On 5/3/07, Juergen Weigert wrote:

On May 03, 07 08:28:26 +0100, Francis Giannaros wrote:

...

So I have to rush out, but once again, some Novell PR guys have done it again. This time it's from Bruce Lowry, [...]

Bruce cannot be an expert on every topic although his job is to write about all topics. I wonder if we could establish some internal proofreading for his articles.

Naturally I (and many others) wouldn't care if it was some trivial topic, but let's face it: even from an abstract point of view, the purpose of this thing called openSUSE, which Novell has a huge amount of engineers working on, is a pretty important fact to know if you're gonna be in Novell PR. I'm almost finding it a little too curious to really think that this is "just a mistake". What makes the situation even more curious though is that Druid contacted Bruce about this very issue! (Since Justin had mentioned something very similar). Bruce replied to that email on the 25th, the blog post was made on the 26th. Now, he seemed to be very understanding when we last contacted him, and in general understood the problem. So he either didn't understand at all, or is just ignoring us altogether :). Anyhow, no point waiting here to find out -- I'll email him now. His other blog post http://www.novell.com/prblogs/?p=331 is making me wonder if there's bad PR again, or if openSUSE really is a serious project to Novell. :( Kind thoughts, -- Francis Giannaros http://francis.giannaros.org --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org

On May 03, 07 14:06:48 +0200, Alberto Passalacqua wrote:

Il giorno gio, 03/05/2007 alle 12.46 +0100, Francis Giannaros ha scritto:

...

His other blog post http://www.novell.com/prblogs/?p=331 is making me wonder if there's bad PR again, or if openSUSE really is a serious project to Novell. :(

It's quite clear. They're interested in putting OEM SLED on enterprise desktops.

I don't know why we should force Novell to say what it doesn't want to say.

But I know one simple reason: I don't want my employer to annoy the very people we depend on. Anything that is ``a little too curious to really think that this is "just a mistake".'' is no good. cheers, Jw. -- o \ Juergen Weigert paint it green! __/ _=======.=======_ <V> | jw@suse.de wide open suse_/ _---|____________\/ \ | 0911 74053-508 (tm)__/ (____/ /\ (/) | __________________________/ _/ \_ vim:set sw=2 wm=8 SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nuernberg) "Oral agreements are worth about as much as the paper they are written on." --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org

I personally believe openSUSE is the community distribution for Novell, and its for everyone that's not an enterprise (as in, home, home offices, enthusiasts, geeks, everyone that SLED isn't targetted to....) Last time I checked, its pretty darn stable as a distribution (specially 10.2!) On 5/3/07, Alberto Passalacqua wrote:

Il giorno gio, 03/05/2007 alle 14.21 +0200, Juergen Weigert ha scritto:

...

...

I don't know why we should force Novell to say what it doesn't want to say.

But I know one simple reason: I don't want my employer to annoy the very people we depend on.

What's annoying is not Novell saying "OpenSUSE is for geeks and enthusiasts", but the ambiguity.

I can be happy with both decisions of openSUSE as a development lab (fedora style) or as a more versatile but still stable distribution than the enterprise line.

What is important is to be _honest_ with the users.

Regards, Alberto

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On Thursday 03 May 2007 18:14, Martin Schlander wrote:

Den Thursday 03 May 2007 17:07:57 skrev Justin Haygood:

...

Last time I checked, its pretty darn stable as a distribution (specially 10.2!)

This would be a nice time to have the results of the survey that was supposed to end a few days ago :-) I just received the results like an hour ago or so ;-) We'll publish them asap in the wiki. Short overview: More than 27,000 people participated, 98% of them are male, 89% have broadband access, 69% use openSUSE in dual boot, 71% use mainly KDE, 22% use mainly GNOME, 77% download the distro from our homepage, 68% wants to have beter hardware support in the future.

Michael

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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 James Tremblay wrote:

ok, but historically since 10.0 we have introduced new technology (because we are an engineering distro, not a packaging distro i.e. Ubuntu) that I would not expose the first timer to, in the sense of learning how to overcome the problems that arose from that new technology i.e. the new gnome and kde interfaces, and the updater issues.

What "new GNOME and KDE interfaces" ? KDE 3.5.6 ? The new start menus ?

If opensuse wants to target the soho/homeuser then lets have an LTS version, lets gold master 10.2 without the zenupdater , with gnomebaker, with wireless drivers and their instructions and support it for 3 years like Ubuntu. Other

It's not because Ubuntu does an "LTS" that it is the best nor the most viable model. Canonical has still everything to prove wrt their support. Furthermore, LTS is not free, nor is SLED. Actually, if it's a desktop you're after, SLED is less expensive than Ubuntu LTS. And, at the very least, the SUSE engineers have proven their capabilities in the past wrt support, which is not yet the case for the few full-time employees of Canonical.

wise it really isn't for the first timer to have to struggle with drivers and codecs and updators and looking for everyday applications and then in 18 months have to update it by reinstalling everything to continue to get security updates.

If feature-stability and long lifetime is what you're looking for, buy SLED for a few bucks. If you want evolution, new features, improvements, go for openSUSE. But that doesn't mean it has to be "beta-quality", unstable nor anything else.

Wireless configuration support and the network manager are still unstable especially when registering to the customer center during installation and lots of people don't rewire their homes, they buy a wireless router and wireless cards and pay someone to set it up or call Dell to walk them through it. Are we ready to compete with that ? No , i don't think so , we would need

Sure but that's not any different from other Linux distributions. openSUSE is pretty good wrt hardware detection and easy of installation IMO. Blame the wireless card vendors, they're making an awful mess out of chipsets, incompatible devices with the same model number, closed specs, etc...

that 900 system in place, we would need the update.opensuse.org to be set up as the default update channel in yast( even if registering fails) and have it redirect to other mirrors, we would need software.opensuse.org to be the default application source for add-ons (like the multiverse) and a

The build service repositories (software.opensuse.org) just contain too much software -- having it split up into many repositories as now is the right model. You wouldn't want experimental xorg73 packages to show up in the same repository as the latest Firefox package. update.opensuse.org makes sense though.

support.opensuse.org forum\KB to even exist. These things are all being

http://suseforums.net/ http://suselinuxsupport.de/ http://opensuse.us/

discussed and worked on but we can't put the cart before the horse and start extolling the virtues of our distro to the homeuser, when in reality we the enthusiast are the only ones that can make it all work with a little guidance from friends in obscure places like the irc forums. Some one needs to start

IRC "forums", "obscure" ?

consolidating the places we get help from on an intuitive location like "support.opensuse.org" because the masses are used to the host domain having these kinds of pages. our front page is difficult to navigate because the things homeusers are looking to find aren't what we look for when we go

File bugs for those suggestions, give feedback to the web designers of the site when they make a proposal on the list (but not hidden in a large post on this list ;))

there, even software.opensuse.org has changed recently and it is obscure even to me how to search for packages in the different repos. I was looking to see

True, it's still lacking a lot on the end-user interface, but efforts have been concentrated on the packager side of things up to now (which is even more important in the first place). Hopefully there will be some sort of interface for users soon. As for finding packages, Benjamin Weber's webpin is currently the best option.

if we had a 10.2 package for NBD and had to go to google to find it on opensuse.org, this is unacceptable to the novice. So that novice goes looking for a click and run distro like Ubuntu.

