On Wednesday 27 February 2008, Alberto Passalacqua wrote:

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the menu bar is completely unusable in openSUSE: icons are too big (distro patch), and there are tons of submenus (because we use the same menu config as KDE?)

openSUSE/KDE would definitely not object to a simplified application menu hierarchy. It is something that should be improved - but wisely.

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not-updated-to-the-latest-versions packages: yelp, totem, epiphany, rhythmbox for example. This is SUSE policy. The released version is not upgraded until the next release. I usually agree with it, because it's thought to grant stability, but I think it was used in the wrong way sometime, not providing updates when features were lacking (for 10.3, read: anjuta, gedit with python support, ...).

I think you're confusing things: packages in factory should be updated, and they should be updated early and often to catch regressions. usually you'll find the updated packages in the buildservice first though before they end up in factory, so that the biggest issues are already ironed out. I think thats a good compromise.

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when I update openSUSE with "zypper dup", I have to download nearly 1GB of packages. I seriously doubt that all of them were updated. It takes me hours to get all updates... (slow DSL line)

use deltarpms. I think it is actually a bug that we don't produce them for factory distribution - I don't know why actually.

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the Ubuntu development version is nearly never broken. Factory is always broken in some way (still usable, but either no network, or uninstallable updates, or impossible to mount a usb key, etc.). Another historical issue. I always read/experienced these issues.

a henn/egg problem: if nobody uses factory, nobody fixes factory.. somewhen I do want to launch the "use factory" campaign. Greetings, Dirk -- RPMLINT information under http://en.opensuse.org/Packaging/RpmLint --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On Wed, 2008-02-27 at 21:37 +0100, Vincent Untz wrote:

The policy you're talking about is about the stable openSUSE. Using factory, I have a more than one-year old yelp, for example.

This was a specific choice, yelp in 2.20 broke so much interoperability with non-gnome help URI's we didn't ship it.

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seahorse/gnome-keyring integration: in Ubuntu, when I ssh somewhere, a dialog pops up. In openSUSE, I need to use the standard ssh-agent, it seems.

I agree on this one too :)

This might just be a package selection issue.

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in the middle of the afternoon, I see beagle-build-index and the man db rebuild happening. Lots of hard disk use. Middle of the afternoon is when I use my computer. It should be done during the night if possible.

Hmm. This looks like a cron-job issue. It's usually done around late evening here.

My original suggestion (during the night) is of course a bit stupid for people working during the night. It should only happen when nothing else is happening, or when the screensaver is active.

The cron job issue is unfortunately related to how our cron works - daily cron jobs run 15 minutes after install by default. Drove people nuts with the locate database builds too. -JP -- JP Rosevear Novell, Inc.

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Alberto Passalacqua wrote:

I read this interesting wiki

http://en.opensuse.org/GNOME/Projects/Lived_in_Project/Ubuntu#Experience_of_...

There are some interesting points I share, and some points that imho are what characterize SUSE since the beginning, so I think it would be interesting to discuss them a bit to hear what users think.

Vincent, the author of the page, asked me to clarify that what he wrote are his opinions. Of course it's the same for what I write. :-)

Some time last year, my sole experience with Ubuntu ended with a kernel-oops during installation - well before any menus or anything had turned up. It was just too basic for me to even consider reporting. /Per Jessen, Zürich --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

Note that I only wrote the bottom part of the page, everything else is relating Rodrigo's experience, I believe.

Also, I updated a bit the wiki page to clarify things that were unclear (I wrote the page in a rush, while waiting for some compilation to finish). So some of the things you quoted have changed a bit ;-)

Hehe, OK. Sorry for not having asked what was your part.

Having one full-featured DVD is great in some ways, I agree. But we also already provide GNOME/KDE CD. We can improve things for them.

I agree.

Well, the new version of the installer doesn't take much longer than Ubuntu. And again, it's a good step in the right direction. But we can still improve :-) I'll file bugs/mail the yast list about this once I'll be done with a new installation.

Can you link them here? :-)

Agree. But if we make it use sudo, it's a bit better :-)

Yes. Just expect a sort of revolution by old time users (not me) :-)

Hrm, if there's only one OS (in our case, openSUSE), the only other choice is failsafe. 10 seconds is really long for this...

The a11y argument is good. I didn't think of it.

We might ask suseRocks on IRC about this.

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Ubuntu uses brown as the color for the root window when starting GDM (it's a gdm config option, I believe). It helps with the transition from the brown gdm theme to the brown default background on the user desktop. In openSUSE, we still use the greyish blue. It should be some green.

