February 2009 - openSUSE Features - openSUSE Mailing Lists

[openFATE 305848] Offer 1 Sole Default Facility to Process System Email
by fate_noreply＠suse.de 23 Feb '09

23 Feb '09

Feature added by: Scott Couston (zczc2311) Feature #305848, revision 1, last change by Title: Offer 1 Sole Default Facility to Process System Email openSUSE-11.2: Unconfirmed Priority Requester: Important Requested by: Scott Couston (zczc2311) Description: Currently during installation we offer a user the ability to receive system email. What we don't show everyone that we need to configure an email Client to draining /var/mail/xxxxxx Consider that we have 10 PC on a LAN or a remote user providing system support. We really have no facility to process default system mail. I propose that we add a new network Service to YaST to define an 1. SMTP Server/IP 2. A Valid From Address 3. A Valid To Address 4. Optional password verification to SMTP Server 5. TLS/SSL Transfer via POP3 By configuring a default mail client system wide a sole user address within another part of the LAN will get all the system mail AND/OR a remote Administrator who job is to view system mail warnings etc. Yes I know we could use IMAP, but why not keep it very simple and use an SMTP Server we all know how to use and we all know how to set-up an email client wherever it may be. This would provide system wide continuity for all system mail and we can start offering more that the current security/Apparmour items into the future. I understand that adding anything to YaST is pushing it - But I think this really is a quick, easy and user friendly way of accomplishing the above. Once Established we can omit the option for a user to receive system mail OR if so selected fill in the initial info into the YaST Module above whilst drawing the attention to the user to complete YaST System Mail after installation. Your Thoughts? -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/305848

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[openFATE 305882] Create Custom Locale in YaST
by fate_noreply＠suse.de 23 Feb '09

23 Feb '09

Feature changed by: Stanislav Visnovsky (visnov) Feature #305882, revision 2 Title: Create Custom Locale in YaST + openSUSE-11.2: New + Priority + Requester: Desirable Requested by: Stanislav Visnovsky (visnov) Description: In Gnome there is no easy way (GUI) to set date and time format independent of desktop language. I agree with the use of the locale framework in the Gnome desktop because locale should affect all apps, not just desktop ones, and I hope that KDE follows suit. However, regardless of what Gnome or KDE decides, a tool in YaST to create a custom locale (for apps using locale) and to at the same time set KDE desktop preferences or something similar would be benificial within YaST. In Suse 10.1 Gnome desktop and SLED 10 Gnome desktop it is very cumbersome to choose a default en_CA locale, US English keyboard, en_UK desktop language (since UK English spelling is closer to Canadian spelling), a Weekday Month Day, Year long format an ISO-8601 short date format (i.e. YYYY-MM-DD), and a 24hr time format. On other operating systems and in the KDE desktop it is easy to specify these regional settings (although the KDE settings only apply to KDE apps as far as I know). If there is already an easy way to set date format settings then please help me find it. Relations: - Create Custom Locale in YaST (novell/bugzilla/id: 188844) https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=188844 Discussion: #3: Guy Lunardi (glunardi) (2008-12-09 15:36:53) Stano, I am cleaning up my bugs and finally got to this one. I think this could be useful indeed. A way to setup system-wide locale settings that would apply across the desktop environment and any other applications. This probably needs to be moved to Fate. Could we look into it for openSUSE 11.2 and SP1? -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/305882

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[openFATE 304911] Import all GPG keys at once before downloading the metadata from new repositories
by fate_noreply＠suse.de 23 Feb '09

23 Feb '09

Feature changed by: Dmitry Mittov (Michael_Knight) Feature #304911, revision 17 Title: Import all GPG keys at once before downloading the metadata from new repositories openSUSE-11.1: Rejected by Stanislav Visnovsky (visnov) reject date: 2008-07-09 07:54:32 reject reason: Cannot be done in time. Priority Requester: Desirable openSUSE-11.2: Evaluation Priority Requester: Desirable Requested by: Ladislav Slezak (lslezak) Description: If e.g. 10 different repositories are added yast asks to import the GPG key for each repository so the user cannot leave the computer while the metadata are downloaded. References: https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=399253 Discussion: #2: Federico Lucifredi (flucifredi) (2008-07-08 19:41:45) (reply to #1) cute. It is a nice idea indeed. + #3: Dmitry Mittov (michael_knight) (2009-02-23 11:03:50) + It is not a good idea to add gpg keys for all repos all over the world. + What do you want to do with new repos on BuildService? They can be + created after release of new Suse version. All repos signed with SuSE + Package Signing Key are guaranteed. When you add other repos you should + confirm you trust them. + But special option for 'zypper ar'. Something like '--trust-key' will + solve you problem. -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/304911

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[openFATE 305296] Easy Way to Disable Beagle Completely During Installation
by fate_noreply＠suse.de 22 Feb '09

