-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 The Monday 2008-09-08 at 10:48 -0400, Larry Stotler wrote: ... [branching a little...]

...

Oftentimes, people who decide to try Linux do so because they want to improve themselves and their technical expertise. Befriending others and getting guidance within a community often presents them with a huge array of information and little guidance about solidifying their chosen path of expertise.

The LUG in my area never went anywhere and I'm not even sure if it still exists. I've basically quit asking people to try linux because they just aren't interested. Security and stability aren't as important as being able to use whatever windows only program they have or if their hardware isn't easily recognized.

Quite true. I haven't convinced anyone to actually use linux, in years, no matter how much I tried -- unless they were already convinced. Somethings are more important than the community, like things actually working without having to jump many loops. Example: I'm trying to buy a color laser printer. HP boxes do not say whether linux work with them or not, and browsing their web page is useless if you search for this particular piece of info. So, a user might buy a printer and chance it, or simply use windows where he is sure that it will work and find support (from sales staff or any friend or neighbor, not "virtual", remote help).

Of course, if any of them ever had to re-install windows, they'd have more work to do, but that's why I have a job in a computer shop.

:-)) - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.4-svn0 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFIxT9YtTMYHG2NR9URAlERAJ9qGMswMViFUAw85oJSSbFQHEAZnQCfdnNn BNADXKDMC31n41nTEf1FpaU= =yOIf -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 The Tuesday 2008-09-09 at 15:31 +0200, Stephan Kulow wrote:

...

I haven't convinced anyone to actually use linux, in years, no matter how much I tried -- unless they were already convinced. Somethings are more important than the community, like things actually working without having to jump many loops.

Example: I'm trying to buy a color laser printer. HP boxes do not say whether linux work with them or not, and browsing their web page is useless if you search for this particular piece of info. So, a user might buy a printer and chance it, or simply use windows where he is sure that it will work and find support (from sales staff or any friend or neighbor, not "virtual", remote help).

HP has its own community: http://www.communities.hp.com/online/blogs/laserjet/archive/2008/07/16/did-y...

Thanks, but that proves my point, that you have to jump many loops just to use linux. With windows it is just plug and play (or so they claim). If I have problems I go for help to a neighbor or to the shop. With linux, I'm physically alone, there is nobody - except on the network. And the network is good enough for some people, but probably not for the majority. The printer (just an example of a piece of hardware) specifies in the box the many operating systems it supports, and linux is not there. If I browse the Spanish HP page with the printer specifications (1), linux is again not even mentioned. I have looked at several HP printers, and they never say "YES, this printer works with linux", even when it is known it does. It makes shopping for linux usage very difficult, which is my point. And this is a company that sponsors linux! (3) Why this perverse denial? I know that many people here will know of many other samples of companies refusing to say that their hardware work with linux. (1) http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/es/es/ho/WF06a/18972-18972-3328060-3328070-33... http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/es/es/ho/WF05a/18972-18972-3328060-3328070-33... http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/es/es/ho/WF05a/18972-18972-3328060-3328070-33... Sistemas operativos de red compatibles Microsoft® Windows® 2000, XP Home, XP Professional, Server 2003; preparada para Windows Vista®; Mac OS X v10.2.8, v10.3, v10.4 o superior Sistemas operativos compatibles Microsoft® Windows® 2000, XP Home, XP Professional, Server 2003; preparada para Windows Vista®; Mac OS X v10.2.8, v10.3, v10.4 o superior (2) Linux is mentioned here (English brochure), just once (google found it): http://h20195.www2.hp.com/PDF/4AA0-9484EEE.pdf Operating systems compatibility Microsoft® Windows® 2000, XP Home, XP Professional, Server 2003; Windows Vista® Ready; Mac OS X v10.2.8, v 10.3, v10.4 or higher Optional: OS/2, UNIX, Linux , Latest drivers for Windows® and Mac are available at http://www.hp.com/support/ljcp1510series Network operating systems compatibility Microsoft® Windows® 2000, XP Home, XP Professional, Server 2003; Windows Vista® Ready; Mac OS X v10.2.8, v 10.3, v10.4 or higher , optional: Microsoft® Windows® 2000, XP Home, XP Professional, XP Professional x64, XP Tablet PC, Server 2003 (32/64 bit), Windows Vista® Ready; Mac OS X v10.2.8, v10.3, v10.4 or higher And they have drivers: http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareIndex.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodNameId=3422467&prodTypeId=18972&prodSeriesId=3422465&swLang=8&taskId=135&swEnvOID=2020 (3) http://www.openprinting.org - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.4-svn0 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFIxpYvtTMYHG2NR9URAkeTAJ98abLomLYQI8iBVlUhJHDHKCK++ACfTOe5 XbdtVIuVaiPWvt0fZ+6EXwM= =RN4c -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 The Tuesday 2008-09-09 at 11:40 -0400, Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier wrote:

On Tue, Sep 9, 2008 at 11:28 AM, Carlos E. R. <> wrote:

...

Thanks, but that proves my point, that you have to jump many loops just to use linux. With windows it is just plug and play (or so they claim). If I have problems I go for help to a neighbor or to the shop. With linux, I'm physically alone, there is nobody - except on the network. And the network is good enough for some people, but probably not for the majority.

This can be a problem. I do hope when you went to buy hardware, you contacted the manufacturer and let them know that you were dissatisfied that they didn't support (or indicate support) for Linux.

I do, when I fill the registration form. I did fill out a form on the HP site when they ask "did this information help you?" or something similar, I answered "no". I haven't bought it yet.

IIRC, some printer manufacturers do (or did) brand their boxes with an indication that they supported Linux. I want to say Lexmark did that, but I may be misremembering. I do remember a period of time when I was writing reviews that Lexmark was being very aggressive about getting reviews of its printers with Linux.

I think I saw a Samsung color laser saying linux supported, in the box, but I later found out that the driver is closed source, so that's a no-no for me.

Anyway - it can be frustrating. I do hope anyone who doesn't like the current situation will take some time to email or get in touch with manufacturers and let them know when you vote with your $currency with another vendor that has better Linux support... that, and driving Linux as a mainstream platform, are the only things that are going to change the situation.

But there is no color laser printer with better linux support, as far a I know. HP at least has some and is opensource. I have also to look at what hardware and "expendables" (toner) I can find locally. I did not see Epson lasers at the shops here, for instance.

(When people ask me "why do you think it's important for Linux to become mainstream," this is one of the reasons...)

