Thank you for installing Sparemint!

This page as well as Sparemint itself is still under construction. You won't find a lot of links here as it is not yet clear where they should point to.

What is Sparemint

Sparemint is a software repository for MiNT, based on the Redhat Package Manager RPM, a freely available software management tool developed by Redhat, on of the major distributors for Linux.

Sparemint is not a full-blown MiNT distribution, it is only useful if you already have a working MiNT installation. The amount of software that you are expected to have already installed is decreasing at the same speed that volunteers all over the world contribute new software packages to the Sparemint project.

What does it cost?

Nothing!

How can I help?

That depends on your particular talents. If you have experience in porting software to MiNT you should consider to take over the maintainance for a particular software package. Maintaining a software package means that you should keep your eyes open for updates of that software and then recompile the package with the updated sources. You should also have some minimal interest in the software in question so that users can contact you if they come across a bug.

Of course you are welcome to contribute the free software that you have written yourself to the Sparemint project. Please note that under normal circumstances only free software is accepted. Free software means for us that you distribute the sources along with your software and that everybody is free to modify these sources. If you use the GNU General Public License all these requirements are fulfilled.

But you don't have to be a hardcore hacker to contribute to Sparemint. If you have the talent to spice up this page or other parts of Sparemint with your artwork, with documentation, bug reports, support for newbies, beer, coffee or cigarettes, you are welcome!

Who is it?

The Sparemint project was founded by Frank Naumann and Guido Flohr. These are currently the only project members, you are welcome to join us.

Support

There is no official support for Sparemint, do not forget that the whole thing is kept going by volunteers in their spare time. However, finding out a competent person to help you with a particular software package is easy. For example you have problems with the program "foobar", you would issue the command:


 bash$ which foobar
/usr/bin/foobar
bash$ rpm -qi foobar

That will show up a description of the package that the "foobar" program belongs to, maybe even in your native language. This description will always contain a line about the person who packaged the software. This will probably be a competent addressee for your questions.

Other sources of information are

Good luck and thanks again for choosing Sparemint.

Cheers,
The Sparemint Team