New subject: [opensuse-factory] Re: 12.1 is around the corner, and I must make my concerns known.

15 Aug 2011


      To the Green Blooded,

	The excitement is building as yet another release of our beloved openSUSE 
is just around the corner. This coming release looks as though it may be yet 
more exciting than 11.4 was; 11.4 being the distro I run only and place my 
clients on as well. Last release was a bit rough around the edges at launch, 
and had issues that shook confidence of new users. Though it brought 
enormous improvements in speed and stability, I must still worry about the 
first experience. 
	As you most likely will recall, there were several discrepancies and 
throwbacks to previous versions that sullied 11.4 upon release. Primarily ones 
I noticed were the oddity of the DVD using the old Knetwork Manager as opposed 
to the current plasmoid version that was present in the KDE Live CD version. 
There was also the matter of the pre 11 series behavior of AppArmor in 
blocking Samba; this I found was more pronounced in the DVD install. (To this 
day I can't get Samba to work properly in a DVD install.) Since I am not a 
developer, and have only a brief familiarity with many of the logistical 
issues facing a project of this magnitude I will not offer an immediate 
critique. However as an Ambassador I must emphasize that these sort of 
anomalies, no matter how technically minor will shake the confidence of 
someone trying the new release. The things that we may consider minor, a new 
user will consider to be clues to the overall experience and what to expect; 
this is especially true for new users coming from Windows. Thus we lose a 
potential asset to the community in favor of some other distro (usually 
Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, or Mandriva). Frankly, I would rather we be a bit late 
on releasing 12.1 than to release it as finished with the same sort of issues 
11.4 showed.
	11.4 was a grand milestone, creating enormous buzz with its massive 
improvements. 11.4 launched openSUSE to a new height of interest and 
popularity, and with that in consideration we must be careful to not put off 
the new users. Further, openSUSE has long been known as the flagship for KDE 
and as such many people will be looking to us for an alternative to the much 
disliked Gnome3 and Unity.

Sincerely,
Roger
openSUSE Ambassador

P.S.

	In this section I wanted to raise some questions, critiques, and a small 
wishlist. As this is less important by far I have placed it where it is.
	The odd discrepancies in the DVD vs LiveCD version leads me to wonder 
where there was some sort of disconnect between teams. I further wonder why 
there was not a central unified repository for the two versions, as I imagine 
that would have helped remove discrepancies. Why did this occur and how can it 
be prevented?
	Though I know its late in the game to make a lot of changes to the final 
product, this is my personal wishlist of things to see in future openSUSE 
(Gnome team disregard KDE specific things):

	1. Have a simple default configuration for Samba, like in Ubuntu where it 
	simply works out of the box.
		a. Fix AppArmor so it isn't battling with Samba constantly.

	2. AppArmor desktop notifier. It would be nice for the user to know when 	
	 AppArmor blocks something, and be able to click straight through to 	    
	the Profile Update wizard. But even somethin as simple as a system 		
	announcement would be superior and be picked up by the KDE notification 	
	system.

	3. Maintain more current versions of some neglected packages, especially 	
	WINE. Rekonq being the other package I would have liked to see 			
	updated.

	4. Amarok is known as one of the most feature rich players in all of 		
	Linux. However, it often suffers from bugs that crash it constantly, or 	
	degrade its performance. Also its interface suffers from not using common 
	conventions, and thus confounds new users. I recommend replacing it with 	
	Clementine as it is more stable and has a friendlier interface, and is 		
	 yet KDE native.

	5: There has been some talk about replacing the YaST Printer module with 	
	a KDE one in userspace. Frankly I think this is a terrible idea as YaST 		
	is the only tool on any platform that has actually made configuration of 	
	the god-forsaken yet popular HP AllInOne devices simple.

Thank you for your time and consideration.
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[opensuse-factory] 12.1 is around the corner, and I must make my concerns known.

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