Ubuntu is no "click and run distro", it's by no means easier to set up and use than openSUSE. The only thing that's better with Ubuntu is the package manager. Idealizing Ubuntu as being perfect and not having any issues is ridiculous.

No our structure is still to immature to sell it to the homeuser masses, therefore I agree with Justin and Bruce and Ted, opensuse is the techies version.

Not to say there aren't a lot of things to improve, but it isn't a "techies version" more than SLED nor Ubuntu nor Fedora nor ... cheers - -- -o) Pascal Bleser http://linux01.gwdg.de/~pbleser/ /\\ _\_v The more things change, the more they stay insane. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with SUSE - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFGOsTOr3NMWliFcXcRAni9AJ9oTozkG7Vddd7kuwCyK632LwwHrgCgq7Ry oBUb/GKfHSHbYOwg6Aq6fe0= =8cYl -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org

- hope in a never coming patch for the default audio player (I know there's amarok, that there are patches on buildservice and such...still not the point for a user friendly distribution).

released today btw. Ciao, Marcus --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org

On Fri 04 May 2007 19:41:38 NZST +1200, Alberto Passalacqua wrote:

The buildservice might be good from a developer point of view, but for a user it's just a mess and it's not easily accessible.

As I was discussion on IRC with Benjamin, at least a yast integrated interface to add-remove the various repositories would be necessary to make the buildservice accessible to the users.

That would be nice. With an appropriate warning like "these packages may come from the underworld and steal your computer".

Ubuntu is a lot closer to being click and run than openSUSE in the current state.

I'm afraid you're probably right.

As said, ubuntu doesn't require to:

- remove zmd and to clean and rebuild the package manager database.

Ack^3. Pitching opensuse against ubuntu is currently difficult. 10.1 is a dead loss, 10.2 is only good after installing a bunch of updates and obliterating zmd (risky business, might uninstall 2/3 of KDE and basic system libraries, so why not format in the first place?). Repositories are too difficult to add to suse. Mostly because finding them in the first place takes too long for a non-techie, partly because it's too slow. And too damn buggy - repos which were configured before just pop off the list (but are still being refreshed, creating a "what the hell is this *&@#$&@( box downloading for the next 15 minutes?). A non-techie wouldn't know any of this. What would be nice is a tabular list of repos, their short info, and their state with tick boxes, not this drop-down box in the corner. Repo management still sucks when compared with something debian-based. Sorry, but currently it's alpha 3 so a good time to say it ;) Volker -- Volker Kuhlmann is list0570 with the domain in header http://volker.dnsalias.net/ Please do not CC list postings to me. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org

Den Saturday 05 May 2007 01:30:13 skrev Volker Kuhlmann:

Repositories are too difficult to add to suse. Mostly because finding them in the first place takes too long for a non-techie, partly because it's too slow. And too damn buggy - repos which were configured before just pop off the list (but are still being refreshed, creating a "what the hell is this *&@#$&@( box downloading for the next 15 minutes?). A non-techie wouldn't know any of this.

I disagree. Nowadays you can add the official repos during installation. If you choose to do it manually you no longer need to split the url, you can simply copy/paste the url to yast installation source module. .. or you can run zypper sa <url> <alias> What's difficult about that? Finding the repositories might be a bit difficult for a clueless n00b, but doesn't that go for Ubuntu too, if you want unofficial repos? We have these nice wiki pages: http://en.opensuse.org/Package_Repositories http://en.opensuse.org/Additional_YaST_Package_Repositories A google search for: "opensuse repository" will take you right there - #1 find. Maybe the n00b doesn't understand why it doesn't just take an instant, but at least now we have progress bars. I really can't see how it could be any easier. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org

On Sun 06 May 2007 01:19:07 NZST +1200, Martin Schlander wrote:

...

Repositories are too difficult to add to suse. Mostly because finding them in the first place takes too long for a non-techie, partly because it's too slow. And too damn buggy - repos which were configured before just pop off the list (but are still being refreshed, creating a "what the hell is this *&@#$&@( box downloading for the next 15 minutes?). A non-techie wouldn't know any of this.

I disagree.

No problem, but I'm keeping my opinion for now. :)

Nowadays you can add the official repos during installation.

Sure, but you haven't got a running system yet. Do you know which ones to add? No. Adding the official ones during installation makes the system unusable for a serious length of time, so I usually advise against it. People want to be running first. Afterwards, there's no more repo suggestion, not even for the official one. This is bad.

If you choose to do it manually you no longer need to split the url, you can simply copy/paste the url to yast installation source module.

Yes, pasting the complete URL in one hit is an assential function! Yet, a friend updated 9.x to 10.2 GM, there was no such function...

.. or you can run zypper sa <url> <alias>

What's difficult about that?

Are you serious? This command line interface is absolutely essential for sys admins and people who know they want to use it, but won't win you any converts from XP. Those people are Linux's growth potential!

Finding the repositories might be a bit difficult for a clueless n00b, but doesn't that go for Ubuntu too, if you want unofficial repos?

SUSE doesn't even offer the official repos after install. Ubuntu includes all the stuff everyone wants/needs in their official repo, SUSE can't compete with that for reasons we know, but SUSE falls shorter than that: no 3rdparty repos are offered at all to be ticked.

We have these nice wiki pages: http://en.opensuse.org/Package_Repositories http://en.opensuse.org/Additional_YaST_Package_Repositories

Good. But I'm missing the link to these to click on in yast package management... All the info is online somewhere. That's not user-friendly, or polished. User-friendly would be to have the essentials at most one click away. And the click has to be obvious.

A google search for: "opensuse repository" will take you right there - #1 find.

Someone who is used to doze and is just trying openSUSE for the first time wouldn't know these search terms. Frustration level goes up a notch. Too many more notches, and it's Ubuntu (which doesn't seem to frustrate people, or at least one doesn't hear about it), or back to XP "this Linux thingy is unusable bla bla".

Maybe the n00b doesn't understand why it doesn't just take an instant, but at least now we have progress bars.

