On Fri, 2007-03-02 at 22:52 +0100, Alberto Passalacqua wrote:
After quite a long time, I decided to do some considerations on the status of OpenSUSE as a community and as a distribution, starting from everyday experience.
I'll start from some bug reports, which affects me directly and which have been waiting for a solution for a long time since the release of 10.2 final. They're only examples, you can find many others on bugzilla.
* main-menu Hangs https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=240727
* Banshee doesn't recognize ipod https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=215301
* yast is still unable to list printers https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=240727
* Gimp can't print: https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=230887 which sends to bug #226710, which is not accessible.
The main menu bug is a blocker and it's really strange no-one in the development team noticed it during the development stage. A patch was recently released on bugzilla, but it only partially solves the problem for some user and does nothing for others, which indicates the issue is quite serious.
We suspect it might be related to the size or entries in ~/.recently-used and are continuing to look at it.
A final comment, to conclude this already long e-mail, is about the GNOME-KDE question (seriously, for once).
Gnome users (not only me, there are a few, but there are) are quite bored to see GNOME considered the de-facto second choice of the distribution because it is less tested than KDE and less maintained.
Now, I understand many developers at SUSE love KDE and that SUSE was a KDE based distribution. But in the past at least it was coherent: KDE was the default and SUSE was really optimised for KDE. It was so evident that GNOME appeared out of place, and it was OK. A user who chose SUSE knew it was a KDE distribution.
Today SUSE has no defaults, so a user thinks he can choose what he likes more, but it's not that way.
In openSUSE 10.2 it is so evident a lot of the efforts were put in creating a KDE which is better than GNOME. Examples are many: from the new kickoff menu, which was developed faster than the gnome main-menu and has none of the issues of the gnome one, to the opensuse-updater, which has no equivalent in GNOME (I know one is coming for 10.3).
Both DE should be considered as alternatives, not as rivals. I do myself this mistake, I know. But it's really annoying to read "Use KDE" or "Use a KDE app" when a user asks for help about GNOME.
Moreover GNOME is the default on SLED, and having a low quality GNOME on openSUSE doesn't help to give a good image to potential customers.
If things are going to stay as they are at the moment, I would really prefer a strong but clear decision to make openSUSE again a KDE based distribution instead of having a two-DE distribution only in appearance.
So, to be frank about this, the development group that includes GNOME
work has not been very focused on openSUSE in the past, however we've
been making a concerted effort to change this for 10.3. In the next
couple of days I'll post info more widely that you already know Alberto
about the opensuse GNOME mailing list and irc channel.
That being said the same development group that manage GNOME has driven
other general desktop technologies that have improved openSUSE
substantially, such as Xgl/Compiz, NetworkManager, Beagle, so a lot of
work has benefited openSUSE both for GNOME and KDE.
-JP
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JP Rosevear