Hehe I love green, so I agree. But green is not much appreciated by various users, who switched back to blue or personalised backgrounds.

I suggested green because the default gdm theme is green :-)

Yes. I meant it's not easy to do that in general. But for the default, I agree.

Well, it's not about the applications, really. It's just the way the menu is organized. I need to look at which .menu file is used to understand why it's done this way.

Ah ok. I misunderstood.

(I'm not using gnome-main-menu so I can't comment)

Hehe. Good for you :-)

The policy you're talking about is about the stable openSUSE. Using factory, I have a more than one-year old yelp, for example.

Ah ok. That's something I didn't know.

Actually, Ubuntu puts this in some multiverse repository which is about non-free/non-legal-in-some-countries packages. That's a bit like non-OSS, I guess. But the result still feels integrated, as if there were only one repository.

Yes. I think this is a question of optimizing mainly the interface of the package manager (see other thread :))

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I couldn't find all gstreamer plugins for factory... So no multimedia experience for me.

This depends on the fact that those plugins can't be hosted in -factory for the same legal reasons they're not provided with the distribution. Moreover they're packaged by non-Novell related guys.

Yes, I understand the problem. That's still an issue for users, so we should try to provide something. It doesn't need to be hosted by Novell.

Yes. The solution for now was 1-click. But I agree, it's not something you easily find.

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there are tons of installed packages by default that don't make any sense. Some graphical ones (gftp? skencil?), some non-graphical (tcsh, ksh, zsh: do we really need all shells by default?)

Well, except gftp (the only decent FTP client for GNOME), the rest should be removed. It's ages we get the complaint of suse having this issue.

I'd be interested to know why nautilus doesn't work fine as a ftp client. That's a discussion for opensuse-gnome, though.

Yeah. Feel free to open that discussion. Nautilus is always slow when it does network operations on suse. That's a general issue (samba, ftp, ssh). If you need help testing things, just poke me in IRC (albertop).

The packages I put on the wiki are just examples, and I'd sure that checking the whole list of installed packages can give you others.

Oh I know. I tried to suggest myself at the beginning of my experience in the opensuse community...without results. :)

Keeping the firewall with an easier configuration would be a cool solution, yes.

I fully agree. You find a widely open door on my side. It's another issue for which I tried to push a bit, without results.

Keep in mind that I'm really talking about the average desktop users. Such a user won't know what apparmor is and exposing too many things he doesn't know will kill his user experience. He won't ignore it. He will look at it, wonder what this is about, think he's doing something wrong, etc. If we want to expose the apparmor features, it should be done in some places where it makes sense, not in the first place where user look.

I think a huge terrifying warning should be enough :) Regards, Alberto --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On Wednesday 27 February 2008 21:37:24 Vincent Untz wrote:

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sudo should be used by default for a desktop install. It doesn't make any sense to have the root account. There's an option "Use the same password for root as the one used for the user" in the installer, but it's not about sudo, I believe.

Thanks for pointing this out. I was myself a sudo supporter, but someone with more technical experience than me explained to me that sudo is not the right way to follow for various security/conceptual reasons, and I agree. In the end, UNIX has root, and the users should learn to manage it. It doesn't add complexity if properly explained.

I disagree with the fact that people should have to learn about root. It makes things more complex for an average desktop user. I know sudo is not perfect (and PolicyKit will help solve the whole issue in a good way), but it's good enough in the very short term for desktop users.

If PolicyKit does solve the desktop-privileged actions case in the medium term, we should stick with root for consistency with previous openSUSE releases and SLES (I don't see that changing to sudo) until then.

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with only a very short look, I saw many not-updated-to-the-latest-versions packages: yelp, totem, epiphany, rhythmbox for example.

This is SUSE policy. The released version is not upgraded until the next release. I usually agree with it, because it's thought to grant stability, but I think it was used in the wrong way sometime, not providing updates when features were lacking (for 10.3, read: anjuta, gedit with python support, ...).

The policy you're talking about is about the stable openSUSE. Using factory, I have a more than one-year old yelp, for example.

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Ubuntu is quite good at uploading new packages as soon as upstream releases (at least, for GNOME). This is really great for a developer like me.

I agree. But I don't want to think to continuous updates to the released version ;-)

I think the policy is very relaxed - just 'packagers should update their packages in a timely manner' which leads to inconsistent update frequency across different parts of the distro as packagers have different priorities which product to concentrate on. In the KDE team we cultivate a reputation of having the latest KDE packages before other distros. Will -- Will Stephenson Desktop Engineer KDE Team --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On Wednesday, 27. February 2008 21:31:54 Dirk Mueller wrote:

openSUSE/KDE would definitely not object to a simplified application menu hierarchy. It is something that should be improved - but wisely.

