March 2009 - openSUSE Features - openSUSE Mailing Lists

[openFATE 305869] improve partioning UI during installation
by fate_noreply＠suse.de 25 Mar '09

25 Mar '09

Feature changed by: Kevin Dupuy (kdupuy9) Feature #305869, revision 7 Title: improve partioning UI during installation openSUSE-11.2: Evaluation 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 + Discussion: + #1: Kevin Dupuy (kdupuy9) (2009-03-26 00:06:41) + I like the proposal so far. Perhaps there could also be some + improvements wrt the actual partitioning interface, similar to GParted + or the Ubuntu partitioner. This way it's easier for people that need to + make a small change to YaST's proposal can do it easily. + GParted: http://kajar.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/gparted-gui.jpg + Ubuntu: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_MfwRx_4ERx8/Sa6_M2URLeI/AAAAAAAAAxA/rEcbk5uSrhA/s… -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/305869

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[openFATE 305869] improve partioning UI during installation
by fate_noreply＠suse.de 25 Mar '09

25 Mar '09

Feature changed by: Michael Löffler (michl19) Feature #305869, revision 5 Title: improve partioning UI during installation - openSUSE-11.2: New + openSUSE-11.2: Evaluation 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 305489] default email in email applications
by fate_noreply＠suse.de 25 Mar '09

25 Mar '09

Feature changed by: Michael Löffler (michl19) Feature #305489, revision 13 Title: default email in email applications - openSUSE-11.2: New + openSUSE-11.2: Evaluation Priority Requester: Desirable Requested by: Martin Lasarsch (mlasars) Description: To get more subscriptions to the mailinglists it would be nice to have a "default mail" in the mail clients (evolution, kmail) which points the user to the mailinglists. Every openSUSE user should be subscribed to opensuse-announce at least. - A simple reply to this "default mail" should subscribe to the list. Of - course there could be more information in it, like other important - lists, pointing to the main list page. + A simple reply to this "default mail" should subscribe to the list (so + it's opt-in, no one should be forced). Of course there could be more + information in it, like other important lists, pointing to the main + list page. evolution have already a "default mail", with general information about evolution, kmail afaik not. This might be also usefull for OEM customers to have a welcome mail for the customers, pointing to the support pages etc.. So general email "branding" packages which makes it possible to have such special "default mails" for the email clients would be usefull. Discussion: #1: Carlos Lange (cflange) (2009-01-17 19:59:30) There are several parts to this suggestion. 1) "default mail": If you mean "Default" in the sense that when I start a new message the To: field is filled out by default with the mailing- list address, I disagree with your comment. The user should set that and an inexperienced user should find herself/himself subscribing to a mailing-list by mistake, just because they forgot to reset the To: field. Such a user would be rightly upset and feel like they were trapped into doing it. 2) If you mean, however, that the address book in Evolution and Kmail should be pre-populated with relevant addresses, such as the mailing- list and others, in the same way the Firefox bookmarks toolbar comes pre-populated with the SUSE folder, then I would agree that this is a useful suggestion, because the user can freely choose to use those addresses or not. 3) I strongly disagree that every openSUSE user should be subscribed to the opensuse-announce mailing-list. I deal with many different types of users. Only a minority of them would be interested in receiving announcements and they actively subscribe to the mailing-list. The vast majority of them likes the Linux-way of being non-intrusive, without the nags and unsolicited messages from the proprietary world, that tend to be associated with annoying marketing strategies. Please, don't advocate that for openSUSE. The SUSE information box shown at the first login is as much in-your- face direct marketing as one should need to take when using openSUSE. And being beautiful and carefully designed as it is, it contains all information a new user needs to decide how much involved with the operating system they want to be. #2: Joe Brockmeier (jbrockmeier) (2009-01-20 02:05:37) (reply to #1) Perhaps "every" is a bit much, but I feel a lot more people should be subscribed than are currently. I find it's not uncommon to talk to people and see that they're unaware of something happening in the community that has been announced on the mailing list. The percentage of people subscribed to -announce is much less than 1% of openSUSE users, and I feel we could be reaching a lot more people. It's not an "annoying marketing strategy," it's an attempt to keep our community informed. Most of the messages that go to announce are not "marketing" in nature, they're informative. #3: Kevin Dupuy (kdupuy9) (2009-01-20 02:49:32) (reply to #2) I also like the idea of having more users subscribed to the -announce list. Every time there is scheduled downtime, even though it is announced on -announce and openSUSE News, some people come on the opensuse(a)o.o mailinglist "eh, what happened? the servers are down, suse is unreliable!",. so those type of mails I'd like for more users to get. Then again perhaps not every user wants to know when the next project meeting is, so that's a strike against the idea as well. I do think, as with Carlos, that the address book in Kontact and Evolution should have some important email address in there (opensuse(a)o.o, anything else?) #4: Martin Lasarsch (mlasars) (2009-01-20 17:12:09) (reply to #1) 1. no 2. maybe, why not 3. should means as an opt-in ... not forcing With default i meant to have a simple email in the inbox to make it easier to subscribe to the announce list. -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/305489

