On Sat, Oct 15, 2005 at 05:52:32PM +0200, Sinisa Bandin wrote:

Interesting data at betterdesktop.org:

open http://www.betterdesktop.org/welcome/index.php?q=data/analysis/ select Test with reviews: "Turn off login music" look at the "The subjects distribution is as follows" table

it says:

Total Subjects 11 Male Subjects 3 Female Subjects 10

A little stange mathematics or what? ;)

No, you can just conclude from that that at least two of the subjects were hermaphrodite. Robert -- Robert Schiele Tel.: +49-621-181-2214 Dipl.-Wirtsch.informatiker mailto:rschiele@uni-mannheim.de

On Sat, 15 Oct 2005, Christoph Thiel wrote:

On Sat, 15 Oct 2005, Aschwin Marsman wrote:

Dear Christoph, Thanks for your quick reply.

...

Looks like a promising project to me, but I have two remarks: - I can't view the videos, time outs occur.

The server that delivers the videos seems to be down. I'v escalated this to Novell IS&T.

The server wasn't available yesterday evening when I tried again, but it is available now. It would have been wise to make sure the website and it's contents are available if Novell is putting a press release on the web though.

...

- The video's are taken from the Ximian website, which I would not describe as desktop neutral if you want to perform usability tests on different parts of the KDE and GNOME desktops.

If you look at the videos, you'll find that both KDE and GNOME were

I couldn't look at the videos yesterday, but I'm currently watching one.

tested. Quoting betterdesktop.openSUSE.org: "Over the past year, we have conducted many usability tests on different parts of the KDE and GNOME desktops."

That's not my point, I know they did test on both KDE and GNOME, but I can't see ximian as an unbiased entity when you are doing those tests. Have they developed improvements for KDE since Novell took them over?

...

Is Novell's desktop future on GNOME?

No. Neither GNOME nor KDE are the privileged Novell desktop environment - they both have the same status.

But what about specific installation tooling and new applications: I don't hope Novell is creating a Yast specific for GNOME, one for KDE and one written in MONO? It could be done off course by using something like an observer like pattern: create the functionality (backend) once and have different views on it using a GNOME/KDE/... frontend. What are the ideas on this for the OpenSUSE project? As a usability example: I would like to have the ability to make some improvements (in my opinion) to e.g. you: When downloading the patches and everything went will I don't want to press the Finish button myself, I would like a checkbox that gives me the option to specify the behaviour I described above. When will development be open for these kind of issues, and who will decide if a proposed patch will be included or not? Some short info about myself to put my remarks above in place: I'm a software developer based in the Netherlands, started in 1990 with Ultrix on a VAX and started with the SLS Linux distribution in 1993. I have developed technical software which mostly also included user interfaces for e.g. wafer steppers, air/vessel traffic control, radiotherapy and I'm currently working on self-checkout solutions for supermarkets. I've almost always worked on a UNIX/Linux platform.

Regards Christoph

Have a nice weekend, Aschwin Marsman -- aschwin@marsman.org http://www.marsman.org

On Sun, 16 Oct 2005, Christoph Thiel wrote:

On Sun, 16 Oct 2005, Aschwin Marsman wrote:

Christoph, Thanks for your quick reply.

...

That's not my point, I know they did test on both KDE and GNOME, but I can't see ximian as an unbiased entity when you are doing those tests.

Please note, that the test persons were volunteers (not Novell/Ximian employees)!

I know, but somebody has to do the analysis.

...

Have they developed improvements for KDE since Novell took them over?

That's not their job - they are supposed to work on GNOME.

And MONO.

...

But what about specific installation tooling and new applications: I don't hope Novell is creating a Yast specific for GNOME, one for KDE and one written in MONO?

Please, don't try to act naive! YaST isn't bound to KDE or GNOME - why should we reinvent the wheel?

Because YaST is currently based on Qt, it wouldn't feel native in GNOME.

...