22 Feb '09

Feature changed by: Eric Springer (Erikina) Feature #305296, revision 42 Title: Easy Way to Disable Beagle Completely During Installation openSUSE-11.2: Evaluation Priority Requester: Important Requested by: JP Rosevear (jproseve) Description: We need to either have beagle off by default and allow a user to enable it the first time they search or provide an install option to turn it off. Relations: - Better Beagle Acceptance (feature/id: 303367) - Easy way to disable beagle completely during install (novell/bugzilla/id: 282678) https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=282678 Discussion: #1: Federico Lucifredi (flucifredi) (2009-01-26 20:52:46) I prefer to start with disabled, offer option to run at first search. We are proliferating checkboxes in the installer too much. #8: Stephan Kulow (coolo) (2009-02-10 15:32:39) (reply to #1) I wholehearty agree. Having specific applications in the installer is definitely something that we shouldn't do. Have it disabled by default and make it easy to enable. #9: Manuel Bejarano (mbejaranoc) (2009-02-11 09:29:51) (reply to #1) 100% agree #11: Jean-Daniel Dodin (jdd) (2009-02-15 10:12:29) (reply to #1) +1 #2: Kevin Dupuy (kdupuy9) (2009-01-29 23:40:17) I prefer a more sane option than disabling it by default... instead, allow the user to go in and uninstall it from the installation software screen, just as they would any other app (perhaps make 'Desktop Search' pattern, installed by default?) We just need to insure that uninstalling Beagle doesn't throw up any dependency errors. #3: Eric Springer (erikina) (2009-01-30 00:16:23) Every single openSUSE install I've done has resulted in beagle being removed. It slows down the computer, and the firefox extension throws lots of errors. I'm quite happy with how easy it is to remove, and I can see why it's useful -- but unless its seriously improved, I think it should be removed (by default) #4: Jan Engelhardt (jengelh) (2009-01-30 15:22:34) Maybe pulseaudio should be too, for slightly similar reasons. :) #5: Rastislav Krupansky (ra100) (2009-01-31 13:10:36) (reply to #4) exactly right ;-) #6: Thomas Beimel (rheydtergekko) (2009-02-01 16:22:09) Yes this would be an perfect option during installation. Especially because I prefer to have a new installation that consumes as less resources as possible. I do not need indexing service and I think many others as well. #7: Andri Andreas Priyanto (turtlix) (2009-02-05 11:20:44) I haven't use beagle since I install openSUSE, and maybe wouldn't or never But I don't know other user. I always remove beagle from my gnome-session-properties. #10: Johnny Stovall (oouc) (2009-02-11 22:50:14) Beagle should be disabled by default. Everyone in the DFW Linux Users Group complained when Suse added it. It causes nothing but trouble for me. #12: Bart Otten (bartotten) (2009-02-16 01:13:58) I agree with the people voting to disable it by default. I think we have to keep focus on the 'consumer' and most of them won't use Kerry/Beagle. ps. KDE4 -and- Beagle is useless. KDE4 uses Strigi and Nepomuk. #13: Sebastian Rösgen (palimpseste) (2009-02-17 12:55:11) Despite all who now have voted for this proposal, I just have to vote against it. At least in the forms discussed here. I use Beagle heavily as do some other people I got convinced to use openSUSE instead of Windows. A good Desktop search was among the arguments to move these people to change their OS (others arguments were Deskbar etc... which btw. does not necessarily need Beagle but gets some interesting advantages IF Beagle is activated). Why not simply ask at startup how to configure some basic system defaults. Among them there could be beagle. So concerning the proposals of Federico Lucifredi, Stephan Kulow and so on, I am definitively of the same mind. Beagle should be installed by default, but it should be easy to switch it "on" or "off" whenever one wants. #14: Eric Springer (erikina) (2009-02-18 01:05:18) (reply to #13) Yes, a search is very useful. Yes, some people find beagle beneficial (as apparently you do). But the vast majority (Currently the vote is at 47:1) of people it doesn't work well with. And that's truly an amazing statistic, as it's super easy to see and use the feature it provides but much harder to see that it's beagle causing so many (resource related) problems. And if that statistic alone isn't enough to convince you it's not a sensible default, then I have absolutely no idea how to. There really should be a resemblance of QA in place, especially for default (and completely optional) packages. #15: Sebastian Rösgen (palimpseste) (2009-02-19 12:04:23) (reply to #14) Ok, I hope that my comment did not sound as gruff or ... brusque, for I, basically, hoped to present a different opinion. What I did not intend was to, evidently, irritate somebody by not completely assenting to his opinion. See: I am working for a university in Germany. We have 45.000 students and a staff of employees of a size appropriate for this amount of students. We rely heavily on the capabilities of a search system (to be honest: in this case not beagle, but somethings similar to beagle). I am one person who posts here but, to stay in your line of argumentation, statistically I represent so many single individuals, that my vote could be multiplied by a "pretty fight factor". Now the problem is that most of these people just use a search feature but do not understand of configure it. But they will notice when it is gone . These users do not vote, they are not involved in community work, they are not programmers, not system architects, not members of an online community. But they use systems like beagle. I know, as I stated in my first post, some people, which I got to switch their OS, from Windows to openSUSE. These people will miss features, too. Especially if you are so eager so simple remove this feature despite the fact that it was part of the distribution for many years. The more I write here, the angrier I get. I mentioned that Lucifredi and Kulow are of another opinion (disable but no remove the software; make it possible to switch it on or off when needed), an opinion I agree with. Is it possible that YOU ignored that part? This is quite normale for the usual open source community. To me it is a relatively illusive concept, the more I deal with it (and I deal with it for now 9 years) the more I learn about the ignorance it contains. Too many people choose rather to ignore those who have to vote (usually called users) and instead see their opinion as the ultimate measure to decide pro