But it is a dog eats its tail situation. There can no be mainstream without better hardware support, and there will not be better support without a larger customer base. - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.4-svn0 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFIxruUtTMYHG2NR9URAvkxAKCErApR3fYIjoPjIW7tRBCouiYIUwCeKyVy 1DvV6112KYYsCVCw0bccIyQ= =9ftJ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On Tue, Sep 9, 2008 at 11:40 AM, Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier wrote:

IIRC, some printer manufacturers do (or did) brand their boxes with an indication that they supported Linux. I want to say Lexmark did that, but I may be misremembering. I do remember a period of time when I was writing reviews that Lexmark was being very aggressive about getting reviews of its printers with Linux.

Lexmark has two lines of product 1) cheap crap (winprinters) and 2) serious business-class printers. For the most part the latter have excellent Linux support due to generally being PostScript printers. Feed CUPS the PPD from the Windows drivers and everything (including extra trays, duplexer, etc) will work fine. I think Lexmark has recently released a Linux filter driver for some of these printers, but I don't see the point in even trying that out when the 20kb PPD works just fine. I think Samsung and Brother have branded their printers as Linux compatible, but I recall having nightmares with the Samsung binary filter drivers.... luckily there was an opensorce alternative, but just like using the Samsung-provided MacOS drivers the printer would pause between pages. Brother officially supports Linux and the quality of their drivers is pretty good. They interface with CUPS and SANE and with various distributions and printers I have not seen any major issues. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On Saturday 20 September 2008 06:10:20 am Carlos E. R. wrote: ...

The thing is that finding the PPD from windows may not be so easy. In my case (HP printer) I could not find it in the CD, most files are compressed as CAB or are executables. It probably needs installing the printer in windows first to find out :-(

Just a thought: can Wine help to run self extracting archives hidden as exe files. The cabextract is for cab files. Check what requires cabextract ;-) Maybe Printer setup knows how to find PPD among files on windows driver CD. -- Regards, Rajko --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 The Saturday 2008-09-20 at 07:28 -0500, Rajko M. wrote:

...

...

compressed as CAB or are executables. It probably needs installing the printer in windows first to find out :-(

Just a thought: can Wine help to run self extracting archives hidden as exe files.

Huh. Better to install under vmware, which I have; but my windows version is old, WinMe, which I think doesn't use ppd files.

...

The cabextract is for cab files.

Check what requires cabextract ;-)

It comes in the OSS repo, I had it installed. Funny that "apropos cab" didn't find it. I'm dissapointed that Midnight Commander doesn't handle them. cer@nimrodel:~/tmp/HP> cer@nimrodel:~/tmp/HP> cabextract -d cont *cab Extracting cabinet: hppcps09.cab extracting cont/FXCompChannel.dll extracting cont/hpbcfgre.dll ... Extracting cabinet: psi2caww.cab extracting cont/HPC1510S.PPD (here! but mine is the 1510n, not 's') ... Extracting cabinet: psi2deww.cab extracting cont/HPC1510S.PPD ... cont/PS5UI.DLL: Permission denied extracting cont/PSCRIPT.HLP cont/PSCRIPT.HLP: Permission denied extracting cont/PSCRIPT5.DLL cont/PSCRIPT5.DLL: Permission denied and many more "Permission denied". I got a PPD, though... [...] Seems to be it. I think the one that CUPS is using they got from the "Mac OS X" version. I think I will try it later. - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAkjU8wYACgkQtTMYHG2NR9XjQgCeJrvQpT/nzoMcqVB9+5m23KAj KlEAoIwkvJe1TP9AozJy5uul7yhvSBam =nQeG -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 The Tuesday 2008-09-09 at 17:46 +0200, Klaus Singvogel wrote:

Carlos E. R. wrote: [...]

...

And this is a company that sponsors linux! (3) Why this perverse denial?

To my humble knowledge the situation is different.

Well, I meant that in the (3) link there is a big "sponsored by HP invent" right at the top, and I thought they did something more for linux than a web page. I understand you can buy some HP computers with some linux preinstalled :-?

HP invents new printers and the Windows drivers at the very same time, but not the Linux drivers. After quiet some time the Linux drivers appear in the hplip project at sourceforge -- or not. But in the meantime, and this is typicaly the same period of time when a HP printer is avail at the market, no one knows the future state of the printer: will there be drivers (support) for Linux or not?

Yes, that's exactly my situation :-(

A good evaluation might be the price. Too cheap models will never be supported, all others will (98% ?). Don't even think about the cheap ones. :-)

I know that! I have been bitten before, several times, not only with printers. Which is what I say: it is difficult to buy something for linux. You go to the shop, write down what you find, go back home, google, surf, whatever, find out, back to the shop or to find another shop... Heh, the printers I find in media mark, for instance, are the HP2600N, CP1215 and HP1600, quite difficult to find on the HP (Spain) web page, which instead suggests the HP1600, CP1210 or CP1510 (I like the last one better). The 2600 specification page can not be found. Why? Another vendor told me that they no longer make it, so they are selling the stocks the vendors have fast. It is very difficult to determine for sure whether a particular printer of all the above works in linux or not. I think Samsung lists on the printer box that linux is supported. Good! But I found out the driver is closed source... so I said no and turned to another make.

[...]

...

(3) http://www.openprinting.org

I wouldn't name this site as first choice for support information about HP printers. Till and his helpers are always behind the actual situation of printers. Better use http://hplip.sourceforge.net/ instead. :-)

I have looked at both. The 1510 is not listed on neither (nor on the unsupported list), but some of the links I looked at mention the driver or that it is supported. One of the comments said that they have been using this model for years, which makes funny the fact that it is not listed on the hplip page. All this is having me nearly a nervous breakdown :-P I must stop drinking tea. Perhaps a "tila" will be better. Expending +200€ on limited info, with a real risk of finding it doesn't work in linux is bad for my nerves. Argh! This is turning into a support question, and I did not intend it. I just wanted to put an example of how difficult is to buy hardware that works in linux, which helps to turn new users out running for their lives. - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.4-svn0 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFIxrlqtTMYHG2NR9URAosIAJ47BM/2eOyLEiLSxon/mpDqIgdMXACfRrph ccwKMFhRHfpvDbqZmCn9WVc= =5ban -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 The Wednesday 2008-09-10 at 09:01 +0200, Johannes Meixner wrote:

Hello,

On Sep 9 19:58 Carlos E. R. wrote (shortened):

...

I think Samsung lists on the printer box that linux is supported.

Ahh - this manufacturer who did set nice setuid-root bits on various programs with his driver install stuff to make it "just work".

Did they? Nasty :-/

Again an example how bad a "Linux support" on a hardware box might be in the end for the poor average user who does not have the knowledge to find out which driver is good and which driver is bad.

I googled and investigated a bit and I found out that it is a propietary driver, so I marked it out of my shoping list.