As a usability example: I would like to have the ability to make some improvements (in my opinion) to e.g. you: When downloading the patches and everything went will I don't want to press the Finish button myself, I would like a checkbox that gives me the option to specify the behaviour I described above. When will development be open for these kind of issues, and who will decide if a proposed patch will be included or not?

The development is already open - just use Bugzilla to interact with the YaST developers on this. But please note, that there will be quite some redevelopment on the YaST2 Packagemanager + YOU for 10.1...

That depends on your definition of open: using Bugzilla to report a bug or issue a feature request is usefull, but open development to me would be that I can take the source, make a patch which does what I would like and sent that to a mailing list for discussion/review. Do we have that kind of openess already? Is it supposed to be like that in the (near) future?

Regards Christoph

Have a nice weekend, Aschwin Marsman -- aschwin@marsman.org http://www.marsman.org

On 10/16/05, Christoph Thiel wrote:

We had that kind of openness from day 0 - just go ahead, file a bugreport, attach a patch and discuss it with the developers. But be aware of the fact that we might not accept your patch - which has nothing to do with openness, but with the fact that the responsible developer / project manager will have the final say.

Christoph, I do think that this is the problem with communication in many open source projects is that we think that signing up for a users mailing list will give us some insight and say in future releases, whereas it seems to be more of a first level support situation. Some of what this thread is talking about goes beyond offering patches and bug reports and more into the general direction of the project. For example "please don't make OpenSuse yet-another-gtk-centric distribution" isn't exactly a bug report/patch situation. How does someone who's not a developer or Novell employee get involved in the openness you discuss, and find out what's being planned for upcoming releases? Sander P.S. I'm glad to hear about the in improvements YaST you mentioned, as that is the one weakness I've found in so far.

From my perspective exploring Linux over the past couple of years it has been this "last mile" of communication that has been downfall of

The participation link still doesn't answer where decisions regarding the future of OpenSuse are made and how people can influence their outcome. I realize there are probably private mailing lists and such where overall decisions on feature sets are made and goals are set, and they don't need the needless pestering of people who aren't actively involved in the project, but some insight into this process would go a long way. the community-based distribution model. I realize that if I download the latest development builds, hang out on IRC, monitor the development mailings lists and such I'll have some idea on where OpenSuse is headed with new releases, even if I'm still not sure what I can do to change it. But if I'm someone who's just using 10.0 everyday, who files bug reports and answers questions in forums, I really don't have any idea on potential big changes until they are more or less done. This IMHO is the challenge for distributions is to actually build a true community and not be so top down/insular as to exclude anyone who's not completely involved in development. This is why people change distributions so much, is because major changes like spatial nautilus just show up in a new build and there's not much the average user can do to keep it from happening or even know it's coming. Thanks, Sander On 10/16/05, Christoph Thiel wrote:

On Sun, 16 Oct 2005, Alexander Antoniades wrote:

...

I do think that this is the problem with communication in many open source projects is that we think that signing up for a users mailing list will give us some insight and say in future releases, whereas it seems to be more of a first level support situation. Some of what this thread is talking about goes beyond offering patches and bug reports and more into the general direction of the project. For example "please don't make OpenSuse yet-another-gtk-centric distribution" isn't exactly a bug report/patch situation. How does someone who's not a developer or Novell employee get involved in the openness you discuss, and find out what's being planned for upcoming releases?

There are many ways to get involved... I'd recommend you to read [1] first. Running the latests development version that's available on openSUSE.org would be another way to find out where the develment is happening. If you want to suggest new features or packages, the wishlists on the wiki would be the place to go...

Regards Christoph

[1] http://www.opensuse.org/How_to_participate

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+1 On Sun, 2005-10-16 at 19:09 -0400, Alexander Antoniades wrote:

The participation link still doesn't answer where decisions regarding the future of OpenSuse are made and how people can influence their outcome.

I realize there are probably private mailing lists and such where overall decisions on feature sets are made and goals are set, and they don't need the needless pestering of people who aren't actively involved in the project, but some insight into this process would go a long way.

...