and contra. Did it come to your mind that about 80-90% of those who start to create an account for a portal like openFATE, who pay the time to write some comments and skip through all these proposals in this portal, that 80-90% of these people might perhaps be programmers? Geeks and nerds as they are called nowadays. This is no real statistic representing the opinion of those who use a software, it is a statistic of those how develop a software. Make this clear to you. So to get back on a rather rational level: I recognize that you are of another opinion. That most of the people here are. But, and that was important to me, these votes in here are not a real representation of opinions. I prefer openSUSE after all these years espcially because it was bought by Novell. Because they do research in usability, which is the only real way to ask the customers/the users, how to design the software. That is why I said, that an easy startup QA for the normal user is the best to do. Do not be too ignorant. The users know what they want, even if they miss some technical versatily, they will still take note of features that are missing, of bugs in the browser, of missing parts in the system "that they know worked on a different OS" or whatever else. Perhaps they annot name the source of the problem and do not know if it is a real design issue or a real bug. But they will say that the feature is not how they expected it to be. I recently said to a colleague of mine that the times of Mac OS are nearly over. The only real advantage they have is that they can design an OS without paying too much attention to different hardware. They know exactly which hardware their OS will possible have to run on. If Linux with a nice GNOME, KDE, or-whatever-desktop would run out of the box on ANY posible hardware, with all features running without a problem (Audio, Bluetooth, 3D Graphics are still a problem as we know) it would be undeniable that Linux will be the winner. I see progress made well into that direction. I see that Linux is close to this goal, to solve these issues in nears time (most Graphic Cards now easily work, with only a few exceptions). So please do not disappoint me. I have to lead discussions about Linux/Windows and Linux/MacOSX nearly every week. I do not want to have them led in vain. Look at what Mac and Windows do, they have a search system with an index. Make ours betters, faster and less memory hungry instead of removing it. These who switch from Windows/Mac to Linux (for instance to openSUSE) want to find new and more useful features instead of fewer features. I know this post was too long. I am sorry, but it thought it necessary. #16: Eric Springer (erikina) (2009-02-19 14:33:07) (reply to #15) I agree with everything you said, but you must realize I/we aren't arguing against search. We're arguing against beagle. I personally use google desktop search on a daily basis. And it works well. I assume that it does all its work when I'm not physically using the computer (a policy that is ideal for desktop usage). I'm not advocating its inclusion (primarily license reasons and kde integration reasons) but you should see that I'm not against a search or anything like that. Beagle on the other hand, I've tried to give it a fair shot a few times. To see if it has improved (something I will admit Banshee has done). But its *always* problematic. Something that is echoed daily on IRC and the mailing lists. The firefox extension causes huge amounts errors and slow downs. The actual search program maxs out the CPU. IO brings the computer to a crawl when I need to get work done etc. It's just not pretty. So if Beagle works well, I'd love to use it. But it doesn't and shouldn't be included. Put it this way. I would really like to see kernel initialization of graphics devices. However, until it's finished and works properly -- I think we'd both agree that it shouldn't be on our systems. I know it's not a good test for everything, but have you noticed how many other desktop distros have chosen to include beagle? #17: Sebastian Rösgen (palimpseste) (2009-02-19 18:16:48) (reply to #16) Ok, I see your point. Perhaps beagle is indeed not a good solution and I was too narrow minded to realize it. (Though I haven't experienced the CPU problems anymore for about one year, I suppose you are right). Especially since the development of beagle has come to a crawl (the last release: 0.3.9 was released about four weeks ago but it needed nearly half a year to be released and contains only some mere bug fixes). I think, I am going to open a new feature request in openFate. If you (and the other guys) are not against desktop search, but instead against beagle, it could be interesting to discuss why Tracker (http://projects.gnome.org/tracker/index.html) should not become a replacement for beagle. Especially since KDE has now Strigi as a core component. So one can get rid of beagle and use some "quasi native" tools for desktop search (namely "strigi" and "tracker") on Gnome and, respectively, KDE. Anyway, thanks for your reply and the discussion. #18: Sebastian Rösgen (palimpseste) (2009-02-19 18:23:53) (reply to #17) Hm, as it seems I cannot open such a request. Wonderful! So perhaps somebody has read this discussion and might be so kind to at least evaluate the request and "perhaps" might open a new feature request concerning the replacement of beagle by Tracker (which is a Gnome Desktop search, but since KDE has already its own Desktop search this should not be that problematic... I hope) And before somebody asks: no I will not file a feature request via bug tracking system. Those usually take weeks or even months before they are answered/evaluated/discussed etc... #19: Federico Lucifredi (flucifredi) (2009-02-19 16:52:12) (reply to #18) Hello Sebastian - I do not take the thread as being "against desktop search", which is a great feature, or against Beagle, which I personally run. The decision is only to have Beagle not be running by default out of the box, but to have it installed and ready. The first time a search is performed, we ask. Users who want desktop search select to run it, and those who are more "frugal" in terms of CPU do not. I am running a 3 year old laptop, and Beagle is running just fine for me. I suspect that's the case for a lot of people. But it is still a good idea to ask for a choice. + #20: Eric Springer (erikina) (2009-02-22 03:03:55) (reply to #17) + 100% agree. I think tracker/strigi make wonderful replacements. :) -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/305296

