so does flarum. And both fall back to paged threads/forums smile

progandy wrote:

I'd rather see a vanilla based forum than flarum. I just don't think this pure javascript approach is healthy. Use it to make endless scrolling and partial refreshs possible, but please keep the forum accessible from a text browser.

Again, both discourse and flarum seem to gracefully fallback when JS is not available. It's all text browser friendly. Did you try it? smile

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#15 2015-11-09 09:03:55

ayekat
Member
Registered: 2011-01-17
Posts: 1,589

Re: Future of Arch Linux BBS/FluxBB

wil93 wrote:

Discourse works even without JS, by the way smile And so does flarum. And both fall back to paged threads/forums smile

That must've been added very recently - when I tried, without javascript one would just get a blank page on flarum. My experience with discourse is limited to a probably outdated version of discourse.

It's nice to see they have added this (although they still seem to focus on javascript, given how stripped down it feels, and the "best viewed with javascript" banner on the top of the pages).


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