I'm not a n00b, and it took me a little while to realise that yast was failing to list the repo it was just spending aaaages on refreshing. Hey I couldn't even disable it - no repo in yast, no yast can't no do. The bug is still open. (I texteditored /var/lib/zypp/db/sources, not a n00bable solution. Serious question: How does an average user recover from this problem?)

I really can't see how it could be any easier.

Ugh. Many suggestions have been made in this thread. Let's keep at it. Volker -- Volker Kuhlmann is list0570 with the domain in header http://volker.dnsalias.net/ Please do not CC list postings to me. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org

Ack^3. Pitching opensuse against ubuntu is currently difficult. 10.1 is a dead loss, 10.2 is only good after installing a bunch of updates and obliterating zmd (risky business, might uninstall 2/3 of KDE and basic system libraries, so why not format in the first place?).

Well, it's not that terrible. You can choose not to install ZENWorks tools at installation time by putting a "Taboo" sign on the proper checkbox. The problem is that you've to know that. However we should not worry anymore about ZENWorks for 10.3.

Repositories are too difficult to add to suse. Mostly because finding them in the first place takes too long for a non-techie, partly because it's too slow. And too damn buggy - repos which were configured before just pop off the list (but are still being refreshed, creating a "what the hell is this *&@#$&@( box downloading for the next 15 minutes?). A non-techie wouldn't know any of this.

The biggest problem is to find them and to understand what repository contains what you need. Webbin is of great help in this however. The speed of zypp and friends should improve in 10.3, so we'll see.

What would be nice is a tabular list of repos, their short info, and their state with tick boxes, not this drop-down box in the corner.

Yes this would be a lot better, but it seems it's not so easy to do according to Pascal. Another possible solution would be to make it possible to click on the webpin link and install the package you need. But it doesn't sound that easy to me too, because of the dependencies issues. Regards, A. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org

On 5/5/07, Pascal Bleser wrote:

Definitely. Webpin is a great tool, but there is an issue with it: hosting. We definitely need a more reliable hosting solution for it (and Benjamin would be the first one to agree, he already wrote an email about that): http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-project/2007-04/msg00128.html

The legal aspects are biting us again. Because it also indexes and references packages that are on Packman and Guru, it may not be hosted by Novell. OTOH, not indexing Packman and Guru would make the tool only half as useful.

Actually the legal aspects are not an issue of hosting, the frontend (which we can host on opensuse-community.org can utilise multiple search services, one of which could be hosted by Novell, and the other indexing packman & guru etc would be hosted by the community still. AdrianS indicated they could help with hosting, but not until more resources are available.

I really think that at some point, we should find a reliable hosting solution (not in the USA because of its legislation) for community projects like that, funded by donations (PayPal).

I agree, but I think there is significant growth required before we will need, or be able to afford this.

...

The speed of zypp and friends should improve in 10.3, so we'll see.

Yes, that would be good. And then, IMO the focus should be put on usability of the package manager (adding/removing/refreshing repositories, finding/installing packages, installing patches/online updates, upgrading packages (including from 3rd party repos), etc...).

Hear, Hear. Although there has been some progress (pun intended) in 10.2, it is still essentially the same GUI designed for 8.1. Back then installing software from CDs was the only significant use case.

But frankly, instead of always blaming Novell/SUSE and the developers, we should come up with some discussion and brainstorming on what we would like to see and what we think would be a good solution both for beginners and for advanced users. And then send a proposal to the developers (or possibly do some implementation work ourselves).

Indeed, and this is beginning to happen, but the bottleneck always remains the SUSE people who are not being proactive in engaging with these efforts. We need public planning of development "sprints" with the community actively involved and aware of what is going on, and being encouraged to participate. Right now we have the situation where SUSE people do things behind closed doors for a while, and announce their status at status meetings. No-one outside knows what is underway or how to get involved. The recent opening of the development process of yast+zypp is a shining example of how things should have been done from the start. Congratulations to those responsible, and hopefully the effort will pay off.

It seems easy to implement, but getting a list of those repositories is problematic for legal reasons.

It would be easy to do either from api.opensuse.org (this doesn't have any public features at present so can't be used). Or from my search service, expanding something like: http://benjiweber.co.uk:8080/searchservice/SearchService/Repos/openSUSE_102 to also include descriptions and other metadata from the .repo files on the build service. I have an example YaST based frontend to the search service in the MetaPackage-Package you kindly made for me. Install http://benjiweber.co.uk/mp/yast2-mpp-0.0-0.suse102.noarch.rpm and run "/sbin/YaST2 PackageSearch" to play. Screenshot: http://bw.uwcs.co.uk/packagesearch-yast.png . The "Install Now" hooks into the automatically generated meta-packages from the SearchService to add the repository and install the package automatically. The same principle could be used to make a list of repositories with checkboxes as per Alberto's suggestion.

Yet, maybe having a "meta-repository" (sort of a "repository of repositories") hosted elsewhere (e.g. opensuse-community.org) could be a solution.

Something like http://benjiweber.co.uk:8080/searchservice/SearchService/Repos/openSUSE_102 with more information I think.

Have the right tool support out-of-the-box in YaST2, but just add a single meta-repository URL and also have the 3rd party repositories in the list. Again, hosting, see above.

Indeed.

...

Another possible solution would be to make it possible to click on the webpin link and install the package you need. But it doesn't sound that easy to me too, because of the dependencies issues.

Precisely. But Benjamin is also working on that: having files that not only have a list of packages to install with a single click (more or less), but also dependent repositories that are added if not already present.

Indeed, see the above meta-package-package and http://benjiweber.co.uk:8080/webpin/index-test.jsp to play.

But the most difficult part with such an approach is certainly the browser, much more than the package manager side of things: 1) associating a MIME type in Konqueror+Firefox+Seamonkey with an application that handles parses the file, adds missing repositories, passes the package installation to sw_single or zypper (or smart) 2) security... with a tool like that, you definitely have to think about security: * setup+use sudo or replicate user delegation (as in ZMD) or prompt for the root password to add repositories and packages * always prompt the user for confirmation before doing anything * package signatures, RPM keyring (is mostly already handled by YaST2 though, when adding a signed repository) * put some thoughts into malicious misuse of that technology to sneak in rootkit packages and how to circumvent it

My demo yast module for this: - Prompts user for root password /after/ displaying all the information about what will be done to the system to make malicious use as easy for the user to detect as possible. - All the Package Signature checking etc is provided by the yast package installation/ repository handling api already, so done for us. _ Benjamin Weber --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org

On Sat, 5 May 2007, Volker Kuhlmann wrote:

Ack^3. Pitching opensuse against ubuntu is currently difficult. 10.1 is a dead loss, 10.2 is only good after installing a bunch of updates and obliterating zmd (risky business, might uninstall 2/3 of KDE and basic system libraries, so why not format in the first place?).