I see nothing wrong with our current application menu hierarchy: defining two possible levels and let the desktop decide how to represent (KDE showing both if there is more than one entry on second level) and GNOME application browser only respecting the top-level. Bye, Steve --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

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Note that some of the items here are simply caused by the fact that openSUSE tries to be everything at the same time (distro for server, desktop, etc.). It might make sense to have an install CD for server, and another one for desktop.

The DVD tries to be everything at once. The 1-cds and live-cds *don't*. I do agree that a dedicated server cd would be a good idea. openSUSE is very underrated by many as a (home) server, and a server cd would help emphasize it's great qualities in this area.

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the installer is way too complex, with too many things to do, even with the current simplification work going on in Factory.

The live-cd installer is much simpler, you can use that. If I'm not mistaken there are plans to push the live-cd more in 11.0 times. No need to dumb the real installer down further.

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sudo should be used by default for a desktop install. It doesn't make any sense to have the root account. There's an option "Use the same password for root as the one used for the user" in the installer, but it's not about sudo, I believe.

You're not the first former Canonical employee hired by Novell to make this request. To me it's nonsense. The sudo system is a lot more complex and confusing. You can use your normal password for system administration, then it's remembered for x amount of time, but only the first user on multiuser systems can do it. Ubuntu users have no clue what's going on, and very often they sudo things that they shouldn't. Regular root user is much simpler. Either you're root or your not, either you know the root password or you don't. Couldn't possibly be easier to understand.

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on startup, there's a 10 seconds delay in grub. Ubuntu only uses 1 or 2 seconds. It helps with the feeling of booting faster.

I think it's 8 by default? Might make sense to make it 5 or so. Perhaps enter some text that says the timer will be stopped by pressing a key (other than Enter)

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the menu bar is completely unusable in openSUSE: icons are too big (distro patch), and there are tons of submenus (because we use the same menu config as KDE?)

Not having the second level of categorization makes the menu much more messy and cluttered. Unless your next great idea is to install only a handful programs. And some general remarks... I think the general point of view around these parts is that the success of Ubuntu has a lot more to do with astoute marketing trickery, than with technological prowess. If we thought Ubuntu were so great and perfect don't you think we would *use* Ubuntu instead of openSUSE? For years people have been arguing "copy MS Windows as much as possible", now we keep having people telling us we must do everything that Ubuntu does and in the exact same way. I certainly hope that all those people wanting to turn openSUSE into Ubuntu won't succeed. Imho openSUSE strikes the balance between powerful and ease of use almost perfectly at the present time. You can dumb down GNOME and yast-gtk as much as you want, but please don't destroy the rest of the distro. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

Stephan Kulow wrote:

Am Mittwoch, 27. Februar 2008 schrieb Dirk Mueller:

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when I update openSUSE with "zypper dup", I have to download nearly 1GB of packages. I seriously doubt that all of them were updated. It takes me hours to get all updates... (slow DSL line) use deltarpms. I think it is actually a bug that we don't produce them for factory distribution - I don't know why actually.

deltarpms are bad for factory users as they require metadata updates _after_ the factory tree is synced out. It would take _even_ longer to get to a new factory snapshot being online.

But we have drpmsync data next to factory, unfortunately no-one is using them. And the question is how can we improve that? Let me ask you guys: would it be ok if you had to mirror either all of factory or a portion of it before you could update from your local mirror?

Greetings, Stephan

I haven't checked the wiki, so I don't know if drpmsync is described there. I haven't paid nay attention to it either. Where it fits in the picture could be made clear in the list. Out of sync mirrors do cause problems, zypper dup will throw up lots of conflicts one day and be largely fine next day when the full synch is completed. The list could be informed of when synch is about to happen and when the mirrors are likely to be fully synched - confusing things happen when the synch is in progress. Emperically I observe that Saturday is a bad day to update, Tuesdays usually OK. Regards Sid. -- Sid Boyce ... Hamradio License G3VBV, Licensed Private Pilot Emeritus IBM/Amdahl Mainframes and Sun/Fujitsu Servers Tech Support Specialist, Cricket Coach Microsoft Windows Free Zone - Linux used for all Computing Tasks --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

Hi, Le jeudi 28 février 2008 à 12:44 +0100, Martin Schlander a écrit :

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the installer is way too complex, with too many things to do, even with the current simplification work going on in Factory.

