Marketing and development (Was: Re: [opensuse-marketing] T-shirt tagline?)
2009/4/15 Martin Schlander <martin.schlander@gmail.com>:
Onsdag den 15. april 2009 17:15:43 skrev Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier:
2009/4/15 Александр Мелентьев <alex239@gmail.com>:
openSUSE: Powered by Lizards, Designed for Humans
Good one - any thoughts? Improvements?
One thought that comes to my mind whenever openSUSE marketing is discussed, is the total detachment of marketing from the actual product >:-)
Inserting a totally new topic into an existing discussion makes it very likely that otherwise cogent, thoughtful, and useful ideas will be ignored, so I'm starting a new mail thread here...
ZMD (10.1+10.2), KDE 4.0 pushing (11.0), and non-working kbluetooth, cd- burning, compiz, amarok2 etc. (11.1), constantly changing updater applets (every release from 10.0->11.1) and other major risktaking and blunders in recent years are not what I consider "designed for humans".
Sorry that you feel that way. I think that some people would agree that some features fell flat, but I'm going to suggest that if you want to have a productive discussion about this a slightly less confrontational tone (not to mention, starting the discussion in a relevant thread rather than hijacking another discussion) would help.
And if openSUSE is actually supposed to be productive, working, easy to use and gaining marketshare beyond geeks, then development decisions/priorities should reflect those goals.
No disagreement here. And I think that you'll find with 11.2 that some of the decisions we've already made (and will make) mean that openSUSE 11.2 will be better all around than previous releases. (Which is not to say those were poor releases...)
A while ago a discussion about distribution focus was being prepared, which filled me with hope that something would be done which really mattered, but nothing has happened so far... I'd like to see http://en.opensuse.org/OpenSUSE_Distribution_Focus
Let me see what we can do on this topic... Best, Zonker -- Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier <jzb@zonker.net> openSUSE Community Manager: http://zonker.opensuse.org Blogs: http://blogs.zdnet.com/community | http://www.dissociatedpress.net Twitter: jzb | Identica: jzb http://identi.ca/group/opensuse/members -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+help@opensuse.org
Well ... I went to the wiki page and posted stuff there, so I'll re-post it here. :) M. Edward (Ed) Borasky comments -- 15 April 2009: 1. Gentoo should be on your list. :) 2. The "differentiators" between distros that I find most relevant are a. Number of packages available in the repository b. Predictable release engineering schedules and availability of user-friendly LiveCDs and installers that I can give to my friends c. GUI system administration tools d. Desktop color and other eye candy / branding Notice what's *not* there: a. Licensing -- as long as what *I'm* doing is legal, the lawyers can fight amongst themselves about the rest. I'm sick unto death of all the arguments about "blobs" and digital rights management and freedom and software patents, etc. I want quality software and I don't want to get sued. :) b. Package format -- .deb, .rpm. .ebuild: who cares, as long as the dependency tree is correct. c. Bleeding edge vs. stable -- 90 percent of that is upstream of the distros, and the other ten percent is how well I manage my systems. And I can install open source or proprietary software on my machines anyway. So, with that said, I am now running openSUSE, having migrated from Gentoo over the six months from June to November of last year. But I do track Ubuntu and Fedora -- I am currently beta-testing Jackalope and Leonidas, for example. By my criteria, Debian has the most packages, followed by Gentoo. I haven't really compared openSUSE, Ubuntu and Fedora on this metric yet, but I think Ubuntu is going to be way ahead because almost anything in Debian's repositories should work on a Ubuntu system. I think Fedora is slightly ahead of openSUSE, but I haven't done an actual count of what's in the distro-specific repositories. The lack of a predictable release engineering schedule and LiveCDs is why I left Gentoo for openSUSE. And the recent decision by openSUSE to slip 11.2 is a ding against the distro. I really wanted an 11.2 in June, even if it was only marginally different from 11.1. I did a network install of "Factory" on my test system yesterday and it looked reasonably good when it came up. Is there a chance an 11.2 could come out in June and a 12.0 or 11.5 in December? :) GUI system administration tools -- I have to give this one to YaST by a wide margin. Ubuntu still (Jaunty Jackalope) expects people to do server administration from the command line for the most part. And I couldn't get Fedora (Leonidas) to even install. I would bet that Fedora's GUI server system administration tools are better than Ubuntu's though, given the Red Hat heritage. Gentoo is dead last here, of course. :) Desktop color -- again, openSUSE is by far the most visually pleasing. The Ubuntu brown-orange native color scheme is ghastly to my eyes, and the Fedora heavy blue is annoying but not repulsive. I'd actually rate Gentoo number two here -- the Gentoo purple, logo, Larry the Cow, and the availability of