Hello everyone!
A while ago, I attended the ArcheoFOSS conference held at the University G.D'Annunzio of Chieti-Pescara (December 19-20, 2024). Unfortunately, due to being engaged in a project in Trentino, I couldn't stay long and only followed a few contributions. I plan to discuss my impressions of the workshop and my presentation on CesiumJS in another post. However, in this post, I want to talk about something that somewhat surprised me: people approaching me during breaks to ask why Arc-Team isn't releasing updated versions of ArcheOS anymore (here an article about its first release, back in 2005).
I regret to say that maintaining a GNU/Linux distribution dedicated to archaeology is quite challenging, and after several years, we at Arc-Team couldn't keep the project going. We felt it might be obsolete because many of the software we compiled and prepared for our distribution had become multi-platform or were already packaged for many GNU/Linux distributions, including Debian, which was the base for the latest versions of ArcheOS. Moreover many applications, including Arc-Team Manager, which we use to manage archaeological projects, now run on the server side.
However, according to the people I talked to at the workshop, ArcheOS was still useful not only for those who had trouble compiling specific software but also for anyone wanting a comprehensive overview of selected software for archaeology. This made me realize that ArcheOS could still be a valuable resource, so I decided to try reviving it, though I'm not under any illusions that it will be an easy process or guaranteed to succeed.
Here's my roadmap:
- Create a small GitHub project for a software list for ArcheOS.
- Check the status of the software and compile and package any missing ones.
- Create a new version of ArcheOS.
I'm currently working on the first step. If you'd like to help or are simply interested in the project, here are some links to check out:
ArcheOS-software-list (GitHub project)
Thank you for your attention, any help is appreciated!
Have a nice day!