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[openFATE 305336] Ship man page for every executable
by fate_noreply＠suse.de 21 Feb '09

21 Feb '09

Feature changed by: Jan Engelhardt (jengelh) Feature #305336, revision 26 Title: Ship man page for every executable openSUSE-11.2: Evaluation Priority Requester: Mandatory Requested by: Matthias Eckermann (mge1512) Description: 1. Even graphical applications need docs outside the application itself. The need to run the application, to know what does it does, is not good. 2. You need a standard documentation format; where standard = expected for people needing that documentation. Who are, often, not knowing the distro well (so the format can't be distro-specific). And the format must be the same for all binaries/packages. One can't rely on the fact it will always be easy and intuitive to find that some application is part KDE (for example) and one can get the documentation in konqueror when typing 'help:/application'. 3. To view the documentation must be as easy as possible and with as minimal resources as possible. This is why online documentation is not so good (you need a running Internet net connection), documentation in a web browser as well (you need X and graphical desktop). HTML is questionable as it (as a format) allows so many extensions that it is needed to expect that such documentation will not be readable in text browsers after some time. 4. Many parts are shared between openSUSE and the enterprise products. And, in the enterprise world, we need to be much more standard conforming. Including the documentation. A UNIX admin will use the 'man' command for getting info about the binary. 'info' system is here as well, for many years. But 'man' is still more usual. Imagine a server room with hundreds/thousands of servers of several UN*X clones - 'man' works everywhere, and Linux is expected to be "on par" also with respect to those capabilities. These four points stay behind the idea of man pages needed and provided for everything. Relations: - How to Create Manpages with DocBook (url: http://en.opensuse.org/Manual_Pages/How_to_Create_Manpages_with_DocBook) - At http://en.opensuse.org/Manual_Pages/Missing a list of all packages with missing man pages can be found (url: http://en.opensuse.org/Manual_Pages/Missing) Use Case: User / Administrator should find a dedicated man page for every executable in openSUSE and SUSE Linux Enterprise systems. Discussion: #2: Stefan Behlert (sbehlert) (2008-10-22 15:00:11) I agree with the intention, but shouldn't it be rather 'documentation for each executable'? Newer stuff uses mostly info-pages, afaiks #3: Matthias Eckermann (mge1512) (2008-11-10 14:31:15) (reply to #2) It is valid to have a pointer to the info pages in the man-pages, sure. But man-pages are the UNIX proposed way of doing documentation. #9: Thomas Schraitle (thomas-schraitle) (2009-02-20 09:54:09) IMHO DocBook would be very suitable for this task as nobody has to learn the awkward syntax of groff/troff/... For example, I've submitted a DocBook file to the scout author and he generates the manpage with the DocBook stylesheets automatically. If you think, a manpage is not enough, each DocBook file can be easily transformed into (X)HTML, PDF, or almost any other output formats. IHMO it saves time if you want to support more formats than just manpage. The whole process is documented here: http://en.opensuse.org/Manual_Pages/How_to_Create_Manpages_with_DocBook + #10: Jan Engelhardt (jengelh) (2009-02-21 20:31:14) (reply to #9) + Manpages are very suitable for this task as nobody has to learn the + awkward DocBook syntax. + If done right, manpages are just another markup language and there are + just a few elements one needs to know. (You can even count them in your + hands: .TH, .SH, .SS, .PP, .TP, .nf/.fi, \fB, \fI, \fP, and sometimes . + IP. They almost map to HTML's title, h1, h2, p, (no direct eqv), pre, + b, i, /b|/i, and ol|ul, respectively.) -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/305336

