On Monday 07 June 2010 17:49:31 Oddball wrote:
Richard Creighton schreef:
On Monday 07 June 2010 07:13:42 Andreas Jaeger wrote:
I didn't agree with the conclusion and reopened the bugreport - it occured as well on my system (without this thread I wouldn't have checked),
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To me, fundamental tools like the partitioner and repair system should be the ones that work at all costs because when the system fails in some way, they are needed most to work. When the system is working, they aren't as needed, but a Linux convert from Doze needs those basic tools to have a hope to revive a dead system when an errant power failure has hosed his ability to boot his computer and the repair system or partitioner and other basic tools fail, even make it worse.
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Helas for me this is about the same... Not to be able to fix a broken system is the worst thing that can happen... Half broken or invalid pkgs, crappy x-drivers, to 'restore a 'glimps' of a desktop, keyboards that don't work, or apps that are half out of the monitor and cannot be moved..... it is getting a little too bad for me too.... Everything is so broken, you do not know where to start... And it even destroys working configs, to spent half an hour just to get things that worked, back to work again....
Yes, such things are indeed frustrating. It is why I don't recommend openSuSE to first-timers anymore. I now recommend one of several flavors of PCLinuxOS which do a good job of 'just working'. That said; as good as that distro is, it still is lacking in some of the more advanced areas of system configuration. It has no "Yast2" for instance, but does have a decent group of semi-integrated replacements. It fails worst in what SuSE's partitioner handles best, RAIDs and LVMs. It simply doesn't seem to support them (directly) but does still supply the CLI tools that get the job done. Since 10.3, I have used a rather complex combination of RAIDs and LVMs, so as the partitioner evolved, it made setting up increasingly complex (read useful) systems much easier. Alas, the repair system never has worked even to the point of attempting to FSCK the individual members of a RAID, etc.
Should i say bye suse?
I don't really think so. None of the distros are fault-free. My first choice for newbies comes close in many areas, but I can find fault without looking overly hard. SuSE *used* to have a reputation for both being on the (relative) cutting edge *and* stability. Alas, that reputation is sorely tarnished of recent times and no, I don't blame Novell for the most part. I do blame a lot of it on bad management of resources. Much more of it is poor attitudes of those "in charge" of their little niches within the openSuSE structure and by those individuals making bad decisions rather unilaterally about the direction and timing of events within the product. While many of the 'events' are somewhat beyond the direct control of these managers, (KDE for instance) often their poor decisions alienated often large subsets of the openSuSE userbase. In other words, replacing things that were relatively functional and stable with things that simply weren't ready yet for general distribution. To remain "cutting edge" infers taking some risks, but most of them can be done by leaving the tried and true in place and allowing alternative installations of the things that might, in the long run, be a step forward and better. Unfortunately, the tendency is to rip out the current, relatively stable and mostly debugged code and replace it with ultra new technology without considering all of the domino effect changes that occur, at least not thoroughly enough. So, that being said, if you say 'bye to suse' as you suggest, I suggest the current alternatives won't be a whole lot better in most cases for various and often quite different reasons than those affecting openSuSE. I subscribe to a fairly large number of distro support/user mail lists and see many of the same issues (sometimes a whole new group) being "discussed". So, I don't feel leaving openSuSE is a particularly good solution. Giving support to the good 'civilians' like Dotan that report "zillions" of bugs and to people like Andreas Jaeger that are part of the Novell/openSuSE management structure that repeatedly seem to do a lot more good than harm, is a better answer. Hopefully he and a few others, both in and out of management can do things to improve the general attitude of the organization(s) toward the userbase members. Hopefully the elitism of many of the gifted programmers that man the Buglist mechanism can be tempered with the realization that their programming ability doesn't make them smarter about what is good and right about openSuSE, but it simply gives the skills that many don't have to *implement* the programs that help achieve those goals. I am at the end of my "product cycle" in life now but I have written many tens of thousands lines of code in my time so I empathize with those that can program. Unfortunately, my skills were not in C++ or Java or some of the more recent "languages". So, I am somewhat unable to fix current program bugs myself so I can also empathize with the *users* of the programs which exhibit bugs and other undocumented features. I am not sure what the solution is, but I suspect it doesn't involve "running", but more likely involves an "attitude adjustment", both on the side of the Devs/management *and* the userbase members who are often too quick to anger. So, in a word, NO, not yet, don't leave, but do try to figure out a solution and work toward it. Sorry for the dissertation, but I really felt it needed to be said because both devs and bug-testers are here in this forum and it is here that the changes that need to be made can have the most effect, IMO. Richard -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org