Just to make sure: You can (a) install openSUSE 10.2 without the ZENworks stack or (b) uninstall the ZENworks stack at any point after installation. We have successfully tested both scenarios, and I can certify that taking either of these steps won't lead to loss of hair, vision, nor any parts of the KDE stack ;-)

Repo management still sucks when compared with something debian-based. Sorry, but currently it's alpha 3 so a good time to say it ;)

Indeed, repo management is one of those areas where we certainly want to see what we can do to improve usability. I'll ask our teams to make some public proposals based on ideas that have been floating around internally and on this list (among others). On Sun, 6 May 2007, Pascal Bleser wrote:

But the community side of things has its own share of issues we shall (try to) work on.

For example: send more bug reports. Really. Looking at some of those issues that I personally reported in the last couple of months, I would have hoped for more of them to have been reported by others already. I want openSUSE/SLE to be the most polished distro on the planet. Everyone's help on that front, be it design, be it reports, be it concrete fixes, is most welcome!

Frankly, I doubt any of the SUSE people will see this thread and jump on to make some comments.. one cannot monitor that many lists (or interesting posts in a load of off-topic crap).

Now, while I noticed a tendency of mine to agree with what you write, on this one I clearly have to disagree, Pascal. :-P Gerald -- Dr. Gerald Pfeifer E gp@novell.com SUSE Linux Products GmbH Director Inbound Product Mgmt T +49(911)74053-0 HRB 16746 (AG Nuremberg) openSUSE/SUSE Linux Enterprise F +49(911)74053-483 GF: Markus Rex --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org

I seriously agree on the remaster. On 5/5/07, James Tremblay wrote:

Hey guys, I know we are all busy but I am reinstalling 10.2 for a project I'm working on with the kiwi group and I started the reinstall at 4 o'clock it's now 10 o'clock and it's only 40% through the updates, on a cable modem. I think it's time to re-master the ISO's (sorry Lars). going back to "ready for the masses , this kind of major update only six months in to a release is a little much and some of this might have been avoided with a longer beta\rc status. I have also read the talk about about adding the repositories being easy unless your a complete "n00b", I've been around for as long as opensuse has existed and I have trouble with the location of things on our pages ,especially finding packages, update sources (cause I always seem to get the utah one and it always crashes) and dependencies. Maybe, we should slow down on all the work on a new release and clean house a little, get the process of releasing, updating and supporting our distro more streamlined and "n00b" friendly, so that we can become the distro for the masses. So those people obviously "put out" by having to deal with us "n00bs" can get a little distance from us. -- James Tremblay Director of Technology Newmarket School District Novell CNE 3\4\5 CLE \ NCE in training. http://en.opensuse.org/education --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org

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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 The Sunday 2007-05-06 at 15:24 +0200, Alberto Passalacqua wrote:

Il giorno sab, 05/05/2007 alle 22.23 -0400, James Tremblay ha scritto:

...

Hey guys, I know we are all busy but I am reinstalling 10.2 for a project I'm working on with the kiwi group and I started the reinstall at 4 o'clock it's now 10 o'clock and it's only 40% through the updates, on a cable modem. I think it's time to re-master the ISO's (sorry Lars).

...

Preparing remastered ISO's would distract the team from working on 10.3, and they're already busy on SLE SP1. As a consequence I think it's neither a good idea nor a priority.

How about a patch dvd iso? Kind of mirror on dvd, or SP? It would save time for those installs. And those without broadband could burn the extra dvd on an internet caffe. It shouldn't be that dificult. Maybe even a script of some kind could make the iso on the fly. - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Made with pgp4pine 1.76 iD8DBQFGPd/etTMYHG2NR9URAnYdAJ9+hr5UeY0R1sJOFH9SYqOZs5iBWACdEypb leqSfRt7i8yOXTKzm+5D4KE= =e6F1 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 The Sunday 2007-05-06 at 16:34 +0200, Pascal Bleser wrote:

But note that just rsyncing the patches would be pretty much the same thing (and that can be done in an Internet Café too, just bring along rsync.exe ;))

Right now, I don't know what is needed to create a patch CD. I knew, some versions back, but now I don't. Worse, YOU does not keep the patches on the HD: they are deleted, even if you tell YOU to keep them. - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Made with pgp4pine 1.76 iD8DBQFGPlXAtTMYHG2NR9URAtRXAJoC2UD9uPp+hiJjmSK2sno96+XWkgCfRnTC ka6QCEjHCrw9DTop2VuiQ1o= =x5d+ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

On Mon 07 May 2007 10:37:57 NZST +1200, Gerald Pfeifer wrote:

On Mon, 7 May 2007, Carlos E. R. wrote:

...

Worse, YOU does not keep the patches on the HD: they are deleted, even if you tell YOU to keep them.

Do you have a Bugzilla-ID for that? If you aren't aware of one, and cannot find one, would you mind filing this as a bug?

I thought I filed this ages ago for 10.0/10.1, but can't find it now either. For 10.2 the solution is not what one would call ingenious: the "keep downloaded patches" tickbox has been removed, so nobody can complain that it doesn't work ;))) And all downloaded patches are deleted immediately after install, i.e. it's download, applydelta, install, delete, next package. I myself keep on mirroring my own delta rpms. Volker -- Volker Kuhlmann is list0570 with the domain in header http://volker.dnsalias.net/ Please do not CC list postings to me. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org

On Sun 06 May 2007 12:55:26 NZST +1200, Gerald Pfeifer wrote:

On Sat, 5 May 2007, Volker Kuhlmann wrote:

...

Ack^3. Pitching opensuse against ubuntu is currently difficult. 10.1 is a dead loss, 10.2 is only good after installing a bunch of updates and obliterating zmd (risky business, might uninstall 2/3 of KDE and basic system libraries, so why not format in the first place?).

Just to make sure: You can (a) install openSUSE 10.2 without the ZENworks stack or (b) uninstall the ZENworks stack at any point after installation.

(a) is a possibility, but unfortuantely it's not default and therefore typically not used. As for uninstalling zenworks, I tried to talk a friend through this over the phone. Yast was duly installed on first attempt of selecting the pattern. Zenworks refused to bugger off to /dev/null though, even when deselected. Various reboots and refresh attempts had no effect, so forcefully uninstalling the packages belonging to the pattern was in order. This created a dependency warning, to be ignored if one wanted a chance of sending zenworks West. Next thing that went over the screen was "uninstalling kde-extras, uninstalling kde-libs, uninstalling kde...". So I told my friend to pull the plug, and it cost me some hours of driving over and fixing up the system again manually. You may have tested it, but I know for certain that there's a risk that it'll kill the system.