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[openFATE 305877] Popularity contest
by fate_noreply＠suse.de 20 Feb '09

20 Feb '09

Feature changed by: Michal Vyskocil (mvyskocil) Feature #305877, revision 3 Title: Popularity contest openSUSE-11.2: New Priority Requester: Important Requested by: Vladimir Nadvornik (nadvornik) Description: We need a feedback about packages that are preferred by users and actively used. Debian already has a tool named Popularity contest (popcon) * reusing popcon will give us results that are directly comparable with Debian and Ubuntu * packagers team can take care of the package * we need a configuration dialog in YaST that is visible enough * we need a server infrastructure on opensuse.org. (There are certain privacy issues, see Debian FAQ for details) References: http://en.opensuse.org/BrainStorming_Prague#We_don.27t_know_which_packages_… http://popcon.debian.org/FAQ http://popcon.debian.org/ http://popcon.ubuntu.com/ + Discussion: + #1: Michal Vyskocil (mvyskocil) (2009-02-20 12:56:06) + The pupularity-contest executable is a simple Perl script, which should + be ported to rpm (replacing of dpkg calls by appropiate rpm alternative + should be enough). -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/305877

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[openFATE 305869] improve partioning UI during installation
by fate_noreply＠suse.de 20 Feb '09

20 Feb '09

Feature changed by: Martin Schmidkunz (mschmidkunz) Feature #305869, revision 3 Title: improve partioning UI during installation - openFATE: New - Priority - Requester: Important openSUSE-11.2: New Priority Requester: Important Requested by: Martin Schmidkunz (mschmidkunz) Description: The partitioning dialog during installation is perceived as confusing (see Bug #461819) . The reasons for confusion are * button labeling * workflow A redesign could provide some improvement. A first idea could be: http://en.opensuse.org/Image:Partitioner_proposal_installation.png References: https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=461819 http://en.opensuse.org/Image:Partitioner_proposal_installation.png -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/305869

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[openFATE 305336] Ship man page for every executable
by fate_noreply＠suse.de 20 Feb '09

20 Feb '09

Feature changed by: Thomas Schraitle (thomas-schraitle) Feature #305336, revision 24 Title: Ship man page for every executable openSUSE-11.2: Evaluation Priority Requester: Mandatory Requested by: Matthias Eckermann (mge1512) Description: 1. Even graphical applications need docs outside the application itself. The need to run the application, to know what does it does, is not good. 2. You need a standard documentation format; where standard = expected for people needing that documentation. Who are, often, not knowing the distro well (so the format can't be distro-specific). And the format must be the same for all binaries/packages. One can't rely on the fact it will always be easy and intuitive to find that some application is part KDE (for example) and one can get the documentation in konqueror when typing 'help:/application'. 3. To view the documentation must be as easy as possible and with as minimal resources as possible. This is why online documentation is not so good (you need a running Internet net connection), documentation in a web browser as well (you need X and graphical desktop). HTML is questionable as it (as a format) allows so many extensions that it is needed to expect that such documentation will not be readable in text browsers after some time. 4. Many parts are shared between openSUSE and the enterprise products. And, in the enterprise world, we need to be much more standard conforming. Including the documentation. A UNIX admin will use the 'man' command for getting info about the binary. 'info' system is here as well, for many years. But 'man' is still more usual. Imagine a server room with hundreds/thousands of servers of several UN*X clones - 'man' works everywhere, and Linux is expected to be "on par" also with respect to those capabilities. These four points stay behind the idea of man pages needed and provided for everything. Relations: + - How to Create Manpages with DocBook (url: http://en.opensuse.org/Manual_Pages/How_to_Create_Manpages_with_DocBook) - At http://en.opensuse.org/Manual_Pages/Missing a list of all packages with missing man pages can be found (url: http://en.opensuse.org/Manual_Pages/Missing) Use Case: User / Administrator should find a dedicated man page for every executable in openSUSE and SUSE Linux Enterprise systems. Discussion: #2: Stefan Behlert (sbehlert) (2008-10-22 15:00:11) I agree with the intention, but shouldn't it be rather 'documentation for each executable'? Newer stuff uses mostly info-pages, afaiks #3: Matthias Eckermann (mge1512) (2008-11-10 14:31:15) (reply to #2) It is valid to have a pointer to the info pages in the man-pages, sure. But man-pages are the UNIX proposed way of doing documentation. #9: Thomas Schraitle (thomas-schraitle) (2009-02-20 09:54:09) IMHO DocBook would be very suitable for this task as nobody has to learn the awkward syntax of groff/troff/... For example, I've submitted a DocBook file to the scout author and he generates the manpage with the DocBook stylesheets automatically. If you think, a manpage is not enough, each DocBook file can be easily transformed into (X)HTML, PDF, or almost any other output formats. IHMO it saves time if you want to support more formats than just manpage. The whole process is documented here: http://en.opensuse.org/Manual_Pages/How_to_Create_Manpages_with_DocBook -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/305336