But - see my other mail - it seems there is nothing what Linux distributors can do (except to try to inform the users) because what a manufacturer actually does is out of our control.

Obviously. But even finding out if a printer is suported in linux from "our" pages is also difficult - and more so when the manufacturer changes model names for a printer :-( It is not good for linux. A novice can easily fall into a pithole when shopping, and a bad experience like that can turn many back into Windows. Seasoned users will endure, but new ones... - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAkjHtIUACgkQtTMYHG2NR9USYQCdFcwnxWhsNaYhB3l2LumlQJrw lgYAn0A1RP2pRGgl0LGM/CYbWDzZ/d9f =55nb -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On Donnerstag, 11. September 2008, Antenore Gatta wrote:

Well, if I would have a shop, virtual or real, that sell just what is certified to work with Linux, that provide me the drivers, support, garanty, and whatever is needed, I wouldn't take care too much about the prize (a bit of course!), I would be happy to buy there my new sparkling PC.

Those shops exist. One of them is here in Nürnberg: http://www.tuxhardware.de/ It's not a huge hardware megashop, of course. CU -- Stefan Hundhammer Penguin by conviction. YaST2 Development SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg) Nürnberg, Germany --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

Hello, On Sep 9 17:28 Carlos E. R. wrote (shortened):

The printer (just an example of a piece of hardware) specifies in the box the many operating systems it supports, and linux is not there. If I browse the Spanish HP page with the printer specifications (1), linux is again not even mentioned. I have looked at several HP printers, and they never say "YES, this printer works with linux", even when it is known it does. It makes shopping for linux usage very difficult, which is my point.

You are right. FYI: https://answers.launchpad.net/hplip/+question/19382 Kind Regards Johannes Meixner -- SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, Maxfeldstrasse 5, 90409 Nuernberg, Germany AG Nuernberg, HRB 16746, GF: Markus Rex --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

Mandag 08 september 2008 16:25:24 skrev Bryen:

But the question asks "How do we get people to step up." That implies there is a plethora of people with the proper skills out there that aren't stepping up. My belief is that the opposite is more true.

Look at how many people are packaging things in the OBS or at Packman. We also have many programmers using openSUSE. There's a great amount of technically talented people in the community. I think once the contrib repo is established, and factory will be developed in the OBS, we'll see a steady increase in community participation in coding and packaging. Specifically regarding KDE, I think there might be an additional "problem" that people might have gotten a little too lazy - the service has been so good for so long that there hardly have been any itches for anyone to scratch - making users a little complacent.

There are a plethora of people who don't have the proper skills, want to learn the proper skills, and thus cannot step up at this point in time. How often have we heard someone say "Let me know how I can help, but just so you know, I'm no coder."

If people have the required dedication, time and potential to learn these things, nothing's stopping them. And if people display dedication and potential there will also be someone willing to help them a little along the way when needed. But noone wants to handhold someone for hours or maybe even days, just to see them lose interest just as suddenly as they popped up. I'm pretty non- technical myself, but I have seen this a lot of times trying to help people getting started with translating... I really like this Linus Torvalds quote regarding the issue: "I get the question of "Where should I start?" fairly often and my advice is just don't even ask that question. It's more like if you're not interested enough in one particular area that you already know what you want to try to do, don't do it. Just let it go and then when you hit something where you say, "I could do this better" and you actually feel motivated enough that you go from saying that to doing that, you will have answered that question yourself."

What I'd like to see is the openSUSE Board, the community, and Novell take a look at this gap. Think of ways we can mentor people, especially newcomers to acquire the necessary skills to tackle and maintain the various tasks required to keep openSUSE afloat. Either Feed the People, or Teach them to Grow themselves, right?

Surely putting an effort into good docs, maybe the occasional packaging day, etc. is a good idea. But as stated above I don't really buy the premise that there's a mass of people who have the required dedication and talent, who just need a little helping hand. Maybe a better strategy would be to try to figure out ways to attract more developers and techies to openSUSE... I only wish I had some ideas how to do it. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On Mon, 2008-09-08 at 18:29 +0200, Martin Schlander wrote:

If people have the required dedication, time and potential to learn these things, nothing's stopping them. And if people display dedication and potential there will also be someone willing to help them a little along the way when needed.

But noone wants to handhold someone for hours or maybe even days, just to see them lose interest just as suddenly as they popped up. I'm pretty non- technical myself, but I have seen this a lot of times trying to help people getting started with translating...

You're thinking small. :-) An effective training program, through documentation, online seminars, training sessions, etc. will educate large numbers of people at once. Handholding implies mentoring one person at a time. And while I endorse the idea of everyone finding someone to mentor, obviously the risk is great if that person drops out for one reason or another. But even in the case of that one person who drops out after much handholding, we have to ask the question why did that person drop out? Perhaps it was time constraints. Perhaps the person didn't feel he/she was getting much out of their mentor. Perhaps they've come to a block in the road, don't know how to get over it and can't get the answers they're looking for. We can't expect our mentors to know everything. They don't. And hopefully, as more people become educated, they too will step up and carry the mantra of educating the masses, thus reducing the burden of that first teacher. We can, and we *should* grow our community through education. Bryen --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

I've started a discussion in the opensuse list:

http://mail.google.com/mail/?shva=1#sent/11c431bb1fcb97b4

feel free to add to any of the questions I have posed..... I would prefer that we get fresh comments from non factory members so that we could get a good idea of how users are fairing with KDE.

Thanx I know it is not a popular medium to most but there are a few threads on

Larry Stotler wrote: the openSUSE forums that I can point you out to. I think it might be good for tis discussion as there are both technical and non-technical users that visit the forums so you will get both views. Also, there is NNTP access for those that don't want to check things via the web. Let me know and I'll find the names of the threads and in what forum/newsgroup they are in. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On Monday 08 September 2008 16:26:33 Larry Stotler wrote:

...

Reading Felix-Nicolai's blog post, I'd like to get your input on the What is the link where this blog came from?

http://fnmueller.wordpress.com/2008/09/07/kde3-and-kde4-a-discussion-wrap-up... Bye, Steve --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

2008/9/8 Carlos E. R. :

...

heard many requests about KDE3 and KDE4 but so far only saw Carlos stepping up and saying "KDE3 is so important for me that I create a KDE3 LiveCD for openSUSE 11.0".

Er... that wasn't me. I was (am) certainly interested, and I investigated the matter, but it wasn't me who made that CD.

It was Carlos Gonçalves who did (http://cgoncalves.blogspot.com/2008/08/opensuse-110-kde3-live-cds.html) regards, Luiz Fernando --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On Mon September 8 2008 10:52:35 am Carlos E. R. wrote:

The Monday 2008-09-08 at 14:44 +0200, Andreas Jaeger wrote:

...