We have successfully tested both scenarios, and I can certify that taking either of these steps won't lead to loss of hair, vision, nor any parts of the KDE stack ;-)

Where do I send my invoice for damages arising from this dud certification...? ;-)

For example: send more bug reports. Really. Looking at some of those issues that I personally reported in the last couple of months, I would have hoped for more of them to have been reported by others already.

There are practical problems with testing alphas. Few people have unused uptoscratch hardware sitting around where it doesn't matter if the filesystems go down the gurgler by alpha testing. Using vmware is useless without installing the kernel sources and modules and so on, and doesn't allow testing of hardware interaction. It's a resource issue which I haven't satisfactorily solved, and I'm probably not alone. A wiki section on how to test would be helpful. Volker -- Volker Kuhlmann is list0570 with the domain in header http://volker.dnsalias.net/ Please do not CC list postings to me. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org

On 5/6/07, Gerald Pfeifer wrote:

On Sat, 5 May 2007, Volker Kuhlmann wrote:

...

Ack^3. Pitching opensuse against ubuntu is currently difficult. 10.1 is a dead loss, 10.2 is only good after installing a bunch of updates and obliterating zmd (risky business, might uninstall 2/3 of KDE and basic system libraries, so why not format in the first place?).

Just to make sure: You can (a) install openSUSE 10.2 without the ZENworks stack or (b) uninstall the ZENworks stack at any point after installation.

If it's not default it won't apply to the vast majority of the users. Only those specifically told to remove it will do so. You expect $averageuser to a) know what ZMD is, b) understand the openSUSE package management architecture and c) comprehend the problems therein and make the decision to remove it?

We have successfully tested both scenarios, and I can certify that taking either of these steps won't lead to loss of hair, vision, nor any parts of the KDE stack ;-)

...

Repo management still sucks when compared with something debian-based. Sorry, but currently it's alpha 3 so a good time to say it ;)

Indeed, repo management is one of those areas where we certainly want to see what we can do to improve usability. I'll ask our teams to make some public proposals based on ideas that have been floating around internally and on this list (among others).

Good.

...

Frankly, I doubt any of the SUSE people will see this thread and jump on to make some comments.. one cannot monitor that many lists (or interesting posts in a load of off-topic crap).

Now, while I noticed a tendency of mine to agree with what you write, on this one I clearly have to disagree, Pascal. :-P

I expect the reason he said this was to try and have someone like you prove it wrong :p There has a been a lack of SUSE presence on the lists in the past weeks with holidays and SLE. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 El 2007-05-06 a las 03:09 -0400, Cristian Rodriguez R. escribió:

Pascal Bleser escribió:

...

Yes, that would be good. And then, IMO the focus should be put on usability of the package manager (adding/removing/refreshing repositories, finding/installing packages, installing patches/online updates, upgrading packages (including from 3rd party repos), etc...).

Yes, If there is something we need to focus for 10.3 is ending with the "package manager" problem once for all, nowdays it lacks of speed and certainly requires usability improvements but is functional at least..it should be the number 1 priority...IMHO.

There is another issue. According to the survey (http://files.opensuse.org/opensuse/en/6/6c/Opensuse_survey_102_data_final.pd...), 27% of users do not have flat rate internet tariff, and 5% use a modem or isdn connection. All those people would benefit from a method to download patches that used less network bandwidth... just downloading the repodata can be a pain over a modem, but even if it is fast, 27% of users have got to pay for that download, and many times. I know it is not simple, but could this be improved, somehow? - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Made with pgp4pine 1.76 iD8DBQFGPc5ptTMYHG2NR9URAtxuAJ9bXuS/iHRgVnULiiBGZHZ6lQnlPQCfWOuM vZniseDMxsCv7hFPfkvaqjs= =cD6B -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 The Sunday 2007-05-06 at 19:41 -0400, Cristian Rodriguez R. wrote:

Carlos E. R. escribió:

...

According to the survey (http://files.opensuse.org/opensuse/en/6/6c/Opensuse_survey_102_data_final.pd...), 27% of users do not have flat rate internet tariff, and 5% use a modem or isdn connection.

I read the survey results different then, for me it means we shoudl focus on improvements that the mayority of users will use ( that is in this case people with broadband connections.)

So, you belong to those people that disregard the needs of the minority just because you belong to the majority? Perhaps then opensuse should then be a male only distro, as only 1% are female? Common! :-( - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Made with pgp4pine 1.76 iD8DBQFGQFdgtTMYHG2NR9URAvROAJ9RibnzrXweZo+cAUYzJSZKDpeVlQCfccUw /39U4MrTX/b1tUTgu4bRQ5A= =qD4O -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 The Thursday 2007-05-10 at 00:51 -0400, Cristian Rodriguez R. wrote:

Carlos E. R. escribió:

...

So, you belong to those people that disregard the needs of the minority just because you belong to the majority?

Nope. not at all, I mean that things that will serve the mayotrity of users should have priority, time is a limited resource unfortunately :-(

Then, I should remind you that by making the package management usable again for people with limited network resources it will work blazingly fast for those with cheap fat broadband. - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Made with pgp4pine 1.76 iD8DBQFGQ0uDtTMYHG2NR9URAuSsAJ9RrSOqGYd6wOBQjJG/56BvBq9s3wCgkOD6 WvGVzoZUMwW3bqgp4yxQRv4= =ErE4 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

On Friday 04 May 2007 01:29, Pascal Bleser wrote:

James Tremblay wrote:

...

ok, but historically since 10.0 we have introduced new technology (because we are an engineering distro, not a packaging distro i.e. Ubuntu) that I would not expose the first timer to, in the sense of learning how to overcome the problems that arose from that new technology i.e. the new gnome and kde interfaces, and the updater issues.

What "new GNOME and KDE interfaces" ? KDE 3.5.6 ? The new start menus ?

yes, early on, I had mine crash and want to restart more than once.

...

If opensuse wants to target the soho/homeuser then lets have an LTS version, lets gold master 10.2 without the zenupdater , with gnomebaker, with wireless drivers and their instructions and support it for 3 years like Ubuntu. Other

It's not because Ubuntu does an "LTS" that it is the best nor the most viable model. Canonical has still everything to prove wrt their support. Furthermore, LTS is not free, nor is SLED. Actually, if it's a desktop you're after, SLED is less expensive than Ubuntu LTS. And, at the very least, the SUSE engineers have proven their capabilities in the past wrt support, which is not yet the case for the few full-time employees of Canonical.

you make my point the moment you bring SLED into the conversation. SLE is rock solid , I use it for many things at my school and I love it. Finding answers to problems is easy with support.novell.com and as long as you don't want some package thats not included, all the applications that a person needs to work in the enterprise are all at your finger tips and since an enterprise techie is involved,wrt modifications, adding outside packages isn't really a question, is it?