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[openFATE 305336] Ship man page for every executable
by fate_noreply＠suse.de 20 Feb '09

20 Feb '09

Feature changed by: Thomas Schraitle (thomas-schraitle) Feature #305336, revision 23 Title: Ship man page for every executable openSUSE-11.2: Evaluation Priority Requester: Mandatory Requested by: Matthias Eckermann (mge1512) Description: 1. Even graphical applications need docs outside the application itself. The need to run the application, to know what does it does, is not good. 2. You need a standard documentation format; where standard = expected for people needing that documentation. Who are, often, not knowing the distro well (so the format can't be distro-specific). And the format must be the same for all binaries/packages. One can't rely on the fact it will always be easy and intuitive to find that some application is part KDE (for example) and one can get the documentation in konqueror when typing 'help:/application'. 3. To view the documentation must be as easy as possible and with as minimal resources as possible. This is why online documentation is not so good (you need a running Internet net connection), documentation in a web browser as well (you need X and graphical desktop). HTML is questionable as it (as a format) allows so many extensions that it is needed to expect that such documentation will not be readable in text browsers after some time. 4. Many parts are shared between openSUSE and the enterprise products. And, in the enterprise world, we need to be much more standard conforming. Including the documentation. A UNIX admin will use the 'man' command for getting info about the binary. 'info' system is here as well, for many years. But 'man' is still more usual. Imagine a server room with hundreds/thousands of servers of several UN*X clones - 'man' works everywhere, and Linux is expected to be "on par" also with respect to those capabilities. These four points stay behind the idea of man pages needed and provided for everything. Relations: - At http://en.opensuse.org/Manual_Pages/Missing a list of all packages with missing man pages can be found (url: http://en.opensuse.org/Manual_Pages/Missing) Use Case: User / Administrator should find a dedicated man page for every executable in openSUSE and SUSE Linux Enterprise systems. Discussion: #2: Stefan Behlert (sbehlert) (2008-10-22 15:00:11) I agree with the intention, but shouldn't it be rather 'documentation for each executable'? Newer stuff uses mostly info-pages, afaiks #3: Matthias Eckermann (mge1512) (2008-11-10 14:31:15) (reply to #2) It is valid to have a pointer to the info pages in the man-pages, sure. But man-pages are the UNIX proposed way of doing documentation. + #9: Thomas Schraitle (thomas-schraitle) (2009-02-20 09:54:09) + IMHO DocBook would be very suitable for this task as nobody has to + learn the awkward syntax of groff/troff/... For example, I've submitted + a DocBook file to the scout author and he generates the manpage with + the DocBook stylesheets automatically. + If you think, a manpage is not enough, each DocBook file can be easily + transformed into (X)HTML, PDF, or almost any other output formats. IHMO + it saves time if you want to support more formats than just manpage. + The whole process is documented here: http://en.opensuse.org/Manual_Pages/How_to_Create_Manpages_with_DocBook -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/305336

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[openFATE 305296] Easy Way to Disable Beagle Completely During Installation
by fate_noreply＠suse.de 19 Feb '09