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[openFATE 301036] Icon size, icon only, text only in main menu, app browser and control center
by fate_noreply＠suse.de 25 Mar '09

25 Mar '09

Feature changed by: Michael Löffler (michl19) Feature #301036, revision 32 Title: Icon size, icon only, text only in main menu, app browser and control center openSUSE-10.3: Rejected by Gary Ekker (gekker) reject date: 2007-08-06 08:30:51 reject reason: Not done for 10.3. Priority Requester: Important Projectmanager: Important openSUSE-11.0: Rejected by JP Rosevear (jproseve) reject date: 2008-03-25 16:44:39 reject reason: Scott doesn't have enough time for this with his PackageKit work and its not important enough right now to assign elsewhere. Priority Requester: Important Projectmanager: Important - openSUSE-11.2: New + openSUSE-11.2: Rejected by Michael Löffler (michl19) + reject date: 2009-03-25 17:23:29 + reject reason: As this feature doesn't move forward for years I reject. Priority Requester: Important Requested by: Nat Friedman (natfriedman) Description: Icon size, icon only, text only in main menu, app browser and control center Discussion: #1: Gary Ekker (gekker) (2006-08-17 09:52:28) Anna, can we get more info on this? #2: Anna Dirks (annadirks) (2006-09-21 18:43:56) This deals with accessibility requirements, primarily. To enable access to partially sighted users, we should be able to configure the appearance of the tiles in the AB/CC to use various combinations of icon, text, icon and text, etc. #3: Gary Ekker (gekker) (2007-07-17 13:52:34) Do we get this for 10.3 or should we punt to 11.0? #4: Michael Löffler (michl19) (2009-01-09 16:29:01) As this feature doesn't move forward for years I tend to reject. Marco can you tell us the importance of this feature? -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/301036

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[openFATE 306237] yast textmode: displaying release notes
by fate_noreply＠suse.de 25 Mar '09

25 Mar '09

Feature changed by: Karl Eichwalder (keichwa) Feature #306237, revision 7 Title: yast textmode: displaying release notes openSUSE-11.2: New Priority Requester: Desirable Requested by: Karl Eichwalder (keichwa) Description: In YaST ncurses UI, even if the screen is large (more than 100 characters), do not use more than 79/80 width for displaying the frame containing the release notes text. Lines longer than 80 characters are hard to read. Relations: Discussion: #2: Gabriele Mohr (gabi2) (2009-03-25 14:41:44) I have discussed with Karl. The problem also exits for Qt. Therefore a change in YCP layout is necessary. I have attached a suggestion for a layout change in inst_release_notes.ycp. I have used `Empty and `HWeight to add a margin at the left and right side of the text. This approach works for Qt and ncurses. Karl agrees that a stretchable text (width changes depending on total size) is better than a fix width. + #4: Karl Eichwalder (keichwa) (2009-03-25 15:16:03) (reply to #2) + Thanks, Gabi! + > Karl agrees that a stretchable text (width changes depending on total + size) is better than a fix width. + Yes, at least, it looks better for normal use cases. The patch will + probably improve the readability for most users. #3: Gabriele Mohr (gabi2) (2009-03-25 14:43:38) Added attachment patch for inst_release_notes.ycp (HWeight.diff) -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/306237

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[openFATE 306237] yast textmode: displaying release notes
by fate_noreply＠suse.de 25 Mar '09

25 Mar '09

Feature changed by: Gabriele Mohr (gabi2) Feature #306237, revision 5 Title: yast textmode: displaying release notes openSUSE-11.2: New Priority Requester: Desirable Requested by: Karl Eichwalder (keichwa) Description: In YaST ncurses UI, even if the screen is large (more than 100 characters), do not use more than 79/80 width for displaying the frame containing the release notes text. Lines longer than 80 characters are hard to read. + Relations: + Discussion: + #2: Gabriele Mohr (gabi2) (2009-03-25 14:41:44) + I have discussed with Karl. The problem also exits for Qt. Therefore a + change in YCP layout is necessary. I have attached a suggestion for a + layout change in inst_release_notes.ycp. I have used `Empty and + `HWeight to add a margin at the left and right side of the text. This + approach works for Qt and ncurses. Karl agrees that a stretchable text + (width changes depending on total size) is better than a fix width. + #3: Gabriele Mohr (gabi2) (2009-03-25 14:43:38) + Added attachment patch for inst_release_notes.ycp (HWeight.diff) -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/306237