Reading Felix-Nicolai's blog post, I'd like to get your input on the following statement from him:

I believe that openSUSE is supposed to be a community based and community driven product. While many devs work for Novell and do great work, openSUSE does also depend on its many users. So they should get a hear. It is not OK to only raise this issue on a factory mailinglist - a mailinglist a regular user will never see.

* factory was setup as list for future development of the openSUSE distribution. Why is that not working?

Because only users that do some betatesting participate on this list, while many other users are interested in what the distro is going to have, without actually testing it in advance (for whatever reasons).

...

Where would you expect to have general discussion about the direction of the distribution?

I'm not sure... :-?

...

* openSUSE is community based and community driven - but we have Novell engineers doing engineering work with limited time and resources.

Community means not only discussion but also contribution - and I've heard many requests about KDE3 and KDE4 but so far only saw Carlos stepping up and saying "KDE3 is so important for me that I create a KDE3 LiveCD for openSUSE 11.0".

Er... that wasn't me. I was (am) certainly interested, and I investigated the matter, but it wasn't me who made that CD.

I believe that was Carlos Gonçalves Richard --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On 2008/09/09 09:58 (GMT+0200) Felix-Nicolai Müller composed:

Most don't subscribe to the list for future openSUSE development, but go to the forums.

Where did this statistical "fact" come from? As a general rule, I don't go near web forums, and in particular, I couldn't tell anyone how to even find a forum where OpenSUSE (or any other distro's) development, or use, is discussed. As you can see though, I am here. -- "Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor in vain." Psalm 127:1 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

Felix-Nicolai Müller wrote:

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1

Andreas Jaeger schrieb: | Reading Felix-Nicolai's blog post, I'd like to get your input on the | following statement from him: Sure thing | | I believe that openSUSE is supposed to be a community based and | community driven product. While many devs work for Novell and do great | work, openSUSE does also depend on its many users. So they should get a | hear. It is not OK to only raise this issue on a factory mailinglist - a | mailinglist a regular user will never see. | | * factory was setup as list for future development of the openSUSE | distribution. Why is that not working? Where would you expect to | have general discussion about the direction of the distribution? It is not working because this (and issues like this one) is not discussed in spots of the internet that are reachable by the regular users. Most don't subscribe to the list for future openSUSE development, but go to the forums. This would have been a good place to ask what users expect and want. I would be happy to help out here since I am a staff member on the openSUSE forums. I can get a thread setup asking the users what they see as major blockers for KDE4 adoption and then relay the information here.

To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

Felix-Nicolai Müller writes:

Andreas Jaeger schrieb: | Reading Felix-Nicolai's blog post, I'd like to get your input on the | following statement from him: Sure thing | | I believe that openSUSE is supposed to be a community based and | community driven product. While many devs work for Novell and do great | work, openSUSE does also depend on its many users. So they should get a | hear. It is not OK to only raise this issue on a factory mailinglist - a | mailinglist a regular user will never see. | | * factory was setup as list for future development of the openSUSE | distribution. Why is that not working? Where would you expect to | have general discussion about the direction of the distribution? It is not working because this (and issues like this one) is not discussed in spots of the internet that are reachable by the regular users. Most don't subscribe to the list for future openSUSE development, but go to the forums. This would have been a good place to ask what users expect and want. It is perfectly fine to discuss this on this or the -kde ML amongst the devs. But don't expect this ML to reflect the broad scope of users that make openSUSE what it is - one of the most liked Distros in the world with many "support branchens" and spreading the good word about Novell too. There is no way you can ay at the end (doing it this way) that you asked the users.

You never will be able to reach everybody, even if you go to the forums. Should we really vote for every decisions? Or just for critical ones and who defines critical? An option would be if somebody does a vote in a neutral way (like Larry started) and then represents the outcome - but do you think everybody on this list moving to the forums is feasible?

The rather weak response on my blog either shows that the interest in KDE4 is rather low, that people feel it has been all decided anyways, that a blog is not the right form to reach the regular user or that it has not been publicized enough. I don't know which of these reasons is true (yet).

Neither do I. Your blog is aggregated on planetsuse and therefore should reach quite some folks...

However, how the KDE4 discussion developed indicates that there is a bigger and more general problem we will have to deal with asap: lack of communication and miscommunication. Let me make this perfectly clear: This is OSS, so the attitude of the KDE devs that everyone has to either like it or shut up and live with it (which is my personal experience when I hear things like that there are "just some community members beating up again on Beineri" (which is not true, I would rather say his nervous costume is rather thin)) is not debatable, at least if you believe that the mainly by Novell paid KDE devs really are OSS like (I am not saying here that this is my impression, but this is what some might be inclined to debate). However, if they do what they want and "ram KDE4 down the users' throat" they must be able to take the heat. And this is what happened. It was silently decided in 11.0 to only push KDE4. It was (as for as I experienced it) by user intervention that KDE3 was included. Where would openSUSE be today if that had not happened? Would the customers be happier or less happy? I somehow doubt taking away choice would have made them happier. The KDE devs and any developer group (as in OSS) can do what they want, but they also have a responsibillity to take a stand in front of the user for their action. Either that or the users decide to do what they want and execute their freedom of choice and use a different product (remember: "rammed down ..."). And do not expect users (who are all contributers - even if it just for the cause to spread Linux and / or openSUSE) to help products they do not understand or like. Even regular users can have a major impact factor. It is geruilla marketing. Now, communication has already improved by the last painful KDE4 discussion for 11.0. At least people on certain MLs are now asked what they want. However, this does not serve the "normal" user. Maybe it would be wise to split the discussion between devs and testers (who live on MLs) and the users (who live in forums). That way devs could be

It's not as black and white as you say - there are users on mailing lists and developers on the forum as well...

presented with an overview of what regular users want - just like the summary I tried to compile on my blog - and discuss all that internally (but still openly and transparently to the interested public) on a less heated ML. That way, even if users complain later on, you can tell them that you !really! gave them the opportunity to have a say. This is still not the case now.