...

wise it really isn't for the first timer to have to struggle with drivers and codecs and updators and looking for everyday applications and then in 18 months have to update it by reinstalling everything to continue to get security updates.

If feature-stability and long lifetime is what you're looking for, buy SLED for a few bucks. If you want evolution, new features, improvements, go for openSUSE. But that doesn't mean it has to be "beta-quality", unstable nor anything else.

...

Wireless configuration support and the network manager are still unstable especially when registering to the customer center during installation and lots of people don't rewire their homes, they buy a wireless router and wireless cards and pay someone to set it up or call Dell to walk them through it. Are we ready to compete with that ? No , i don't think so , we would need

Sure but that's not any different from other Linux distributions. openSUSE is pretty good wrt hardware detection and easy of installation IMO.

Blame the wireless card vendors, they're making an awful mess out of chipsets, incompatible devices with the same model number, closed specs, etc...

I'm not saying Ubuntu is any better in this regard.

...

that 900 system in place, we would need the update.opensuse.org to be set up as the default update channel in yast( even if registering fails) and have it redirect to other mirrors, we would need software.opensuse.org to be the default application source for add-ons (like the multiverse) and a

The build service repositories (software.opensuse.org) just contain too much software -- having it split up into many repositories as now is the right model. You wouldn't want experimental xorg73 packages to show up in the same repository as the latest Firefox package. Then there needs to be some work done to present software in the correct usage categories. i.e. experimental , stable , games , productivity , hobbies, etc. and of course searchable without running of to someone else's web page , i.e. webpin, which isn't an obvious description of what you get there and should be a drop down choice of search.opensuse.org

update.opensuse.org makes sense though.

...

support.opensuse.org forum\KB to even exist. These things are all being

http://suseforums.net/ http://suselinuxsupport.de/ http://opensuse.us/

not located as a click from opensuse.org , remember these people that we are trying to gather have never heard of SuSE. They only know , if at all , opensuse. They want a onestop shop.

...

discussed and worked on but we can't put the cart before the horse and start extolling the virtues of our distro to the homeuser, when in reality we the enthusiast are the only ones that can make it all work with a little guidance from friends in obscure places like the irc forums. Some one needs to start

IRC "forums", "obscure" ?

yes, obscure to the masses , take a group of windows power users with no linux knowledge hand them a laptop and a copy of opensuse , tell them they get to keep the laptop if they can recreate their home computers applications and functionality , without any help from us. Bet they don't even think about an irc forum, and if they do, get frustrated trying to get the system to get them there. We are trying to sell computers to the single mom who's kids need a computer but the one with the Microsoft tax is 200.00 dollars more, as well as the power user.

...

consolidating the places we get help from on an intuitive location like "support.opensuse.org" because the masses are used to the host domain having these kinds of pages. our front page is difficult to navigate because the things homeusers are looking to find aren't what we look for when we go

File bugs for those suggestions, give feedback to the web designers of the site when they make a proposal on the list (but not hidden in a large post on this list ;))

start a mailing list "opensuse-website" I'll join

...

there, even software.opensuse.org has changed recently and it is obscure even to me how to search for packages in the different repos. I was looking to see

True, it's still lacking a lot on the end-user interface, but efforts have been concentrated on the packager side of things up to now (which is even more important in the first place). Hopefully there will be some sort of interface for users soon. As for finding packages, Benjamin Weber's webpin is currently the best option.

is that mature enough to sell to the single mom?

...

if we had a 10.2 package for NBD and had to go to google to find it on opensuse.org, this is unacceptable to the novice. So that novice goes looking for a click and run distro like Ubuntu.

Ubuntu is no "click and run distro", it's by no means easier to set up and use than openSUSE. The only thing that's better with Ubuntu is the package manager. Idealizing Ubuntu as being perfect and not having any issues is ridiculous.

you confuse installation with adding software , which is probably why Mr. Dell is looking at Ubuntu for his end user PC's he knows that not only techies will be asking for them and he has looked at what offerings are made to that curios windows power user after the install.

...

No our structure is still to immature to sell it to the homeuser masses, therefore I agree with Justin and Bruce and Ted, opensuse is the techies version.

Not to say there aren't a lot of things to improve, but it isn't a "techies version" more than SLED nor Ubuntu nor Fedora nor ...

as far as I'm concerned they are all techies versions and Linux suppliers, not Linux itself, are the ones that need improvement. We need to hire people in marketing to layout our sites we need to do more user testing like Novell did to find out what SLED needed and how people used it. Only now we are working on delivery not functionality so we need to do usability testing on our websites. I stand by my assertion that our structure is still to immature to offer to the masses. -- James Tremblay Director of Technology Newmarket School District Novell CNE 3\4\5 CLE \ NCE in training. http://en.opensuse.org/education --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 James Tremblay wrote:

On Friday 04 May 2007 01:29, Pascal Bleser wrote:

...

James Tremblay wrote:

...

ok, but historically since 10.0 we have introduced new technology (because we are an engineering distro, not a packaging distro i.e. Ubuntu) that I would not expose the first timer to, in the sense of learning how to overcome the problems that arose from that new technology i.e. the new gnome and kde interfaces, and the updater issues. What "new GNOME and KDE interfaces" ? KDE 3.5.6 ? The new start menus ?

yes, early on, I had mine crash and want to restart more than once.

Ok, well, GNOME... and both menus are WIP. So what, use KDE, switch to the KDE kicker menu.

...

...

If opensuse wants to target the soho/homeuser then lets have an LTS version, lets gold master 10.2 without the zenupdater , with gnomebaker, with wireless drivers and their instructions and support it for 3 years like Ubuntu. Other It's not because Ubuntu does an "LTS" that it is the best nor the most viable model. Canonical has still everything to prove wrt their support. Furthermore, LTS is not free, nor is SLED. Actually, if it's a desktop you're after, SLED is less expensive than Ubuntu LTS. And, at the very least, the SUSE engineers have proven their capabilities in the past wrt support, which is not yet the case for the few full-time employees of Canonical.

you make my point the moment you bring SLED into the conversation. SLE is rock solid , I use it for many things at my school and I love it. Finding answers to problems is easy with support.novell.com and as long as you don't want some package thats not included, all the applications that a person needs to work in the enterprise are all at your finger tips and since an enterprise techie is involved,wrt modifications, adding outside packages isn't really a question, is it?