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[openFATE 305301] Central Regulatory Domain Agent (for 802.11)
by fate_noreply＠suse.de 25 Mar '09

25 Mar '09

Feature changed by: Kshitij Kulshreshtha (polyconvex) Feature #305301, revision 11 Title: Central Regulatory Domain Agent (for 802.11) openSUSE-11.2: New Priority Requester: Important Requested by: Helmut Schaa (hschaa) Description: The regulatroy domain handling for wireless cards was done by each driver seperately before mac80211/cfg80211. cfg80211 is used to unify the handling of regulatory domains for wireless devices. However cfg80211 depends on the user space configuring the regulatory domain. A user space daemon is currently developed (see [1]). It basically provides the allowed channels for all known regulatory domains. Additionally it would be nice to allow the configuration of the regulatory domain from the Yast network module. [1] http://wireless.kernel.org/en/developers/Regulatory/CRDA Partly based on bnc#392853 Discussion: #1: Helmut Schaa (hschaa) (2009-02-03 12:04:57) I've already packaged crda and wireless-regdb in my buildservice project home:hschaa:CRDA. #2: Helmut Schaa (hschaa) (2009-02-09 11:37:20) What we additionally need for this feature is some integration with Yast or NetworkManager such that the user is able to set the regulatory domain (maybe based on the selected time zone). A command line tool for setting the domain is already available (iw) but needs to be updated. #3: Helmut Schaa (hschaa) (2009-02-09 16:09:28) (reply to #2) Just submitted an update for Factory. #4: Helmut Schaa (hschaa) (2009-02-10 10:59:40) (reply to #2) wpa_supplicant 0.6.7 already has support for setting the regulatory domain. We'll get that with the next version update. #5: Helmut Schaa (hschaa) (2009-02-10 13:40:25) (reply to #2) iw, crda and wireless-regdb are part of factory now + #6: Kshitij Kulshreshtha (polyconvex) (2009-03-25 11:53:33) + Sometimes on a short visit abroad a user might not bother to update + their timezone information on their laptop but still want to use a + wireless network. In this case setting the regulatory domain based on + timezone is not the right thing to do. Why not let the networkmanager + applet ask the user himself to provide the country as a part of the + dialog to setup the network? (A map similar to the yast timezone + selector built into KNetworkManager?) -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/305301

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[openFATE 302476] KDE notification for apparmor rejects
by fate_noreply＠suse.de 24 Mar '09

24 Mar '09

Feature changed by: Stefan Behlert (sbehlert) Feature #302476, revision 22 Title: KDE notification for apparmor rejects openSUSE-11.0: Rejected by Stephan Kulow (coolo) reject date: 2008-03-26 17:30:24 Priority Requester: Desirable Projectmanager: Desirable openSUSE-11.1: Rejected by JP Rosevear (jproseve) reject date: 2008-08-15 11:38:24 reject reason: Rejected due to lack of time. Priority Requester: Desirable Projectmanager: Desirable - openSUSE-11.2: Evaluation + openSUSE-11.2: Unconfirmed Priority Requester: Desirable Projectmanager: Desirable Requested by: Stephan Kulow (coolo) Description: fate #300563 added dbus event advertising. We'd need a KDE frontend for these dbus events that shows a notification of these events. Documentation Impact: Needs to be documented Discussion: #1: Stephan Binner (beineri) (2008-03-18 10:45:07) Just had a chat with Ludwig and Marcus about this topic (if it would be a nice SoC project) and they don't see much use in having such an applet on the desktop. #2: Marcus Meissner (msmeissn) (2008-03-20 14:52:14) (reply to #1) (background reasoning is: it would spend almost all of the time: doing nothing.) #4: Stephan Kulow (coolo) (2008-03-26 17:30:09) (reply to #2) such dbus callbacks are perfect kded modules - they would register a callback and be dead code after that and create a notification on callback. And it's half a day effort, not really SoC material. #3: Jared Allen (jpallen) (2008-03-20 13:56:50) I like the idea of using this as a SoC project. Let's consider this for openSUSE 11.1 #6: Stephan Binner (beineri) (2009-01-17 16:16:46) (reply to #3) Any objection to make this fate public for openSUSE.org partner and try to advertize it there? -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/302476