As I said, the process has already be improved, but even when opening the thread on KDE4 for 11.1 it was not made clear how the process to reach those options given was achieved. I now know what the devs think to be legit and possible but I do not know who said what when and why. This points directly to the general problem and what I describe as missing transparency. I want to know the true reasons, which I ultimately only can if I can get a transcript of the discussion how

True reasons? There's nothing to hide: Check how many bugs the kde-maintainers@suse.de list has assigned, see the work for KDE3 and KDE4, assume a fixed number of Novell engineers working on KDE - and then it's an evaluation what to do: Support both KDE 3 and KDE 4? Or spend all energy on KDE 4? Or be the only current distribution that works only on KDE3? Currently 40 % of our KDE users are KDE 4 users, so going forward KDE 4 is a valid option and I personally would rather have a perfect KDE 4 than a less perfect KDE 4 and KDE 3 support. You will argue - and you're right - that even if we drop KDE 3, KDE 4 will not become perfect but long term that's the bet we want to do.

those options were reached. To give you a better example: I filed a bug report against the non-alphabetical ordering of DEs in 11.0 installer. It was closed with the comment "This was well thought through by us". Sadly the bug was removed from bugzilla (at least I can't find it no more), but yaloki remembers the bug including the response. When I get such a response for making myself a fool for creating bug reports I feel entitled to know the anonymous mass of "us" and the definition of "well thought through". So basically: Who said what when and where. In order to understand why devs or any group wants something and sees certain choices a short summary of why the think so and what they think is not enough. One needs to see the process how the decision was reached. It would help all groups involved to at least have the opportunity to take that chance.

Could you explain in a practical way how to do it with decisions like this one? There are team and project meetings where these things are discussed and decided in general.

Sometimes I am under the impression that how things are done are decided in a 15-30 minute talk in some office. I would be delighted to be proven wrong.

Who is a contributer in OSS? Everybody! While having more devs would be nice, many many people contribute by pushing OSS, the idea, helping friends, people on IRC or in forums. Some pay, some spread the word, some code. Measuring codelines is not what can be used to measure contribution. The answer "what do you do? Why don't you do it yourself, it is OSS" is not a generally appropriate answer. Such an answer cuts many people short. Without customers and people pushing OSS, devs would be nothing (except to be happy for themselves, but then again, they would probably be lacking input from other devs). No one dev alone can cope with something like a bigger than little OSS project.

Are you actively involved with an Open Source Project besides openSUSE? I'm participating in some and I often see and hear "code wins" - and unfortunately only seldom the users are asked.

| | * openSUSE is community based and community driven - but we have Novell | engineers doing engineering work with limited time and resources. | | Community means not only discussion but also contribution - and I've | heard many requests about KDE3 and KDE4 but so far only saw Carlos | stepping up and saying "KDE3 is so important for me that I create a | KDE3 LiveCD for openSUSE 11.0". Discussion can be very helpful contribution. | | It's good to get input and help with prioritization but how can we get | more people working on KDE to maintain KDE3 and to improve KDE4? KDE3 will die. I don't expect anyone to step up to maintain KDE3 as those who could due to knowledge and time and money will probably wisely invest the effort in KDE4. I expect those who don't find KDE4 to be attractive to change DE. For instance: I am in the phase of changing to XFCE. Just as a personal comment: From a technical standpoint I could step up and help maintain KDE3. But I am not willing to invest precious time in a deemed dead project (as this is always heavily emphasized by current maintainers) as well as I can help better in other areas, like usability (a straw openSUSE or Novell folks just would have to pick). And this is where transparency is of matter again. I find it really hard to produce useful input on usability issues because I am not supplied with the intel I need. E.g. the UX group made a questionnaire and some research on the installer and while making public that the openSUSE 11.0 installer is the best ever and the easiest and so forth the actual numbers (and I would need the setup of the actual experiment) can only be seen if you have access to the internal Novell network. How much BS, traps and effort do I have to go through in order to be _able_ to contribute? And how can it be expected from me to contribute

There shouldn't be any BS and traps and little effort - but unfortunately in some areas it's still too much effort.

in all areas (maintain KDE3, talk to the community and cope with usabillity)? How much can and do you want to ask for? It's not like this is my entire life or if I'd get money out of this to live from.

Anybody can only contribute as much time as they have - you can do a lot with an odd hour here and there IMO.

I hope this answers you questions. I hope you can answer mine.

Not fair, you wrote much more than I did ;) You ask many questions - some of them seem to me rhetoric. If you like to have an answer to ones that I missed, please ask clearly again, Andreas -- Andreas Jaeger, Director Platform / openSUSE, aj@suse.de SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg) Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany GPG fingerprint = 93A3 365E CE47 B889 DF7F FED1 389A 563C C272 A126

Felix-Nicolai Müller writes:

...

Andreas Jaeger schrieb: | Reading Felix-Nicolai's blog post, I'd like to get your input on the | following statement from him: Sure thing | | I believe that openSUSE is supposed to be a community based and | community driven product. While many devs work for Novell and do great | work, openSUSE does also depend on its many users. So they should get a | hear. It is not OK to only raise this issue on a factory mailinglist - a | mailinglist a regular user will never see. | | * factory was setup as list for future development of the openSUSE | distribution. Why is that not working? Where would you expect to | have general discussion about the direction of the distribution? It is not working because this (and issues like this one) is not discussed in spots of the internet that are reachable by the regular users. Most don't subscribe to the list for future openSUSE development, but go to the forums. This would have been a good place to ask what users expect and want. It is perfectly fine to discuss this on this or the -kde ML amongst the devs. But don't expect this ML to reflect the broad scope of users that make openSUSE what it is - one of the most liked Distros in the world with many "support branchens" and spreading the good word about Novell too. There is no way you can ay at the end (doing it this way) that you asked the users.

You never will be able to reach everybody, even if you go to the forums. Should we really vote for every decisions? Or just for critical ones and who defines critical? Just critical ones. Critical is everything that is a core component. No, I will never be able to reach everybody. As this is the case for any questionaire, I guess we should stop asking at all? Because this would be a logical consequence.

An option would be if somebody does a vote in a neutral way (like Larry started) and then represents the outcome - but do you think everybody on this list moving to the forums is feasible?

...

The rather weak response on my blog either shows that the interest in KDE4 is rather low, that people feel it has been all decided anyways, that a blog is not the right form to reach the regular user or that it has not been publicized enough. I don't know which of these reasons is true (yet).

Neither do I. Your blog is aggregated on planetsuse and therefore should reach quite some folks...

...