19 Feb '09

Feature changed by: Federico Lucifredi (flucifredi) Feature #305296, revision 41 Title: Easy Way to Disable Beagle Completely During Installation openSUSE-11.2: Evaluation Priority Requester: Important Requested by: JP Rosevear (jproseve) Description: We need to either have beagle off by default and allow a user to enable it the first time they search or provide an install option to turn it off. Relations: - Better Beagle Acceptance (feature/id: 303367) - Easy way to disable beagle completely during install (novell/bugzilla/id: 282678) https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=282678 Discussion: #1: Federico Lucifredi (flucifredi) (2009-01-26 20:52:46) I prefer to start with disabled, offer option to run at first search. We are proliferating checkboxes in the installer too much. #8: Stephan Kulow (coolo) (2009-02-10 15:32:39) (reply to #1) I wholehearty agree. Having specific applications in the installer is definitely something that we shouldn't do. Have it disabled by default and make it easy to enable. #9: Manuel Bejarano (mbejaranoc) (2009-02-11 09:29:51) (reply to #1) 100% agree #11: Jean-Daniel Dodin (jdd) (2009-02-15 10:12:29) (reply to #1) +1 #2: Kevin Dupuy (kdupuy9) (2009-01-29 23:40:17) I prefer a more sane option than disabling it by default... instead, allow the user to go in and uninstall it from the installation software screen, just as they would any other app (perhaps make 'Desktop Search' pattern, installed by default?) We just need to insure that uninstalling Beagle doesn't throw up any dependency errors. #3: Eric Springer (erikina) (2009-01-30 00:16:23) Every single openSUSE install I've done has resulted in beagle being removed. It slows down the computer, and the firefox extension throws lots of errors. I'm quite happy with how easy it is to remove, and I can see why it's useful -- but unless its seriously improved, I think it should be removed (by default) #4: Jan Engelhardt (jengelh) (2009-01-30 15:22:34) Maybe pulseaudio should be too, for slightly similar reasons. :) #5: Rastislav Krupansky (ra100) (2009-01-31 13:10:36) (reply to #4) exactly right ;-) #6: Thomas Beimel (rheydtergekko) (2009-02-01 16:22:09) Yes this would be an perfect option during installation. Especially because I prefer to have a new installation that consumes as less resources as possible. I do not need indexing service and I think many others as well. #7: Andri Andreas Priyanto (turtlix) (2009-02-05 11:20:44) I haven't use beagle since I install openSUSE, and maybe wouldn't or never But I don't know other user. I always remove beagle from my gnome-session-properties. #10: Johnny Stovall (oouc) (2009-02-11 22:50:14) Beagle should be disabled by default. Everyone in the DFW Linux Users Group complained when Suse added it. It causes nothing but trouble for me. #12: Bart Otten (bartotten) (2009-02-16 01:13:58) I agree with the people voting to disable it by default. I think we have to keep focus on the 'consumer' and most of them won't use Kerry/Beagle. ps. KDE4 -and- Beagle is useless. KDE4 uses Strigi and Nepomuk. #13: Sebastian Rösgen (palimpseste) (2009-02-17 12:55:11) Despite all who now have voted for this proposal, I just have to vote against it. At least in the forms discussed here. I use Beagle heavily as do some other people I got convinced to use openSUSE instead of Windows. A good Desktop search was among the arguments to move these people to change their OS (others arguments were Deskbar etc... which btw. does not necessarily need Beagle but gets some interesting advantages IF Beagle is activated). Why not simply ask at startup how to configure some basic system defaults. Among them there could be beagle. So concerning the proposals of Federico Lucifredi, Stephan Kulow and so on, I am definitively of the same mind. Beagle should be installed by default, but it should be easy to switch it "on" or "off" whenever one wants. #14: Eric Springer (erikina) (2009-02-18 01:05:18) (reply to #13) Yes, a search is very useful. Yes, some people find beagle beneficial (as apparently you do). But the vast majority (Currently the vote is at 47:1) of people it doesn't work well with. And that's truly an amazing statistic, as it's super easy to see and use the feature it provides but much harder to see that it's beagle causing so many (resource related) problems. And if that statistic alone isn't enough to convince you it's not a sensible default, then I have absolutely no idea how to. There really should be a resemblance of QA in place, especially for default (and completely optional) packages. #15: Sebastian Rösgen (palimpseste) (2009-02-19 12:04:23) (reply to #14) Ok, I hope that my comment did not sound as gruff or ... brusque, for I, basically, hoped to present a different opinion. What I did not intend was to, evidently, irritate somebody by not completely assenting to his opinion. See: I am working for a university in Germany. We have 45.000 students and a staff of employees of a size appropriate for this amount of students. We rely heavily on the capabilities of a search system (to be honest: in this case not beagle, but somethings similar to beagle). I am one person who posts here but, to stay in your line of argumentation, statistically I represent so many single individuals, that my vote could be multiplied by a "pretty fight factor". Now the problem is that most of these people just use a search feature but do not understand of configure it. But they will notice when it is gone . These users do not vote, they are not involved in community work, they are not programmers, not system architects, not members of an online community. But they use systems like beagle. I know, as I stated in my first post, some people, which I got to switch their OS, from Windows to openSUSE. These people will miss features, too. Especially if you are so eager so simple remove this feature despite the fact that it was part of the distribution for many years. The more I write here, the angrier I get. I mentioned that Lucifredi and Kulow are of another opinion (disable but no remove the software; make it possible to switch it on or off when needed), an opinion I agree with. Is it possible that YOU ignored that part? This is quite normale for the usual open source community. To me it is a relatively illusive concept, the more I deal with it (and I deal with it for now 9 years) the more I learn about the ignorance it contains. Too many people choose rather to ignore those who have to vote (usually called users) and instead see their opinion