The live-cd installer is much simpler, you can use that. If I'm not mistaken there are plans to push the live-cd more in 11.0 times. No need to dumb the real installer down further.

It's not about dumbing it down, but about making it easier for people. Maybe it's better to recommend the live-cd installer for desktop users, I don't know.

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sudo should be used by default for a desktop install. It doesn't make any sense to have the root account. There's an option "Use the same password for root as the one used for the user" in the installer, but it's not about sudo, I believe.

You're not the first former Canonical employee hired by Novell to make this request.

I've never worked at Canonical. Don't know why you think I did :-)

To me it's nonsense. The sudo system is a lot more complex and confusing. You can use your normal password for system administration, then it's remembered for x amount of time, but only the first user on multiuser systems can do it. Ubuntu users have no clue what's going on, and very often they sudo things that they shouldn't.

Not only the first user can do it. That's a simple checkbox when you create a new user. But I agree that sudo is not perfect either (and that users tend to use it when they shouldn't -- although I wouldn't say they have less clue what's going on than in openSUSE, since it's the same with su/root).

Regular root user is much simpler. Either you're root or your not, either you know the root password or you don't. Couldn't possibly be easier to understand.

Well, I disagree with this since you first have to understand what root is and you also have to remember when you're root. That's fine for most people on this list, but it's not fine for 90% of the people I know. But I've absolutely no problem with keeping the root account. It's just a feeling I had when switching from Ubuntu. I'm not claiming it's the best way to handle things. [...]

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the menu bar is completely unusable in openSUSE: icons are too big (distro patch), and there are tons of submenus (because we use the same menu config as KDE?)

Not having the second level of categorization makes the menu much more messy and cluttered. Unless your next great idea is to install only a handful programs.

Well, it works really well. I very rarely have more than 7 or 10 items in a menu. In gnome-main-menu, the app browser doesn't have all those subcategories, while we have them in the GNOME menu bar. That sounds wrong. This might be something we just want to change on the GNOME side of openSUSE.

And some general remarks...

I think the general point of view around these parts is that the success of Ubuntu has a lot more to do with astoute marketing trickery, than with technological prowess.

If we thought Ubuntu were so great and perfect don't you think we would *use* Ubuntu instead of openSUSE?

For years people have been arguing "copy MS Windows as much as possible", now we keep having people telling us we must do everything that Ubuntu does and in the exact same way.

I certainly hope that all those people wanting to turn openSUSE into Ubuntu won't succeed. Imho openSUSE strikes the balance between powerful and ease of use almost perfectly at the present time.

I'm sorry, but I have the feeling you're missing my point. I'm not saying "hey, Ubuntu is so fantastic, I can't live without this, let's turn openSUSE into the same thing". I'm just saying that Ubuntu has done some things right, and that we can also do the same things right while continuing to do other things in a better way than Ubuntu. (and if you have any doubt: there are things I really disliked in Ubuntu)

You can dumb down GNOME and yast-gtk as much as you want, but please don't destroy the rest of the distro.

That's not about dumbing down. We can keep all features *and* have things easier for most people out there. That's where I'd like openSUSE to go. Vincent -- Les gens heureux ne sont pas pressés. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

Am Donnerstag 28 Februar 2008 schrieb Sid Boyce:

I haven't checked the wiki, so I don't know if drpmsync is described there. I haven't paid nay attention to it either. Where it fits in the picture could be made clear in the list. They are described on the page on how to setup a mirror. Setting up a mirror is using way less bandwidth than updating all rpms every day. But in its current form it's taking way more spare hard disk space.

Greetings, Stephan -- SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg) --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

Alberto Passalacqua wrote:

I read this interesting wiki

http://en.opensuse.org/GNOME/Projects/Lived_in_Project/Ubuntu#Experience_of_...

There are some interesting points I share, and some points that imho are what characterize SUSE since the beginning, so I think it would be interesting to discuss them a bit to hear what users think.

Vincent, the author of the page, asked me to clarify that what he wrote are his opinions. Of course it's the same for what I write. :-)

I will comment point-to-point, hoping not to forget any. Quoted text is from the page.

Let's start:

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Note that some of the items here are simply caused by the fact that openSUSE tries to be everything at the same time (distro for server, desktop, etc.). It might make sense to have an install CD for server, and another one for desktop.

I like the full-featured DVD, which can do everything. And I think that having everything in one place just adds value and simplifies things both for the final users and for the maintainers. I mean: 1 medium allows you to do what you need to, and it's easier to keep under control its quality, at least in the general aspects (more people use it).

