I'm pretty new to Bitcoin. This will be my second question at this site and I'll try to make it less verbose than the first while still containing what seems to be important detail.

I'm still in the middle of synchronizing my Bitcoin Core client with the network. But while that's working, I'm considering mining. I dislike centralized pools for all the good reasons that many people do. It seems decentralized is something that many are beginning to recognize serves the best interests of everyone in the community which I guess is why p2pool was written. Thank you to everyone involved in that. And so if I do start mining, then p2pool seems like the best choice for me.

But what's the difference between these two projects?

https://github.com/forrestv/p2pool/graphs/contributors

https://github.com/Rav3nPL/p2pool-rav/graphs/contributors

Are these just different implementations of the p2pool protocol?

It looks like the forrestv project's last release was in 2013, so 2+ years ago?! Does that indicate stable/finished application or does that indicate an abandoned project?

Rav3nPL's project seems to have more recent activity. Which project is better and why?

If it matters for the answer, I'm using Linux for my Bitcoin node.