Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (2391 mails)

[Andreas Jaeger <aj@xxxxxxx>]

"David C. Rankin" <drankinatty@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

>       Stefan, NO. SuSE 8.0 was great, worthy of production machine
> service at the time of release. SuSE 9.0 was great, worthy of
> production machine service at the time of release. SuSE 10.0 was
> great, worthy of production machine service at the time of release.
>
>       Why would we not expect openSuSE 11.0 to be just as polished
> and ready for production use as its last three .0 predecessors? If it
> isn't, that would signal a fundamental change in SuSE culture showing
> that the rush to push release number next out the door to generate
> revenue has replaced dedication to putting out the best, and fully
> polished Linux distribution going.

We do not spend more time on a .0 release than on a .3 release.  Ignore
numbers, they are marketing ;-).

>       Stefan, you are a great help to us all and you do quality work
> with KDirStat. But why should anyone "expect" to have problems with an
> openSuSE release regardless of whether it is .0, .1, .2, or .3?
>
>       Also, why does it appear that Novell is trying to "lower
> expectations" about the release? All this talk about a ".0" being
> something we should watch out for with "all the new things in it." .0
> does not mean beta. Why isn't Novell proud of the upcoming release
> telling everyone, "The openSuSE 11.0 release will be the best openSuSE
> ever"?

Stefan is not speaking for Novell, so you should not ask him this ;-)

Speaking for openSUSE: I'm proud of 11.0, it will be a great realease.

BUT ;-) the engineers at Novell are not marketing experts and instead
of giving great marketing statements, they give a complete picture which
sometimes sounds a bit pessimistic ;-)

> > > I have said this elsewhere, 11.0 is little different to 10.3 
> >
> > This couldn't be farther removed from reality.
> >
> > Apart from the new KDE4 which you mentioned:
> >
> > The installation workflow is brand new.
> >
> > The look & feel of the installation workflow is brand new, and ALL
> > of the underlying subsystems are significantly changed (Qt4, mod-UI,
> > UI now really separate from yast2-core).
> >
> > Package management has gotten another major overhaul: New dependency
> > solver (a.k.a. "sat-solver"), major changes in libzypp, much better
> > performance.
> >
> > And those are just a few points that immediately came to my
> > mind. There are more changes, of course.
>
>       This is fantastic stuff! I look forward to it. As long as all
> of this is fully QA'ed, tested and working, then "bravo Novell!",
> "Great Job!" However, if it isn't working just right, and Novell has
> knowledge of problems that need to be worked .. and .. releases 11.0
> anyway, then "shame on you Novell, you know better."
>
>       There is no in between..

You cannot fully QA a distribution of this size inside a company without
the help of the community.  If we would want to fully QA this internally
we would need to make significant change, e.g downsize the distro in a
major way.

We're not at the goldmaster, so it's to early to give any clear
statements.  Look yourself in bugzilla to see what needs to be worked on.

> > You may or may not like the new KDE4, and you are right in that it
> > is still far from complete or polished in a way most KDE users wish
> > it was.
> >
> > But this is a chicken-and-egg problem: Without a significant user
> > base out there using KDE4, it won't ever get complete or even
> > polished. Many issues will go unnoticed, and developers of non-core
> > KDE applications will feel a lot less compelled to port their apps
> > to KDE4 (including myself with KDirStat).
>
>       Huh? KDE 4 is "alpha" software that is just "released for
> brave users". See www.kde.org! Surely Novell has more sense than to
> dump this on ordinary users as the default install. Provide it, but
> provide it as an option. Make 3.XX the default. Heaven forbid an
> ordinary user, much less a novice user is forced to deal with KDE 4 as
> their first look at openSuSE. From KDE's own rss feed:

Did you install Beta3?  Where did it install KDE4 as default?  You have
the choice between GNOME, KDE3 and KDE4 with proper wording.

There were a lot of requests to add KDE4 and it should be an install
option as it is.

> [...]
> > Yet, I think that KDE4 is more than a big public beta. There are a
> > lot of users out there eager to get it, and we should deliver
> > something for them, too.
>
>       Why do you contradict what KDE says about its own product?

His personal opinion, "I think".

> Doesn't KDE know best if KDE 4 is ready for the mainstream desktop?
>
> > But KDE3 is still there. I am not sure in which way you feel that
> > KDE3 is affected by KDE4; but we may all find this version of KDE3
> > to be the most stable ever, because most development efforts in the
> > KDE project went to KDE4, so KDE3 received little more than bug
> > fixes.
>
>       For people that need to get something done, KDE 3 is great!
> For people who want to sort out why their desktop crashed and help
> file bug reports, then KDE 4 is fine. In a year or so, KDE 4 may be
> ready, but obviously it isn't yet.
>
>       I continue to have faith that Novell will do the right thing
> with the 11.0 release and put out a quality product. However, it
> scares the hell out of me when I see company men intentionally trying
> to lower expectations about a release when they should be proud to
> shout that "this will be the best release ever." It frightening
> similar to the climate immediately before the Mandake collapse with
> 8.0 that took 6 more releases to almost recover from.
>
>       Now 11.0 hasn't been released yet, so no one can knock it. But
> after Novell has been provided with all the input, bug reports and
> warnings, if 11.0 is released as a cripple, the fallout may just be
> devastating. I don't want to live through it again...
>
>       If the 11.0 release date arrives and 11.0 still isn't ready,
> history tells us it would be far better to slip the release 60-90 days
> and get it ready, than to dump it on the public crippled.

I'm running beta3 and do not expect that 11.0 will be a cripple.  It
will be another great openSUSE distribution with a nice and shiny
installer, the fastest package management, several great desktops
environments etc!

Andreas
-- 
 Andreas Jaeger, Director Platform / openSUSE, aj@xxxxxxx
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