However, how the KDE4 discussion developed indicates that there is a bigger and more general problem we will have to deal with asap: lack of communication and miscommunication. Let me make this perfectly clear: This is OSS, so the attitude of the KDE devs that everyone has to either like it or shut up and live with it (which is my personal experience when I hear things like that there are "just some community members beating up again on Beineri" (which is not true, I would rather say his nervous costume is rather thin)) is not debatable, at least if you believe that the mainly by Novell paid KDE devs really are OSS like (I am not saying here that this is my impression, but this is what some might be inclined to debate). However, if they do what they want and "ram KDE4 down the users' throat" they must be able to take the heat. And this is what happened. It was silently decided in 11.0 to only push KDE4. It was (as for as I experienced it) by user intervention that KDE3 was included. Where would openSUSE be today if that had not happened? Would the customers be happier or less happy? I somehow doubt taking away choice would have made them happier. The KDE devs and any developer group (as in OSS) can do what they want, but they also have a responsibillity to take a stand in front of the user for their action. Either that or the users decide to do what they want and execute their freedom of choice and use a different product (remember: "rammed down ..."). And do not expect users (who are all contributers - even if it just for the cause to spread Linux and / or openSUSE) to help products they do not understand or like. Even regular users can have a major impact factor. It is geruilla marketing. Now, communication has already improved by the last painful KDE4 discussion for 11.0. At least people on certain MLs are now asked what they want. However, this does not serve the "normal" user. Maybe it would be wise to split the discussion between devs and testers (who live on MLs) and the users (who live in forums). That way devs could be

It's not as black and white as you say - there are users on mailing lists and developers on the forum as well... Sorry, but there are statistics to cope with that. In the end you get a black and white result.

...

presented with an overview of what regular users want - just like the summary I tried to compile on my blog - and discuss all that internally (but still openly and transparently to the interested public) on a less heated ML. That way, even if users complain later on, you can tell them that you !really! gave them the opportunity to have a say. This is still not the case now.

...

As I said, the process has already be improved, but even when opening the thread on KDE4 for 11.1 it was not made clear how the process to reach those options given was achieved. I now know what the devs think to be legit and possible but I do not know who said what when and why. This points directly to the general problem and what I describe as missing transparency. I want to know the true reasons, which I ultimately only can if I can get a transcript of the discussion how

True reasons? There's nothing to hide: Check how many bugs the kde-maintainers@suse.de list has assigned, see the work for KDE3 and KDE4, assume a fixed number of Novell engineers working on KDE - and then it's an evaluation what to do: Support both KDE 3 and KDE 4? Or spend all energy on KDE 4? Or be the only current distribution that works only on KDE3? I could _know_ if... well, you know the drill. This is running in circles. So it is a Novell thing, a KDE group thing, a combination of both. Those numbers don't show the actual position of the people. Well, as it was pointed out thiese things work for gnome, I don't really understand what the fear is to do it similar with KDE. I believe as of today at least to me it does not matter anymore.

Currently 40 % of our KDE users are KDE 4 users, so going forward KDE 4 is a valid option and I personally would rather have a perfect KDE 4 than a less perfect KDE 4 and KDE 3 support. You will argue - and you're right - that even if we drop KDE 3, KDE 4 will not become perfect but long term that's the bet we want to do.

...

those options were reached. To give you a better example: I filed a bug report against the non-alphabetical ordering of DEs in 11.0 installer. It was closed with the comment "This was well thought through by us". Sadly the bug was removed from bugzilla (at least I can't find it no more), but yaloki remembers the bug including the response. When I get such a response for making myself a fool for creating bug reports I feel entitled to know the anonymous mass of "us" and the definition of "well thought through". So basically: Who said what when and where. In order to understand why devs or any group wants something and sees certain choices a short summary of why the think so and what they think is not enough. One needs to see the process how the decision was reached. It would help all groups involved to at least have the opportunity to take that chance.

Could you explain in a practical way how to do it with decisions like this one? There are team and project meetings where these things are discussed and decided in general. OK, I give up.

...

Sometimes I am under the impression that how things are done are decided in a 15-30 minute talk in some office. I would be delighted to be proven wrong.

Who is a contributer in OSS? Everybody! While having more devs would be nice, many many people contribute by pushing OSS, the idea, helping friends, people on IRC or in forums. Some pay, some spread the word, some code. Measuring codelines is not what can be used to measure contribution. The answer "what do you do? Why don't you do it yourself, it is OSS" is not a generally appropriate answer. Such an answer cuts many people short. Without customers and people pushing OSS, devs would be nothing (except to be happy for themselves, but then again, they would probably be lacking input from other devs). No one dev alone can cope with something like a bigger than little OSS project.

Are you actively involved with an Open Source Project besides openSUSE? I'm participating in some and I often see and hear "code wins" - and unfortunately only seldom the users are asked. OK, I give up. You win, you have more code and besides the little

Andreas Jaeger schrieb: project openSUSE I am not involved in any other FOSS projects beside R.

...

| | * openSUSE is community based and community driven - but we have Novell | engineers doing engineering work with limited time and resources. | | Community means not only discussion but also contribution - and I've | heard many requests about KDE3 and KDE4 but so far only saw Carlos | stepping up and saying "KDE3 is so important for me that I create a | KDE3 LiveCD for openSUSE 11.0". Discussion can be very helpful contribution. | | It's good to get input and help with prioritization but how can we get | more people working on KDE to maintain KDE3 and to improve KDE4? KDE3 will die. I don't expect anyone to step up to maintain KDE3 as those who could due to knowledge and time and money will probably wisely invest the effort in KDE4. I expect those who don't find KDE4 to be attractive to change DE. For instance: I am in the phase of changing to XFCE. Just as a personal comment: From a technical standpoint I could step up and help maintain KDE3. But I am not willing to invest precious time in a deemed dead project (as this is always heavily emphasized by current maintainers) as well as I can help better in other areas, like usability (a straw openSUSE or Novell folks just would have to pick). And this is where transparency is of matter again. I find it really hard to produce useful input on usability issues because I am not supplied with the intel I need. E.g. the UX group made a questionnaire and some research on the installer and while making public that the openSUSE 11.0 installer is the best ever and the easiest and so forth the actual numbers (and I would need the setup of the actual experiment) can only be seen if you have access to the internal Novell network. How much BS, traps and effort do I have to go through in order to be _able_ to contribute? And how can it be expected from me to contribute

There shouldn't be any BS and traps and little effort - but unfortunately in some areas it's still too much effort.

So I guess it will stay that way?

...

in all areas (maintain KDE3, talk to the community and cope with usabillity)? How much can and do you want to ask for? It's not like this is my entire life or if I'd get money out of this to live from.

Anybody can only contribute as much time as they have - you can do a lot with an odd hour here and there IMO.

Not for openSUSE, sorry.

...

I hope this answers you questions. I hope you can answer mine.

Not fair, you wrote much more than I did ;)

sorry again

You ask many questions - some of them seem to me rhetoric. If you like to have an answer to ones that I missed, please ask clearly again,

rehtoric? OK, I really hope not.

Andreas

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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Andreas Jaeger schrieb:

Felix-Nicolai Müller writes:

...

Andreas Jaeger schrieb:

...

Felix-Nicolai Müller writes:

...

Andreas Jaeger schrieb: [...] You never will be able to reach everybody, even if you go to the forums. Should we really vote for every decisions? Or just for critical ones and who defines critical? Just critical ones. Critical is everything that is a core component. No, I will never be able to reach everybody. As this is the case for any questionaire, I guess we should stop asking at all? Because this would be a logical consequence.