quite a bit of Gentoo artwork is nice. So what should the focus be? 1. openSUSE is number two behind Ubuntu on the Distrowatch poll. Mint, another Debian derivative, is number three and Fedora is number four. So openSUSE is doing *something* right. :) It probably all boils down to marketing budgets and social media at this point, but number two is a *much* better place to be than number four. 2. I'm going to harp on predictable release engineering schedules and LiveCDs again, because I think that's important. A week or two slip because of an upstream security issue or something like that is OK, but a totally unmanaged chaotic process like Debian's or Gentoo's isn't. Code cutoffs, feature freezes, continuous integration, test-driven development, etc. -- this stuff all works! :) 3. openSUSE Build Service: as far as I can tell, nobody else has this, with the possible exception of rPath. I haven't had a chance to really use it yet, but I certainly intend to. Making it easier to use, making Kiwi easier to use, making LiveCDs and LiveUSB sticks "point, click and ship", etc. I think would be a big win. While you're at it, can you package Gentoo ebuilds with it? ;) 4. Virtualization and cloud computing: Red Hat and Ubuntu have thrown their weight behind KVM over Xen, and I think openSUSE has some catching up to do. The main reason I decided to test Jackalope had to do with Eucalyptus and Open Nebula and all the other cloud management / virtualization software being available. Can we at least get Eucalyptus in a factory repo somewhere? :) -- M. Edward (Ed) Borasky http://www.linkedin.com/in/edborasky I've never met a happy clam. In fact, most of them were pretty steamed. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+help@opensuse.org
I added the following to the wiki at http://en.opensuse.org/OpenSUSE_Distribution_Focus under Suggestions for openSUSE Consider the openSUSE distribution in terms of an emphasis on those users at the polar ends of technical skill. Make it a stated goal to help turn beginning users into our future advanced users. Make it a stated goal to help advanced users to use openSUSE without a great deal of effort. Also, make it easier for for an advanced user to contribute back. For new users, who might be just beginning to learn about Linux, we provide a quick start panel, which leads to online video/audio tutorials, online community, context based help and a wizard-style quick start process. We make the process of learning openSUSE truly open. Rather than casting users into a potentially new software environment, we seek to provide life-lines. We seek to make every transition and every screen make sense to someone who is using openSUSE for the first time through additional explanation, training and discussion. All of this extra help might be turned on and off with a single switch for the sake of advanced users. For the advanced Linux/Unix user, who knows what this openSUSE thing is good for, we have build services, virtual machine images, pre-release software, and wiki collaboration integrated into software help systems. OpenSUSE, when connected to the Internet, should no longer be a stack of software in isolation. Every piece of software should allow the skilled user to become involved in the community, to suggest changes, to make improvements. Every software update should include links to additional information, and perhaps daily links to discussion forums. Every piece of software should, through the help interface, connect users with the larger community through forums and wikis. We could make translation plasmoids that seek to translate one line at a time, which in turn could be fed through editing processes. Make it easier to contribute. Make contributing pleasurable by optionally presenting an audio or video based reward. Perhaps present a pleasant little animation or gentle and mild chime every time someone updates help information. Blur the lines between user and community member by folding users into the community. Pour all of these contributions into the next release. -- Ryan Brown ryabrown@ucdavis.edu -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+help@opensuse.org
On Wed, 2009-04-15 at 14:10 -0700, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
The lack of a predictable release engineering schedule and LiveCDs is why I left Gentoo for openSUSE. And the recent decision by openSUSE to slip 11.2 is a ding against the distro. I really wanted an 11.2 in June, even if it was only marginally different from 11.1. I did a network install of "Factory" on my test system yesterday and it looked reasonably good when it came up. Is there a chance an 11.2 could come out in June and a 12.0 or 11.5 in December? :)
I don't know if you saw it, but the Project has recently decided to change the release cycle to have an 8-month release cycle, starting with openSUSE 11.2. openSUSE 11.2 is scheduled for November 2009, with 11.3 8 months later. http://news.opensuse.org/2009/03/05/112-roadmap-and-fixed-release-cycle-for-... -- Kevin "Yeaux" Dupuy openSUSE Member www.twitter.com/KevinDupuy -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+help@opensuse.org
participants (4)
-
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier -
Kevin "Yeaux" Dupuy -
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky -
Ryan Brown