On Thu, Jun 10, 2010 at 10:14 PM, Anshul Jain wrote:

On Thu, Jun 10, 2010 at 10:09 PM, Sankar P wrote:

...

On Thu, Jun 10, 2010 at 9:46 PM, Anshul Jain wrote:

...

Edit: I'm cross-posting my comments as I feel that this deserves a thread of its own, independent from the originating thread which was on another issue...

Couple of my observations on how we as a community can make openSUSE better:- (Disclaimer: This is for the normal user and not the expert)

1. Simplify zypper: The whole upgrading procedure where patches and packages are treated separately have to be streamlined. It is a tad confusing for the normal user. Mandriva provides a very elegant and neat way to upgrade the system through their mdkonline applet. Something we should look at as well

2. Package Management through YaST: The Qt version rocks, but the GNOME version simply is sucks.

3. Better bootsplash experience by using Plymouth

4. Simplify the repository structure. There are too many confusing ones, Factory, STABLE, UNSTABLE etc...the KDE guys are working on simplifying it...I guess. GNOME needs simplification.

Many mistake Ubuntu to have the best user experience distro....but that tag actually belongs to Mandriva, which still has managed to keep itself alive (I don't know how longer though). Some of their tools are very good like msec (Mandriva Security), menu layout for GNOME and KDE which is unique and very consistent. We could take some cues from there and add the requisite polish on top of it.

I'm sure some of these suggestions will be flamed...but I'd appreciate if this not be taken as criticism, but as suggestions to greater improve the distro that we all like.

-Anshul -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-gnome+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-gnome+help@opensuse.org

Please stop creating a new thread for this on opensuse-project.

File individual requests for this in FATE and follow up with individual fate entries. Or better assign some of them to yourself and start working on them. As henne says often, It is YOUR project.  By discussing this in opensuse-project alone, none of the items are ever going to be implemented.

We already have enough traffic on opensuse-project and I dont want to see new feature requests also discussed here.

Thank You.

-- Sankar P http://psankar.blogspot.com

If I could, I would implement them. Unfortunately, I'm not a programmer/hacker. I am not an openSUSE decision maker, I am merely an end-user. So now, how do you propose I solve this by just adding them to FATE?

How many of your previous issues are solved by reporting in opensuse-project ? All I am asking is, instead of reporting in _this_ (project) mailing list, report it in fate, attend the individual team meetings (#opensuse-gnome irc meeting ) and ask it there. Try to convince people there on why this is important. It will make things happen faster, afaics, Thanks. -- Sankar P http://psankar.blogspot.com P.S: My quota of 2 mails per day, for mental peace, gets over with this :-) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-gnome+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-gnome+help@opensuse.org

On Fri 11 Jun 2010 at 7:16:17 (-0300 UTC) Adam Tauno Williams wrote:

On Thu, 2010-06-10 at 23:40 +0530, Atri Bhattacharya wrote:

...

...

Couple of my observations on how we as a community can make openSUSE better:- (Disclaimer: This is for the normal user and not the expert) 1. Simplify zypper: The whole upgrading procedure where patches and packages are treated separately have to be streamlined. It is a tad confusing for the normal user. Mandriva provides a very elegant and neat way to upgrade the system through their mdkonline applet. Something we should look at as well There is an applet that does the updating job for openSUSE as well, whether you use KDE or GNOME. It only installs patches to avoid the

On Thu, 2010-06-10 at 21:46 +0530, Anshul Jain wrote: possibility of problems. The patches are quality checked by a maintenance team and only then pushed out to the public. Speaking from the point of view of a "normal" user nothing could be better than this.

+1

...

A normal user does not need to have to update his packages to those pushed into the repositories every other day, which are also not quality checked. This update mechanism is one of the best things in openSUSE in my opinion. SO this patch and upgrade separation is necessary in zypper to cater to different types of users, some who would not like new upgrades to their system, some more curious who would love to be on the bleeding edge.

+1

I agree too on this point +2

I don't see a problem. If a "normal user" leaves well enough alone then they see no complexity.

...

...

3. Better bootsplash experience by using Plymouth This is being discussed in openFATE [https://features.opensuse.org/305493]. The boot up graphics of openSUSE has been rather nice even without using Plymouth thanks to the good artwork.

Coming from a very fresh dist-upgrade this morning, from M7 snapshot, to Factory and it is noticeable the presence of a nicer bootsplash and GDM-greeter. Indeed Ubuntu (I.E.) graphical boot is more impressive, but openSUSE is getting better.

Eh. This whole obsession with booting baffles me. I don't do it that often. Workstations just run; laptops suspend/resume.... I'm way more interested in getting work done post-boot than the boot process.

...

...

4. Simplify the repository structure. There are too many confusing ones, Factory, STABLE, UNSTABLE etc...the KDE guys are working on simplifying it...I guess. GNOME needs simplification. While true, I don't know why a normal user would always want to use these repositories. Is it not enough that his system is solid and it works, and the little bugs he encounters are fixed by the online updates? It is meant primarily for the intermediate user who knows what to do with these repositories and also knows how to look up information in the wiki [http://en.opensuse.org/GNOME/Software_Repositories].

+1 A "normal user" shouldn't mess with the repos, except maybe one-click install to get the latest Banshee.

Beside normal users that could survive quite well with default software management settings, are presents also some more experienced users (me) that probably would like to get a different approach from software management services. I.E. yesterday I have been a bit displaced in front of the fact that there were some pkgs newer from VideoLan than Packman or openSUSE, so zypper refused to update. I know that is up on the user to choose repo's priorities and so on, but in front of these kind of choices it is not so "immediate" to make the right settings. I.E. How should I set repo's priorities among OSS; NON-OSS; UPDATE; VideoLan; Packman; Mozilla; Java, in order to be always sure to get latest updates, keep maintaining system stability and usability?

...

...

Many mistake Ubuntu to have the best user experience distro....

Many are talking out of their proverbial butts. Making any assertion likes that requires rigorous testing [not casual testing] and quantitative comparison - I've yet to see a distro review talk about their usability matrix - so nobody is doing that. People should stop making such broad/sweeping generalizations, all it does is indicate laziness, bias, or ignorance.

I use openSUSE all day for both commercial and personal work. It works *very* well and *I* have no significant issues that inhibit my productivity. [Well... cut-n-paste from Java apps is irritating.... but aside from that - nothing].

All these commentary are (IMO) very personal, but you cannot contradict the universal success won by Ubuntu in the world, this means that A LOT of users, magazines, professionals, are all thinking the same things. Cheers, Marco

...

There is no one distro that does everything well, let alone Mandriva.

I've no idea. I boot Ubuntu in a VM occasionally. I don't *personally* like their packaging or the non-standard way they structure system tools. But it seems to work fine [my poking is merely casual].

I don't have any other distro's around anymore except boring-old CentOS for servers.

That I have no real interest in hot-distro-of-the-week is because I'm very happy on openSUSE w/GNOME.

-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-gnome+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-gnome+help@opensuse.org