;)

We have to discuss stuff and that means those doing work have to ask. But if we great such a high bar for them they might not ask anymore - that's my problem. How to do it in a convenient way on the one hand - and how to reach a critical and representative group of people?

I do want same recipes on what to do - you know developers want algorithms ;-)

So, what about the following for openSUSE 11.2: * we ask for ideas to implement and collect them in some tool * we will after some time close the tool for new ideas and give everybody the chance to review the list * Michael and Coolo will go through it and comment: + This is something we like to get in openSUSE, who will stepup doing it? - this is something we first want to see upstream, how to get it done there? - this is something we consider a bad idea * We discuss these during a public IRC meeting and on a mailing list * We prioritize the things and community or Novell engineers can commit to do one of the selected features (also in colloboration, with coaching...). * Each step is announced on news.o.o

Would that work? If not, the only critique that I accept is constructive: Write down a better algorithm ;) And if I misunderstood the problem the write one to solve your problem.

A good tool imo would be something like http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/ . This way users could express what they feel to be important. As of today we totally seem to be lacking a tool to get user opinions easily. Therefore, devs might develop in the wrong direction. Those user ideas could be picked up and talked about by the devs / deciders in publicly reviewable meetings.

...

...

True reasons? There's nothing to hide: Check how many bugs the kde-maintainers@suse.de list has assigned, see the work for KDE3 and KDE4, assume a fixed number of Novell engineers working on KDE - and then it's an evaluation what to do: Support both KDE 3 and KDE 4? Or spend all energy on KDE 4? Or be the only current distribution that works only on KDE3? I could _know_ if... well, you know the drill. This is running in circles. So it is a Novell thing, a KDE group thing, a combination of both. Those numbers don't show the actual position of the

[...] people. Well, as it was pointed out thiese things work for gnome, I don't really understand what the fear is to do it similar with KDE. I believe as of today at least to me it does not matter anymore.

You lost me completely - what do you reference GNOME here?

http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-factory/2008-09/msg00242.html I perceive the way KDE4 decision was handled this time still not transparent. At least I could not find a transcript of the actual happening when the KDE4 decisions were made. The KDE Team is big. I would like to be able to understand who exactly decided this. If it was done in an IRC meeting it would be great to get the transscript of the IRC meeting. Who said what and when, if there was a vote (something I am at least not aware of) I would like to know how the people involved voted. It to me is unclear how the decision was made. Sure, people were asked on ML etc, but the event of making the decision seems to be undocumented. If I am mistaken I am sorry and would appreciate to be pointed into the right direction. This is why I reference gnome - they put up transscripts of those things.

...

[...]

...

...

How much BS, traps and effort do I have to go through in order to be _able_ to contribute? And how can it be expected from me to contribute There shouldn't be any BS and traps and little effort - but unfortunately in some areas it's still too much effort. So I guess it will stay that way?

With "it's still too much effort" I intented to say: Yes, this is today too much effort IMO - but that has to change.

...

...

...

in all areas (maintain KDE3, talk to the community and cope with usabillity)? How much can and do you want to ask for? It's not like this is my entire life or if I'd get money out of this to live from. Anybody can only contribute as much time as they have - you can do a lot with an odd hour here and there IMO. Not for openSUSE, sorry.

Why not?

I already explained that my field of expertise is HCI (and HBI, but that is not of interest here). I do not get access to the data necessary to do something senseful. I could have invested 4-5 month doing research on openSUSE components. I had to kill this project because I did not get access to the data necessary. My research group decided to work on spatial attention problems instead for the current research period. I also have a responsibility to the four other members of this research group and I clearly cannot risk working together with a partner who is holding back information to work with (for whatever reason, missing time, fear of competition, review, simple communication problems). It might well not be intentional, but it makes it impossible to even consider starting such a project.

...

...

...

I hope this answers you questions. I hope you can answer mine. Not fair, you wrote much more than I did ;) sorry again You ask many questions - some of them seem to me rhetoric. If you like to have an answer to ones that I missed, please ask clearly again, rehtoric? OK, I really hope not.

If there were not rhetoric questions at all in your lengthy email, then I misunderstood you and we do not communicate at all ;-(

It is lengthy because I try to make the point crystal clear. I kinda seem to be lacking in this area.

Andreas

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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Benji Weber schrieb:

2008/9/10 Felix-Nicolai Müller :

...

I perceive the way KDE4 decision was handled this time still not transparent. At least I could not find a transcript of the actual happening when the KDE4 decisions were made. The KDE Team is big. I would like to be able to understand who exactly decided this. If it was done in an IRC meeting it would be great to get the transscript of the IRC meeting.

There are transcripts of all the KDE IRC meetings here: http://en.opensuse.org/KDE/Meetings

-- Benjamin Weber --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

Thank you. I don't see any process of reevalution in the transcript. I basically don't see any substantial talk about what happened on the ML there. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.4-svn0 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFIyBhZaQ44ga2xxAoRAvoMAKCdgAUpWh/siNWnzYCMIf8/gMDCCACeJV71 pJFl2WErQb0wLeZYLaqmBy0= =R9D3 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Bryen schrieb:

On Wed, 2008-09-10 at 19:20 +0200, Felix-Nicolai Müller wrote:

...

A good tool imo would be something like http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/ . This way users could express what they feel to be important. As of today we totally seem to be lacking a tool to get user opinions easily. Therefore, devs might develop in the wrong direction. Those user ideas could be picked up and talked about by the devs / deciders in publicly reviewable meetings.

There is idea.opensuse.org. And it does work. I submitted a few ideas for Evolution enhancements and they got adopted. But, I would agree with the contention that not enough attention seems to be drawn towards that site.

Bryen

I was not aware of this site. However, it has problems: 1. A new login has to be created 2. There seems to be no voting option 3. Lacking overview of ideas -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.4-svn0 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFIyAtzaQ44ga2xxAoRAphFAKCf880e7JoM5GL/zuWfWAqHLg0w+gCeO9Ra u6zyHII/tqDQurfOfD+nFeQ= =Obo1 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

Bryen writes:

There is idea.opensuse.org. And it does work. I submitted a few ideas for Evolution enhancements and they got adopted. But, I would agree with the contention that not enough attention seems to be drawn towards that site.

idea.opensuse.org was used for our hackweek, don't use it for openSUSE feature requests. We will have openFATE soon, Andreas -- Andreas Jaeger, Director Platform / openSUSE, aj@suse.de SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg) Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany GPG fingerprint = 93A3 365E CE47 B889 DF7F FED1 389A 563C C272 A126

On Tue, Sep 9, 2008 at 8:01 AM, Vincent Untz wrote:

I'm not sure it's not working -- it seems to be working, although not perfectly. In the KDE thread, there were certainly too many emotional replies, with no arguments, and too many people just re-stating the same thing. I don't know if this is something that we can easily "fix" -- I've certainly seen the same things in other communities...