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[openFATE 305296] Easy Way to Disable Beagle Completely During Installation
by fate_noreply＠suse.de 16 Mar '09

16 Mar '09

Feature changed by: Marcel Müller (open_assistant) Feature #305296, revision 58 Title: Easy Way to Disable Beagle Completely During Installation openSUSE-11.2: Evaluation Priority Requester: Important Projectmanager: 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) #26: Peter Nixon (peternixon) (2009-03-11 20:39:01) (reply to #3) +1 #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. :) #22: andrea florio (anubisg1) (2009-02-25 00:40:51) (reply to #20) indeed... beagle is to heavy, traker instead, is simply wonderful! #23: Barbara Hudson (barbie_h) (2009-03-04 02:22:21) (reply to #15) I was going to vote in favour of the request, because I've been bitten by beagle bringing machines to a crawl many times, but one thing I've noticed is that, as people move to dual / quad -core machines, it's no longer a big issue. I'm not saying ignore the memory and resource problems - just that even laptops nowadays can run plasma and beagle and still feel responsive. The current system, where it notifies you when it does the initial indexing, is a lot better than the computer slowing to a crawl on a fresh install and people wondering why openSUSE is soooo slow. #21: Stanislav Visnovsky (visnov) (2009-02-24 09:10:56) Coolo, I believe this should be done via patterns. #24: Stephan Kulow (coolo) (2009-03-04 11:52:23) (reply to #21) having a desktop search easy to enable sounds like a good to have feature, so I wouldn't simply remove the package from install. But it doesn't make sense on a KDE4 desktop (and it's not there in 11.1 afaik) and it doesn't have to be running by default for GNOME either. But this is something for the beagle maintainers to decide. #25: Stephan Kulow (coolo) (2009-03-04 11:53:33) (reply to #24) that is: it should be off by default (seeing all the votes). But if it's worth to make it easier to turn it on than it is, I leave to those that know. But the solution to enable it, should be within the desktop. #27: Jan Engelhardt (jengelh) (2009-03-16 18:03:00) Less than "easy way to disable beagle completey during installation" it should even be "disable beagle by default", thank you. + #28: Marcel Müller (open_assistant) (2009-03-16 20:32:45) + great idea, especially to my slowly pc -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/305296

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[openFATE 305296] Easy Way to Disable Beagle Completely During Installation
by fate_noreply＠suse.de 16 Mar '09

16 Mar '09

Feature changed by: Jan Engelhardt (jengelh) Feature #305296, revision 57 Title: Easy Way to Disable Beagle Completely During Installation openSUSE-11.2: Evaluation Priority Requester: Important Projectmanager: 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) #26: Peter Nixon (peternixon) (2009-03-11 20:39:01) (reply to #3) +1 #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. :) #22: andrea florio (anubisg1) (2009-02-25 00:40:51) (reply to #20) indeed... beagle is to heavy, traker instead, is simply wonderful! #23: Barbara Hudson (barbie_h) (2009-03-04 02:22:21) (reply to #15) I was going to vote in favour of the request, because I've been bitten by beagle bringing machines to a crawl many times, but one thing I've noticed is that, as people move to dual / quad -core machines, it's no longer a big issue. I'm not saying ignore the memory and resource problems - just that even laptops nowadays can run plasma and beagle and still feel responsive. The current system, where it notifies you when it does the initial indexing, is a lot better than the computer slowing to a crawl on a fresh install and people wondering why openSUSE is soooo slow. #21: Stanislav Visnovsky (visnov) (2009-02-24 09:10:56) Coolo, I believe this should be done via patterns. #24: Stephan Kulow (coolo) (2009-03-04 11:52:23) (reply to #21) having a desktop search easy to enable sounds like a good to have feature, so I wouldn't simply remove the package from install. But it doesn't make sense on a KDE4 desktop (and it's not there in 11.1 afaik) and it doesn't have to be running by default for GNOME either. But this is something for the beagle maintainers to decide. #25: Stephan Kulow (coolo) (2009-03-04 11:53:33) (reply to #24) that is: it should be off by default (seeing all the votes). But if it's worth to make it easier to turn it on than it is, I leave to those that know. But the solution to enable it, should be within the desktop. + #27: Jan Engelhardt (jengelh) (2009-03-16 18:03:00) + Less than "easy way to disable beagle completey during installation" it + should even be "disable beagle by default", thank you. -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/305296

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