I fully agree here as I can set up a box even for a complete novice or for anyone knowing that just about everything needed is available to hand. I have done this for a newbie with no internet connection, just needing the latest patch CD and Google Picasa on a memory stick.

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Also, there's something wrong with factory if we want people to use it (especially developers). Ubuntu is doing a much better job here.

Largely factory plays well with me. It's a good idea to get the latest stuff out there and tested. In the past I have had to use Ubuntu Kernels to get my acx111 card working as openSUSE does not provide sources for many of the extra modules and I've never got apparmor to slot into a vanilla kernel - may be due to total lack of HOWTO information or a script to handle it.

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the installer is way too complex, with too many things to do, even with the current simplification work going on in Factory.

Yes, it does a lot of things and it takes longer than ubuntu, that's sure. But on the contrary it leaves you with a fully configured system, with the software selection you want, with network properly configured even if you have various interfaces, with a firewall properly set-up and with running printing services. So I vote for keeping it long.

The installer is just fine, it all depends on perspective as going the other way from openSUSE to Ubuntu is not without difficulty.

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sudo should be used by default for a desktop install. It doesn't make any sense to have the root account. There's an option "Use the same password for root as the one used for the user" in the installer, but it's not about sudo, I believe.

Thanks for pointing this out. I was myself a sudo supporter, but someone with more technical experience than me explained to me that sudo is not the right way to follow for various security/conceptual reasons, and I agree. In the end, UNIX has root, and the users should learn to manage it. It doesn't add complexity if properly explained.

About the "Use the same password for root", I think it's plain wrong. Using the same password for root and the user reduces security.

That's where I first got lost on Ubuntu and don't understand logic of using the same password for user and root (sudo), it takes a little bit of getting used to. I had installed Kubuntu on a laptop so I could give remote assistance to a newbie and in fact it was the newbie who clued me in on that one. Every distro has its own oddities, but you could move from Solaris to openSUSE and find many things done the standard Unix way. Another newbie who had Ubuntu installed (7.04) tried and failed to get skype installed, I tried and also failed. I was left with the impression that that one difficulty was causing his interest in using Linux to wane. As I mentioned above, going the other way, you also find strangeness. Using Fedora you meet other oddities. Ubuntu, freespire and SimplyMEPIS are on a par doing things the same way.

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in openSUSE, there are two radeon drivers: the old one and the randr1.2-enabled one (new one), probably because the new one is still in beta. Still, it doesn't make much sense to have both and the new one works fine. Only this one should be used.

I agree. If the one selected is really working in all the cases. If not, better two than a complaining user.

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on startup, there's a 10 seconds delay in grub. Ubuntu only uses 1 or 2 seconds. It helps with the feeling of booting faster. Ubuntu seems to boot faster. There might be less services, some services are started after GDM is shown, etc. upstart might help too.

Ten seconds in grub are a reasonable time to allow the user to select the operating system. And I think it's a basic requirement also for accessibility. Not all users are young, fast and without issues.

I never get the problem people have with start up times, either for the system or an app such as OpenOffice, what matters to me is overall how responsive the box is once it's up.

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Ubuntu uses brown as the color for the root window when starting GDM (it's a gdm config option, I believe). It helps with the transition from the brown gdm theme to the brown default background on the user desktop. In openSUSE, we still use the greyish blue. It should be some green.

Hehe I love green, so I agree. But green is not much appreciated by various users, who switched back to blue or personalised backgrounds.

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the menu bar is completely unusable in openSUSE: icons are too big (distro patch), and there are tons of submenus (because we use the same menu config as KDE?)

I think it's related to the idea of offering a comparable choice of applications to the users on both DE.

The real, not addressed, point is that the menu (main-menu) is not well implemented and it's probably one of the most buggy piece of software we have (read never solved leaks). I would love to see a kickoff-like implementation in place of the app-browser.

That's all about fashion statements and what one person likes to wear, another will not be seen dead in. I like my desktop backgrounds to be decked out with aeroplanes, things like A380 cockpits are great for me, other than that I can work with all the other stuff. I use kde3 on most desktops and I have one here using kde4. Soon all will be using kde4 which is quite a bit different in most respects to kde3, doesn't really matter.

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with only a very short look, I saw many not-updated-to-the-latest-versions packages: yelp, totem, epiphany, rhythmbox for example.

This is SUSE policy. The released version is not upgraded until the next release. I usually agree with it, because it's thought to grant stability, but I think it was used in the wrong way sometime, not providing updates when features were lacking (for 10.3, read: anjuta, gedit with python support, ...).