I don't see what you mean with your last line. You can add packages built for openSUSE 10.1 from 3rd party repositories. But that pretty much defeats the idea behind SLED. [...]

...

...

Wireless configuration support and the network manager are still unstable especially when registering to the customer center during installation and lots of people don't rewire their homes, they buy a wireless router and wireless cards and pay someone to set it up or call Dell to walk them through it. Are we ready to compete with that ? No , i don't think so , we would need

Sure but that's not any different from other Linux distributions. openSUSE is pretty good wrt hardware detection and easy of installation IMO.

Blame the wireless card vendors, they're making an awful mess out of chipsets, incompatible devices with the same model number, closed specs, etc...

I'm not saying Ubuntu is any better in this regard.

OK, and I understand your point of view from an end-user perspective. But there's no magic wand in this case. We really have to blame it on the wireless chipset/card vendors.

...

...

that 900 system in place, we would need the update.opensuse.org to be set up as the default update channel in yast( even if registering fails) and have it redirect to other mirrors, we would need software.opensuse.org to be the default application source for add-ons (like the multiverse) and a The build service repositories (software.opensuse.org) just contain too much software -- having it split up into many repositories as now is the right model. You wouldn't want experimental xorg73 packages to show up in the same repository as the latest Firefox package.

Then there needs to be some work done to present software in the correct usage categories. i.e. experimental , stable , games , productivity , hobbies, etc. and of course searchable without running of to someone else's web page , i.e. webpin, which isn't an obvious description of what you get there and should be a drop down choice of search.opensuse.org

Again, it's just not as simple as it might look at a first glance. Those "usage categories" you're talking about are actually "stability levels" (uh, bad name but well..). That's really tough to do, and Debian/Ubuntu pretty much fail at it. What you end up with on Debian is having a stone age old "stable" distribution, an outdated "unstable" and a broken "testing". Point is, what is the process for deciding whether a package is "tagged" as "stable", "unstable" or "experimental" (aka Debian's "testing") ? Bug reports ? Success reports ? That's pretty much the only way to measure the stableness of a package. The recent Novell survey shows that 85% of the people who took the survey (count bleeding noobs out, they didn't even know about the survey) don't contribute to openSUSE in any way. What would make those people contribute at least their experience wrt stability of individual packages (or groups of related packages) ? A good, integrated web UI would definitely help (one has to say that Canonical's proprietary Launchpad is a really nice tool for that purpose), but still... Whining won't cut, people have to contribute, even if it's "just" bug reports, success reports, etc... I would agree that a less challenging user interface would be needed for that though, Bugzilla isn't for noobs.

...

update.opensuse.org makes sense though.

...

support.opensuse.org forum\KB to even exist. These things are all being

http://suseforums.net/ http://suselinuxsupport.de/ http://opensuse.us/

not located as a click from opensuse.org , remember these people that we are trying to gather have never heard of SuSE. They only know , if at all , opensuse. They want a onestop shop.

Actually two clicks away (if you don't count the welcome page): http://en.opensuse.org/Communicate#Web_Forums But indeed, it's ridiculously well hidden. Note that a useful web forum will never, ever be hosted on opensuse.org as long as the legal situation in the US (and some other countries, most notably Germany (see the Heise linking case)) remains as it is now. If hosted on opensuse.org, Novell is liable for the content, and linking to package repositories like Packman or Guru (or others), that contain packages that might infringe patents in some countries (e.g. USA) is a no-no for Novell, which is quite understandable. And you will certainly agree that not being allowed to link to such packages or repositories would seriously limit the usefulness of a web forum ;)

...

...

discussed and worked on but we can't put the cart before the horse and start extolling the virtues of our distro to the homeuser, when in reality we the enthusiast are the only ones that can make it all work with a little guidance from friends in obscure places like the irc forums. Some one needs to start IRC "forums", "obscure" ?

yes, obscure to the masses , take a group of windows power users with no linux knowledge hand them a laptop and a copy of opensuse , tell them they get to keep the laptop if they can recreate their home computers applications and functionality , without any help from us. Bet they don't even think about an irc forum, and if they do, get frustrated trying to get the system to get them there. We are trying to sell computers to the single mom who's kids need a computer but the one with the Microsoft tax is 200.00 dollars more, as well as the power user.

Personally, I think that "windows" and "power users" is an oxymoron. But yeah, that's not the point ;) I would also like to see a desktop shortcut that is installed by default on KDE and GNOME which would start an IRC client on irc://freenode.net/#suse (and a shell script that wraps irssi for the console, just in case you can't start the X server any more) Name it "online help" and obscurity is gone ;)

...

...

consolidating the places we get help from on an intuitive location like "support.opensuse.org" because the masses are used to the host domain having these kinds of pages. our front page is difficult to navigate because the things homeusers are looking to find aren't what we look for when we go

File bugs for those suggestions, give feedback to the web designers of the site when they make a proposal on the list (but not hidden in a large post on this list ;))

start a mailing list "opensuse-website" I'll join

It's opensuse-wiki@opensuse.org

...

...

there, even software.opensuse.org has changed recently and it is obscure even to me how to search for packages in the different repos. I was looking to see

True, it's still lacking a lot on the end-user interface, but efforts have been concentrated on the packager side of things up to now (which is even more important in the first place). Hopefully there will be some sort of interface for users soon. As for finding packages, Benjamin Weber's webpin is currently the best option.

is that mature enough to sell to the single mom?

Probably not, you'd have to understand what "package" and "package repositories" are. But tell me, what would be "mature enough to sell to the single mom" ? Googling for a crack for commercial software, get a copy full of trojans and virii, scan it with 1 or 2 cracked antivirus suites, run the .exe installer, etc... ? Ultimately, the only viable solution is probably a web interface where you can browse software packages by category, by tags, have a search function, where each item shows the website, screenshots, a more or less noob-safe description and a single-click option to add the containing repository (if needed) + install the package with its dependencies. But that would be a *lot* of work. And with more than 85% of openSUSE users not getting involved into the effort...

...

...

if we had a 10.2 package for NBD and had to go to google to find it on opensuse.org, this is unacceptable to the novice. So that novice goes looking for a click and run distro like Ubuntu.

Ubuntu is no "click and run distro", it's by no means easier to set up and use than openSUSE. The only thing that's better with Ubuntu is the package manager. Idealizing Ubuntu as being perfect and not having any issues is ridiculous.

you confuse installation with adding software , which is probably why Mr. Dell is looking at Ubuntu for his end user PC's he knows that not only techies will be asking for them and he has looked at what offerings are made to that curios windows power user after the install.

That's an extreme simplification of a situation that involves lobbying, pressuring, lots of money, etc... (yes, I mean between Microsoft and Dell, in both directions).