From my perspective exploring Linux over the past couple of years it has been this "last mile" of communication that has been downfall of the community-based distribution model. I realize that if I download the latest development builds, hang out on IRC, monitor the development mailings lists and such I'll have some idea on where OpenSuse is headed with new releases, even if I'm still not sure what I can do to change it. But if I'm someone who's just using 10.0 everyday, who files bug reports and answers questions in forums, I really don't have any idea on potential big changes until they are more or less done.

This IMHO is the challenge for distributions is to actually build a true community and not be so top down/insular as to exclude anyone who's not completely involved in development. This is why people change distributions so much, is because major changes like spatial nautilus just show up in a new build and there's not much the average user can do to keep it from happening or even know it's coming.

Thanks,

Sander

On 10/16/05, Christoph Thiel wrote:

...

On Sun, 16 Oct 2005, Alexander Antoniades wrote:

...

I do think that this is the problem with communication in many open source projects is that we think that signing up for a users mailing list will give us some insight and say in future releases, whereas it seems to be more of a first level support situation. Some of what this thread is talking about goes beyond offering patches and bug reports and more into the general direction of the project. For example "please don't make OpenSuse yet-another-gtk-centric distribution" isn't exactly a bug report/patch situation. How does someone who's not a developer or Novell employee get involved in the openness you discuss, and find out what's being planned for upcoming releases?

There are many ways to get involved... I'd recommend you to read [1] first. Running the latests development version that's available on openSUSE.org would be another way to find out where the develment is happening. If you want to suggest new features or packages, the wishlists on the wiki would be the place to go...

Regards Christoph

[1] http://www.opensuse.org/How_to_participate

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On Mon, 17 Oct 2005, Aschwin Marsman wrote:

...

...

...

The development is already open - just use Bugzilla to interact with the YaST developers on this. But please note, that there will be quite some redevelopment on the YaST2 Packagemanager + YOU for 10.1...

Where can I read what the current plans are for YaST2? I can only spent my time once like everybody else, is it discussed on the opensuse-edge mailing list? Where can I find it on the opensuse.org website?

As of now there hasn't been much dicussion on the plans for YaST2 development. I'll try to get the YaST people to publish some kind of rough outline on what they are planning for 10.1...

...

...

That depends on your definition of open: using Bugzilla to report a bug or issue a feature request is usefull, but open development to me would be that I can take the source, make a patch which does what I would like and sent that to a mailing list for discussion/review. Do we have that kind of openess already? Is it supposed to be like that in the (near) future?

We had that kind of openness from day 0 - just go ahead, file a bugreport, attach a patch and discuss it with the developers. But be aware of the fact that we might not accept your patch - which has nothing todo with openness, but with the fact that the responsible developer / project manager will have the final say.

This means Novell employees are the responsible developer / project manager? Are can somebody from the opensuse community be also responsible for certain packages? E.g. vim 6.4 is released this weekend and I would like a rpm for this: will it be available in the SUSE or other available YaST repositories or should I create my own?

... well, this is a classical example that will be solved, as soon as we have the public build infrastrucutre in place ;) Regards Christoph

Hi, what about using good old Bugzilla and filing these as bugs against SUSE Linux, Component: Usability? cheers, Jana On Wed, 26 Oct 2005, Kenneth Aar wrote:

Where can we submit suggestions for better usability?

For instance there is this two things with the default KDE setup in SUSE that must be very confusing for new users of SUSE.

1: The use of the round green gecko button. If you look at the default desktop on SUSE the same button is found in three different places on the desktop. But it has three different functions. The three different functions are: Suse watcher(YOU), KMenu(Kicker), SUSE Greeter.

2: The use of the word "Control Center" in the KMenu. One leads to the KDE Control Center the other to Yast.

This is not good usability in my opinion.

This is not meant as a flame of SUSE but as constructive pointers. If this is not the right forum. Please tell me where I should direct such issues in the future.

-- Jana Jaeger jjaeger@suse.de SUSE LINUX Products GmbH Documentation Maxfeldstr. 5 +49 (0) 911 74053-0 D-90409 Nuernberg http://www.suse.de