One of the problems as I see it is that we who have attempted to make use of KDE4 have just been so turned off to it by the lack of things that we need that we haven't went through and tried to find out what is missing. In my case, I have noticed that KDE4 is still slower than KDE3 on the same hardware. Granted, a lot of my hardware is slower(P3 based), but I do have a Core2 and an X2 based systems). I don't have the newer and "awesome" graphics cards. The fastest one I had for years was a GeForce4 MX 440, and I got that for free. I've even seen that memory usage isn't as conclusive as eveyone thought. While KDE4 looked like it used less at first, after letting it run for a while, it seems to use about the same as KDE3.

I wouldn't agree with the fact that we want feedback from all regular users on all topics. It's up to some people to either gather this feedback and report it to the list (or where it belongs) or to have the "user vision", where they clearly understand the regular point of view and can explain it to others. In a perfect world, it'd be fine to have feedback from regular users -- but we're not in a perfect world, and it would just be too much information.

Yes, a lot of us just aren't regular users and we just can't see the new user point of view. We're prejudiced because of of experience. I've used SuSE continuously since 1999, so I guess I'm just set in my ways.

Just restarting what I said so people actually read it: a good way to make all this work better is to volunteer to gather feedback from users (users from the forums, from IRC, from the user mailing lists, ...).

That's wh I started the other thread. And, honestly, I've been suprised by the almost total negative comments about KDE4, especially from hearing so many that like it on this list. There have been some good comments, but most have echoed some of my own, and some of the other's, comments about KDE4. But even then, we still have a limited amount of user experience there to go on. We do need more input from others.

Ah, there's also the fact that Novell has some priorities with SLE that might be different than the priorities of the community. And sometimes, they might conflict. It'd be nice to have a clear way to know what we should do in this case to resolve the conflict (something like: the community wins ;-)). If we want openSUSE to succeed as a community project, that's quite important.

The "decision" to base SLE 11 on KDE4 is mind boggling to me. I seriously think that if that is the case, that Novell may lose some customers over that. Corporations who have standardized on SLED 9 & 10 with KDE3 will not be happy about having to support and roll out a radical new desktop that will require re-traing to some extent. I may be wrong, but I feel that the Novell guys should talk to their customers about that before just deciding to change things. If replacing KDE3 with KDE4 is meant to make it easier to support, then they aren't thinking about what their customers want. And that's strange because Novell has been selling to corps for a long time.

Here's my view of what the experience in the GNOME team (others might see things in a different way). What we're trying to achieve in the GNOME team is to have the development as open as possible, with most (if not all) important decisions discussed in public meetings or on the mailing list. Things that need some work (work as in code, packaging, testing, etc.) are usually advertised so people can jump in and help. And we do have some people helping.

I'm personally not a fan of IRC and other chat type things, so I don't contribute in that way. I do try to add to the list of things to be discussed. I also really can't take the time to do the IRC meeting if I wanted to because I do have a job, and while I can take a minute here and there to check up on these list mails, I can't dedicate my time to that.

I guess other teams have a similar experience. I think that this is only getting better with time (at least, at the moment). And as other people mentioned, something like the contrib repository will help make more people understand they have the power to change openSUSE.

Definately. Before 10.o, there wasn't really that much of a way to contribute for myself. I even had problems trying to get the US ISBN to buy a newer version as they came out. Sometimes it took several emails ust so I could buy it at the book store I worked at(had to do that to enjoy my discount). I haven't piad for it since 9.x because I've had a hig speed connection since then, but I now try to contibute by beta testing as I have time. Also, to be honest, if I'm gonna buy it, then I would expect that the codecs and stuff should come with it. Maybe they should have a 2 tired approach like they used to, but have on copy as all OSS(which can just be downloaded so make it cheaper) and have one copy with the codecs and other proprietary stuff. Users from the WIndows world aren't going to care about the FOSS philosophy. They just want it to work with their iPods and DVDs out of the box. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On Tue, Sep 9, 2008 at 6:21 PM, Will Stephenson wrote:

Right, we jump over backwards to discuss strategy openly in the KDE IRC meetings. I notice that many people active in the KDE3/4 thread aren't at those meetings, so maybe we need to work on the perception of our openness.

Wow, these discussions are everywhere now.... Anyway, I'm not a fan of IRC. Also, I generally can't attend these meetings because of my job. I do try to add things to the discussion meeting topics as I feel the need, but it's probably not enough. Email is so much eaiser to use, but it's not always the fastest way to discuss things..... --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On Tuesday 09 September 2008 05:21:43 pm Will Stephenson wrote:

Right, we jump over backwards to discuss strategy openly in the KDE IRC meetings.  I notice that many people active in the KDE3/4 thread aren't at those meetings, so maybe we need to work on the perception of our openness.

Just to add me to the list of those that are unable to attend, and even on rare days that timing is right (vacation), I type to slow for IRC. I'm not sure why is such pressure to use IRC when it has one major problem for world wide community, time zones. Having more meetings in different times doesn't solve the problem how to synchronize discussions and decisions, and how to bring in relevant people that can give answers. Look at the map: http://en.opensuse.org/OpenSUSE_Community/Map and see distribution of users. It is not exact, but it is for sure proportional to actual number of people using openSUSE. For North America alone is not easy to find good time on a work day. IRC might be option for the weekend, but even it is not easy to synchronize all. The only soultion is email as we use it now, or forums.opensuse.org with new forum Meetings that will have somewhat different rules than the rest to accommodate dependable access via NNTP interface. -- Regards, Rajko --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On Tuesday 09 September 2008 10:44:49 pm Bryen wrote:

I have some ideas for how we can close the gap between IRC and mailing lists/forums, but this is the -factory mailing list.  Perhaps it is more appropriate for us to start a new thread on -project to build some consensus on how to handle that.   What do you all think?  I don't want to start a thread unless people are interested in discussing possible solutions to this.

Go ahead. It is now too late for me, though :-) -- Regards, Rajko --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

Bryen wrote:

[snip] I have some ideas for how we can close the gap between IRC and mailing lists/forums, but this is the -factory mailing list. Perhaps it is more appropriate for us to start a new thread on -project to build some consensus on how to handle that. What do you all think? I don't want to start a thread unless people are interested in discussing possible solutions to this.

Bryen

Coming from the forums world I am interested as I see a major disconnect between certain areas of the community that would only benefit if we could somehow bring them together. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org