...

...

No our structure is still to immature to sell it to the homeuser masses, therefore I agree with Justin and Bruce and Ted, opensuse is the techies version.

Not to say there aren't a lot of things to improve, but it isn't a "techies version" more than SLED nor Ubuntu nor Fedora nor ...

As far as I'm concerned they are all techies versions and Linux suppliers, not Linux itself, are the ones that need improvement. We need to hire people in marketing to layout our sites we need to do more user testing like Novell

Marketing people have nothing to do with anything productive or efficient, and definitely not with usable websites (except the very, very few good marketing people out there). We would rather need web designers, usability experts, ... umm.. no, wait. What we would need in the first place is 50% of the >85% joining the effort, even with modest contributions. Maybe the real question is: how to bring those people into the active community ? Better site ? Better tools ? Probably. A kick in the ass ? Possibly ^^

did to find out what SLED needed and how people used it. Only now we are working on delivery not functionality so we need to do usability testing on our websites. I stand by my assertion that our structure is still to immature to offer to the masses.

Define "our structure". Ok, that probably answers the question. cheers - -- -o) Pascal Bleser http://linux01.gwdg.de/~pbleser/ /\\ _\_v The more things change, the more they stay insane. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with SUSE - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFGO7Pxr3NMWliFcXcRAoNQAKCukqZeNVN++HHWWoCl9ZeG6BoxNwCghOm4 nw6o3GjCMUwVmR9ppmXqZdA= =geMV -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org

On Friday 04 May 2007 19:12, James Tremblay wrote:

...

It's opensuse-wiki@opensuse.org

Joined today, i'll see how active it is.

Not much. I have feeling that guys are preparing new layout and have not much time to look on a mail list. Thanks for having a Portal as navigation help. -- Regards, Rajko. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org

On 5/6/07, Pascal Bleser wrote:

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

Pascal Bleser wrote: [...]

...

Ultimately, the only viable solution is probably a web interface where you can browse software packages by category, by tags, have a search function, where each item shows the website, screenshots, a more or less noob-safe description and a single-click option to add the containing repository (if needed) + install the package with its dependencies.

And this is the sort of thing I'm thinking about wrt that web interface - -- spent some time hacking a mockup, just to give a (very) basic idea:

http://linux01.gwdg.de/~pbleser/files/swportal/mockup/mockup.jpg

That looks really awesome and very friendly; as Benji has said before, we can also work on integrating i.e. OBS ratings with it and the like. My skills are limited, but I'll gladly help with that in any way I can; I really do think it's the way forward for online-browsing, though it sure would be a lot of work. =) Kind thoughts, -- Francis Giannaros http://francis.giannaros.org --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org

Il giorno dom, 06/05/2007 alle 19.37 -0400, Cristian Rodriguez R. ha scritto:

Francis Giannaros escribió:

...

That looks really awesome and very friendly;

yes it looks nice, however, unless Im missing something.. I see no way to implement this "click and install" feature.. how is supposed to be implemented ? what about package dependencies ?

Thanks to benjiman's (Benjamin Weber) work, the YaST module for this already exists and is functional. ;-) For what I understood, you click on the link in konqueror or firefox, the repository is temporary added, the application is installed. The installation is managed by YaST, which should manage the solution of dependencies too. Regards, A. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org

Andreas Jaeger wrote:

Alberto Passalacqua writes:

...

Il giorno dom, 06/05/2007 alle 19.37 -0400, Cristian Rodriguez R. ha scritto:

...

Francis Giannaros escribió:

...

That looks really awesome and very friendly;

yes it looks nice, however, unless Im missing something.. I see no way to implement this "click and install" feature.. how is supposed to be implemented ? what about package dependencies ?

Thanks to benjiman's (Benjamin Weber) work, the YaST module for this already exists and is functional. ;-)

And if that module would work with firefox as well, it would be perfect ;-)

I missed some discussion about this but may I ask what in detail would be needed to support it from Firefox? I heard some statements about simple mime helpers or protocol handlers? Wolfgang --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org

on 5/7/07, Andreas Jaeger wrote:

And if that module would work with firefox as well, it would be perfect ;-)

http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-project/2007-04/msg00181.html _ Benjamin Weber --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org

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Alberto Passalacqua wrote:
> Il giorno dom, 06/05/2007 alle 11.44 +0200, Pascal Bleser ha scritto:
>> Pascal Bleser wrote:
>> [...]
>>> Ultimately, the only viable solution is probably a web interface where
>>> you can browse software packages by category, by tags, have a search
>>> function, where each item shows the website, screenshots, a more or less
>>> noob-safe description and a single-click option to add the containing
>>> repository (if needed) + install the package with its dependencies.
>> And this is the sort of thing I'm thinking about wrt that web interface
>> - -- spent some time hacking a mockup, just to give a (very) basic idea:
>>
>> http://linux01.gwdg.de/~pbleser/files/swportal/mockup/mockup.jpg
> 
> I like it a lot! The idea of "click and install" is the way to go IMHO
> to solve many of the issues of additional packages.
> 
> I don't know much about these things, but if I can help in some way, I'd
> be pleased.

Sure
- - poke people to create a team to develop the site
- - find a SVN repository to host the code
- - domain/database design
- - artwork, website colour palette
- - feature requirements, ideas for functionalities, usability thoughts
(what would end-users typically want to do)
- - comments ?
- - how could a rating system work ? separately for each version/release,
globally only on the level of the application entry, or both ?
etc...

Some ideas, in the wild:
- - link to forum threads and mailing-list threads about issues/solutions
with those applications (sort of a "knowledge base")
- - some sort of integration with Novell's bugzilla (although possibly
quite challenging from a technical point of view... iChain could be a
major blocker)

Of course, if such a website sees the day (which I doubt, given the low
involvement of developers from the community), it can only work if there
are enough people maintaining it (posting information about
applications, screenshots, links to forums/mailing-list, ...).

The only thing that would prevent this from becoming
yet-another-great-idea-that-dies is people joining the brainstorming and
the development of it.

So, if anyone has ideas, skills, time, shoot now or never whine again.

cheers
- --
  -o) Pascal Bleser     http://linux01.gwdg.de/~pbleser/
  /\\        
 _\_v The more things change, the more they stay insane.
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Il giorno gio, 03/05/2007 alle 11.07 -0400, Justin Haygood ha scritto:

I personally believe openSUSE is the community distribution for Novell, and its for everyone that's not an enterprise (as in, home, home offices, enthusiasts, geeks, everyone that SLED isn't targetted to....)

That's the goal, and the potential of openSUSE. At the moment however James is right when he talks about the required workarounds to make it work for an average home user. Regards, A. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org