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Ubuntu is quite good at uploading new packages as soon as upstream releases (at least, for GNOME). This is really great for a developer like me.

I agree. But I don't want to think to continuous updates to the released version ;-)

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when I update openSUSE with "zypper dup", I have to download nearly 1GB of packages. I seriously doubt that all of them were updated. It takes me hours to get all updates... (slow DSL line)

This is because dependency issues in the gnome side at opensuse are historical. One package usually brings half of gnome with itself. I don't know if it's necessary, but it's a common complaining we get.

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the Ubuntu development version is nearly never broken. Factory is always broken in some way (still usable, but either no network, or uninstallable updates, or impossible to mount a usb key, etc.).

Another historical issue. I always read/experienced these issues.

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I had to manually install the firmwares for my intel wireless card when I don't have a gstreamer plugin, totem shows a dialog proposing me to install it. It just opens a webpage. Ubuntu actually installs the right package (and adds the repository if needed)

Well, ubuntu violates a bunch of laws doing that :-) The intel firmware is provided on a non-OSS support and on the DVD, and should be installed by default. Online there's the non-OSS repository, which can be added at installation time. Keeping OSS and non-OSS separated is one of the long discussed key decision openSUSE made.

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I couldn't find all gstreamer plugins for factory... So no multimedia experience for me.

This depends on the fact that those plugins can't be hosted in -factory for the same legal reasons they're not provided with the distribution. Moreover they're packaged by non-Novell related guys.

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it's actually confusing to have so many repositories on software.opensuse.org. If possible, everything should go to the main factory repository.

I agree. But for codecs, drivers and others things, there are legal issues.

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there are tons of installed packages by default that don't make any sense. Some graphical ones (gftp? skencil?), some non-graphical (tcsh, ksh, zsh: do we really need all shells by default?)

Well, except gftp (the only decent FTP client for GNOME), the rest should be removed. It's ages we get the complaint of suse having this issue.

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Ubuntu doesn't use a firewall by default because the default services are secure and trusted (ssh, avahi, eg). With openSUSE, I have to choose what I want to do with the firewall.

Ubuntu does wrong on this side. Services are secure until you don't prove the contrary, and this happens often, considering that SSH is regularly patched, for example. A firewall is necessary imho, but its configuration should be easier. For example, while it's easy to open SSH port, it's a mess to have a properly working samba because of closed highports (hehe I know I said this too many times).

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too many unneeded yast stuff. Users don't need to know about apparmor.

Why not? A user can happily ignore that. Who does decide that the user doesn't need to know? That's not the UNIX philosophy. The user should LEARN to use his system, and the system should provide sensible defaults, of course (as a proper AppArmor configuration).

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A tool to config the mouse model in X shouldn't be needed.

The model of the mouse is selected in SaX, where the whole X is configured, and I think it's there because it might be necessary to set things in a fine way in certain cases.

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There are 8 >launchers in the Software category and I don't understand what they >are... etc.

Perfectly agree on this!

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seahorse/gnome-keyring integration: in Ubuntu, when I ssh somewhere, a dialog pops up. In openSUSE, I need to use the standard ssh-agent, it seems.

I agree on this one too :)

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in the middle of the afternoon, I see beagle-build-index and the man db rebuild happening. Lots of hard disk use. Middle of the afternoon is when I use my computer. It should be done during the night if possible.

Hmm. This looks like a cron-job issue. It's usually done around late evening here.

Going back a while, perhaps to 9.x, you could set udpdatedb to fire off at some a convenient time, but that changed. Can't find anything changeable in /etc/cron.daily/suse.de-updatedb. When I'm using OpenSUSE, kubuntu or Mandriva or any other distro, I just go with the flow and I don't see any pressing reasons for any of them to ditch the way they do Linux by thinking that one distro has all the answers. My measure is if my openSUSE boxes all got destroyed and I had to use someone else's Linux box with any other distro installed - Could I get my work done? Sure - at times I've used a Linux box not knowing at the time that it was a Linux box. Regards Sid. -- Sid Boyce ... Hamradio License G3VBV, Licensed Private Pilot Emeritus IBM/Amdahl Mainframes and Sun/Fujitsu Servers Tech Support Specialist, Cricket Coach Microsoft Windows Free Zone - Linux used for all Computing Tasks --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

Stephan Kulow wrote:

Am Donnerstag 28 Februar 2008 schrieb Sid Boyce:

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I haven't checked the wiki, so I don't know if drpmsync is described there. I haven't paid nay attention to it either. Where it fits in the picture could be made clear in the list. They are described on the page on how to setup a mirror. Setting up a mirror is using way less bandwidth than updating all rpms every day. But in its current form it's taking way more spare hard disk space.

