Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-factory (1564 mails)

[C <smaug42@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Nov 9, 2011 at 08:17, Thomas Taylor <linxt@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Personally, I find the installation to be difficult for a "newbie".  I've used
> openSUSE since version 5 or 6 and find the most recent (11.3 thru 12.1) to be
> very user antagonistic.  Yes, I know how to make modifications during the
> install process but how many users just starting to experiment with linux (and
> therefore SUSE) would know that?

Exactly what modifications do you think a new user needs to make?

If you assume an average computer (which we have to assume in the
installer) and a new user who is first experimenting with Linux....
all they need to do is burn the ISO to CD/DVD or USB stick and pop it
in a drive/USB port.  Boot it up, take ALL the defaults, and bingo
bango, a few minutes later they should have a fully functioning
openSUSE install.  It's only the "corner cases" where someone has some
odd hardware that's out of the mainstream or tries to overthink the
installer that things go wrong... and guess what, it likely goes wrong
regardless of distro or OS you install.

I install openSUSE all the time on multiple machines on very varied
hardware (laptops, desktops and servers) and the installer (using
defaults) rarely fails to give me a working system.  I can think of
once on some really unusual hardware and user requirements that I had
a problem.

A new user doesn't have to think about a separate /home.. the
installer creates it for him by default.  A new user does not need to
think about things like "should I make a partition for /tmp and /usr
and /var and and and"  These are things that experienced users are
interested in... a new user often doesn't even know what a partition
is :-P

A new/inexperienced user will not be trying to rip the guts out of the
install by killing splashy and friends.  An experienced user.. .sure,
why not. but the openSUSE installer cannot possibly hope to cater to
every single possible odd out0of the mainstream requirement that
someone has... and seriously, taking out splashy and friends is not
mainstream.. this is a very special-needs corner case.

For advanced users who don't like the GUI and/or the GUI installer...
there is the Minimal install... no splashy included.  You get CLI, and
you can use the text YaSY to add apps including specific GUI
components post-install.

Yes there are some spaghetti dependencies (such as some very deep
reaching and as yet unexplained dependencies for splashy) and at
times... dependencies that don't make sense... it happens...
contributors are human... they make what appears to be the best
choices that make sense to them, and sometimes it doesn't work.  Open
a bug report and request it changed.


> There is no documentation on the DVD iso's explaining anything about things
> like what "branding" is, why a separate /home is a good idea, what network
> settings (during install) are (i.e. loopback device), or even how to handle
> some of the more common problems during install (video cards, etc.).

So... if you know there's a problem here, and you know what exactly
the problem is - you've listed several things here - then... the
openSUSE doc team is always in need of help.  You do not need to be a
C++ developer to write a doc.

You can find the Doc Team here:
http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Documentation_team
Maybe you could add content to this doc page here:
http://www.novell.com/documentation/opensuse114/book_opensuse_reference/?page=/documentation/opensuse114/book_opensuse_reference/data/book_opensuse_reference.html


> And what are we to think when we submit bug reports that don't seem to be
> investigated during several milestones?  The only response seems to be to call
> them duplicates but not find a solution until enough duplicates are 
> accumulated.

Loads of bug reports are fixed... all the time. Have you ever worked
in software development?  I don't mean open source, I mean commercial
paid development.... I have, for years, and... well guess what, bugs
are handed exactly the same way there as they are here - in fact
openSUSE bugs are generally handled better than any other commercial
or open source project I've worked on (I'm thinking of OpenOffice in
particular which had/has hundreds of bugs open/ignored for 10 years or
more)... and good luck submitting a bug to Apple or Microsoft - you
want to talk about black hole.. there's one.  At least with openSUSE
you *actually*do* have a say in where things go.

If a bug appears to be ignored maybe there's a reason for it... the
maintainer has too many bugs to manage... he/she has forgotten about
it (I've done that)... there is no maintainer... it's a low priority
because it's an unusual or very uncommon thing that a tiny number of
expert users might stumble on in rare cases (so an effort vs gain
decision is made... something I've had to do countless times).

The openSUSE community here is VERY helpful despite the claims made
earlier in this thread.  Look at the recent help given to the new user
who was asking advice.. there were what.. over 100 messages there with
loads of helpful advice - it was explained to this user why he might
want to add a few extra partitions outside of the default, and it was
explained in clear steps how to do this, people took the time to
explain the difference between x86_64 and i586/i686.. the list goes on
and on, and that's just one discussion... take a look at the useful
info D.Rankin posts - like the mysql/BASH tip today... People who make
 spurious claims about how crap the community is to them will never
believe, no matter how much proof you show them, that the reality is,
we're doing pretty good - room for improvement, but overall, this
community is alive, helpful and encourages participation at all
levels.

Hmmm... where'd this soapbox come from?  I'll just step down from
there, and retreat back in to the background again.

C.
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