as the ultimate measure to decide pro and contra. Did it come to your mind that about 80-90% of those who start to create an account for a portal like openFATE, who pay the time to write some comments and skip through all these proposals in this portal, that 80-90% of these people might perhaps be programmers? Geeks and nerds as they are called nowadays. This is no real statistic representing the opinion of those who use a software, it is a statistic of those how develop a software. Make this clear to you. So to get back on a rather rational level: I recognize that you are of another opinion. That most of the people here are. But, and that was important to me, these votes in here are not a real representation of opinions. I prefer openSUSE after all these years espcially because it was bought by Novell. Because they do research in usability, which is the only real way to ask the customers/the users, how to design the software. That is why I said, that an easy startup QA for the normal user is the best to do. Do not be too ignorant. The users know what they want, even if they miss some technical versatily, they will still take note of features that are missing, of bugs in the browser, of missing parts in the system "that they know worked on a different OS" or whatever else. Perhaps they annot name the source of the problem and do not know if it is a real design issue or a real bug. But they will say that the feature is not how they expected it to be. I recently said to a colleague of mine that the times of Mac OS are nearly over. The only real advantage they have is that they can design an OS without paying too much attention to different hardware. They know exactly which hardware their OS will possible have to run on. If Linux with a nice GNOME, KDE, or-whatever-desktop would run out of the box on ANY posible hardware, with all features running without a problem (Audio, Bluetooth, 3D Graphics are still a problem as we know) it would be undeniable that Linux will be the winner. I see progress made well into that direction. I see that Linux is close to this goal, to solve these issues in nears time (most Graphic Cards now easily work, with only a few exceptions). So please do not disappoint me. I have to lead discussions about Linux/Windows and Linux/MacOSX nearly every week. I do not want to have them led in vain. Look at what Mac and Windows do, they have a search system with an index. Make ours betters, faster and less memory hungry instead of removing it. These who switch from Windows/Mac to Linux (for instance to openSUSE) want to find new and more useful features instead of fewer features. I know this post was too long. I am sorry, but it thought it necessary. #16: Eric Springer (erikina) (2009-02-19 14:33:07) (reply to #15) I agree with everything you said, but you must realize I/we aren't arguing against search. We're arguing against beagle. I personally use google desktop search on a daily basis. And it works well. I assume that it does all its work when I'm not physically using the computer (a policy that is ideal for desktop usage). I'm not advocating its inclusion (primarily license reasons and kde integration reasons) but you should see that I'm not against a search or anything like that. Beagle on the other hand, I've tried to give it a fair shot a few times. To see if it has improved (something I will admit Banshee has done). But its *always* problematic. Something that is echoed daily on IRC and the mailing lists. The firefox extension causes huge amounts errors and slow downs. The actual search program maxs out the CPU. IO brings the computer to a crawl when I need to get work done etc. It's just not pretty. So if Beagle works well, I'd love to use it. But it doesn't and shouldn't be included. Put it this way. I would really like to see kernel initialization of graphics devices. However, until it's finished and works properly -- I think we'd both agree that it shouldn't be on our systems. I know it's not a good test for everything, but have you noticed how many other desktop distros have chosen to include beagle? #17: Sebastian Rösgen (palimpseste) (2009-02-19 18:16:48) (reply to #16) Ok, I see your point. Perhaps beagle is indeed not a good solution and I was too narrow minded to realize it. (Though I haven't experienced the CPU problems anymore for about one year, I suppose you are right). Especially since the development of beagle has come to a crawl (the last release: 0.3.9 was released about four weeks ago but it needed nearly half a year to be released and contains only some mere bug fixes). I think, I am going to open a new feature request in openFate. If you (and the other guys) are not against desktop search, but instead against beagle, it could be interesting to discuss why Tracker (http://projects.gnome.org/tracker/index.html) should not become a replacement for beagle. Especially since KDE has now Strigi as a core component. So one can get rid of beagle and use some "quasi native" tools for desktop search (namely "strigi" and "tracker") on Gnome and, respectively, KDE. Anyway, thanks for your reply and the discussion. #18: Sebastian Rösgen (palimpseste) (2009-02-19 18:23:53) (reply to #17) Hm, as it seems I cannot open such a request. Wonderful! So perhaps somebody has read this discussion and might be so kind to at least evaluate the request and "perhaps" might open a new feature request concerning the replacement of beagle by Tracker (which is a Gnome Desktop search, but since KDE has already its own Desktop search this should not be that problematic... I hope) And before somebody asks: no I will not file a feature request via bug tracking system. Those usually take weeks or even months before they are answered/evaluated/discussed etc... + #19: Federico Lucifredi (flucifredi) (2009-02-19 16:52:12) (reply to + #18) + Hello Sebastian - I do not take the thread as being "against desktop search", + which is a great feature, or against Beagle, which I personally run. + The decision is only to have Beagle not be running by default out of + the box, but to have it installed and ready. The first time a search is + performed, we ask. Users who want desktop search select to run it, and + those who are more "frugal" in terms of CPU do not. + I am running a 3 year old laptop, and Beagle is running just fine for + me. I suspect that's the case for a lot of people. But it is still a + good idea to ask for a choice. -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/305296

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