Greetings, Stephan

Thanks, I shall give that a try as I have no shortage of disk space this end. Just checking the manpage now. Regards Sid. -- Sid Boyce ... Hamradio License G3VBV, Licensed Private Pilot Emeritus IBM/Amdahl Mainframes and Sun/Fujitsu Servers Tech Support Specialist, Cricket Coach Microsoft Windows Free Zone - Linux used for all Computing Tasks --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

You can dumb down GNOME and yast-gtk as much as you want, but please don't destroy the rest of the distro.

Hmmm! No way! ;-) --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

Am Donnerstag 28 Februar 2008 schrieb Sid Boyce:

Stephan Kulow wrote:

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Am Donnerstag 28 Februar 2008 schrieb Sid Boyce:

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I haven't checked the wiki, so I don't know if drpmsync is described there. I haven't paid nay attention to it either. Where it fits in the picture could be made clear in the list.

They are described on the page on how to setup a mirror. Setting up a mirror is using way less bandwidth than updating all rpms every day. But in its current form it's taking way more spare hard disk space.

Greetings, Stephan

Thanks, I shall give that a try as I have no shortage of disk space this end. Just checking the manpage now.

I tried it myself and it filled the spare 36GB and it was still not finished. So we need to work on it :) Greetings, Stephan -- SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg) --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

[ Disclaimer: I have used Ubuntu a lot prior joining Novell, but not I have never been employed by them in anyway ] On Thu, 2008-02-28 at 13:23 +0100, Vincent Untz wrote:

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To me it's nonsense. The sudo system is a lot more complex and confusing. You can use your normal password for system administration, then it's remembered for x amount of time, but only the first user on multiuser systems can do it. Ubuntu users have no clue what's going on, and very often they sudo things that they shouldn't.

Not only the first user can do it. That's a simple checkbox when you create a new user. But I agree that sudo is not perfect either (and that users tend to use it when they shouldn't -- although I wouldn't say they have less clue what's going on than in openSUSE, since it's the same with su/root).

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Regular root user is much simpler. Either you're root or your not, either you know the root password or you don't. Couldn't possibly be easier to understand.

Well, I disagree with this since you first have to understand what root is and you also have to remember when you're root. That's fine for most people on this list, but it's not fine for 90% of the people I know. But I've absolutely no problem with keeping the root account. It's just a feeling I had when switching from Ubuntu. I'm not claiming it's the best way to handle things.

I agree totally with Vincent. Using sudo, properly configured, also offer the advantage to not have to memorize a second password. You can still keep the root account.

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Not having the second level of categorization makes the menu much more messy and cluttered. Unless your next great idea is to install only a handful programs.

Well, it works really well. I very rarely have more than 7 or 10 items in a menu. In gnome-main-menu, the app browser doesn't have all those subcategories, while we have them in the GNOME menu bar. That sounds wrong. This might be something we just want to change on the GNOME side of openSUSE.

That one is bugging my like hell, I end up never finding programs because I don't know how they are categorized. Also submenus are always hard to use. [...] Hub --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

When following the discussion one gets the impression it is a bit of the old KDE vs. GNOME /overcomplicated vs. dumbed-down discussion; I find that rather dull.

Well, I agree. I was just joking (maybe not the right place, but well...the smiley should have clarified) with Martin. We often talk about GNOME, KDE, issues and such on IRC.

Much more interesting I think are new solutions, like the menu you find on the EEE-PC (ASUSTek's). Anyone had a look at it? It is quite similar to SLAB but not only lists applications as items but also links to sub-levels of the menu.

It looks interesting, at least from some screenshots I saw (sorry, no EEE around). I saw it, and it is somewhat closer to what I think it might improve the current menu. Do you think this would help to bring the menu back to "one piece" instead of two like now? Or do you think that's a way to improve the appbrowser? Regards, Alberto --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

Dr. Peter Poeml wrote:

On Thu, Feb 28, 2008 at 01:31:44PM +0000, Sid Boyce wrote:

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Dr. Peter Poeml wrote:

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Hello Sid,

On Thu, Feb 28, 2008 at 12:00:32PM +0000, Sid Boyce wrote:

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Stephan Kulow wrote:

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_after_ the factory tree is synced out. It would take _even_ longer to get to a new factory snapshot being online. Out of sync mirrors do cause problems, zypper dup will throw up lots of conflicts one day and be largely fine next day when the full synch is completed. The list could be informed of when synch is about to happen Which mirror(s) do you regularly use? Did you also try to access download.opensuse.org directly?

The latter should help you to avoid the need to wait for an up to date mirror. Does that work for you? Please let me know if not.

That's the one I normally used. Recently I had to switch to ftp-1.gwdg.de. I would guess that download.opensuse.org was in update and gwdg.de was up to date with the last synch.

So you have actually more problems with the origin server than with the mirror? Then I assume it's caused by inconsistent Factory snapshots being put there, or by the tree being in flux (while you were updating). (It depends on the kind of error you got.)

This actually reminds me of this bug: https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=245428 (old, but somehow managed to be still in state "NEW")

It might be due to the way *how* Factory is synced to download.opensuse.org.

I don't know details about that, yet -- I only know that there is no synchronisation that I know of. It is on my todo list to find out.

How about the following two funky possibilities to sync the client with the server. The client could check (when tracking Factory) if there's some kind of lock file which indicates that the tree is being worked on, and refuse to use it. Or the server could simply block access to the tree during that time, and open up after the sync completed.

...

...

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and when the mirrors are likely to be fully synched - confusing things happen when the synch is in progress. Emperically I observe that Saturday is a bad day to update, Tuesdays usually OK. Regards Sid.

Peter

Those suggestions are perfectly fine and would save on wasted time. Regards Sid. -- Sid Boyce ... Hamradio License G3VBV, Licensed Private Pilot Emeritus IBM/Amdahl Mainframes and Sun/Fujitsu Servers Tech Support Specialist, Cricket Coach Microsoft Windows Free Zone - Linux used for all Computing Tasks --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On Thu, 2008-02-28 at 12:44 +0100, Martin Schlander wrote:

If we thought Ubuntu were so great and perfect don't you think we would *use* Ubuntu instead of openSUSE?

For years people have been arguing "copy MS Windows as much as possible", now we keep having people telling us we must do everything that Ubuntu does and in the exact same way.

I certainly hope that all those people wanting to turn openSUSE into Ubuntu won't succeed. Imho openSUSE strikes the balance between powerful and ease of use almost perfectly at the present time.

You can dumb down GNOME and yast-gtk as much as you want, but please don't destroy the rest of the distro.

funny to read this, since Vincent is one of the persons helping make openSUSE better :-) The ubuntu (and fedora) lived-in project (http://en.opensuse.org/GNOME/Projects/Lived_in_Project ) we (opensuse-gnome team) started is about finding good things in other distros, not to copy them as if we didn't have our own ideas ourselves. Believe me that we have lots of ideas, and looking at what others do is part of our brainstorming for ideas So really, this is not about saying ubuntu is better than opensuse, it is about how to make opensuse much better, and even if you don't like ubuntu, it surely has something we can adapt to our distro -- Rodrigo Moya

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On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 8:49 PM, JP Rosevear wrote:

On Wed, 2008-02-27 at 21:31 +0100, Dirk Mueller wrote:

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...

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the Ubuntu development version is nearly never broken. Factory is always broken in some way (still usable, but either no network, or uninstallable updates, or impossible to mount a usb key, etc.). Another historical issue. I always read/experienced these issues.

a henn/egg problem: if nobody uses factory, nobody fixes factory.. somewhen I do want to launch the "use factory" campaign.

What steps do we need to take to launch it?

I think we could really get a boost by having a bigger call for testing in the announcement with the next alpha (and there's a little time to stabilise it more until then), where we could also have a day or two after telling people to report their findings and problems in #opensuse-factory. Advertising things like the sat solver, new installer, etc. could certainly help here :-). Any thoughts? Regards, -- Francis Giannaros http://francis.giannaros.org --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

Am Mittwoch, 27. Februar 2008 20:37:21 schrieb Alberto Passalacqua:

About the "Use the same password for root", I think it's plain wrong. Using the same password for root and the user reduces security.

Does it? If we don't offer it, people can do it anyway. But if they do it anyway, we give an attacker a cryptographical advantage by encrypting the same password twice. Regards Oliver --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

Am Freitag, 21. März 2008 14:45:14 schrieb Alberto Passalacqua:

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Does it? If we don't offer it, people can do it anyway. But if they do it anyway, we give an attacker a cryptographical advantage by encrypting the same password twice.

You assume that the attacker know we are using the same password.

He might just try an attack on that assumption. Regards Oliver --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org