Thanks to everyone for their replies! Roger Luedecke wrote:
the font rendering issue is being worked on actually and should be fixed in an update soon.
Great to hear this! What does the fix involve? I'm aware that the subpixel rendering used by the Infinality project (arguable the best font rendering available for Linux) is patent-encumbered, but in my experience Arch has fonts that are *almost* as good as Infinality, and I'm pretty sure they don't use anything patent-encumbered. In my experience, the DejaVu Sans fonts with "slight" hinting and RGBA antialiasing look pretty nice, even with the default openSUSE fontconfig. So that's an example where considerable improvement could be made in the default openSUSE settings, even within the confines of purely open source solutions. Roger Luedecke wrote:
As for installing proprietary drivers, I'm not sure how much easier we could really make it.
Well, I do think that the Ubuntu Restricted Drivers tool is pretty fantastic. The reason is that most newish Linux users aren't really aware of the existence of libre/proprietary drivers, they just want their hardware to work. Many users aren't even all that sure about what sort of hardware they have, and it gets even more complicated with dual-graphics Intel/Nvidia Prime systems. So it requires more than a little bit of manual investigation to get certain hardware pieces working. The users has to find the hardware device in the YaST hardware tool, and then has to Google around to figure out what the names are of the drivers that correspond to the hardware, then they have to find the openSUSE package name as well as the repo that contains it. Sometimes there are libre drivers that work to a certain extent, but some users require the more complete functionality of a proprietary driver. Yes, it's not *terribly* difficult, and us seasoned Linux users can do it with our eyes closed, but I think that a lot of openSUSE users aren't interested in learning about their system-- they just want it to work correctly. A tool like the Ubuntu Restricted Drivers does all the hard work for the user, it tells them what pieces of hardware have an available proprietary driver, which versions are available, and a one-click button to enable it if desired. Roger Luedecke wrote:
I don't know about our packages being crippled to complicate using codecs etc
The most concrete example I can remember off-hand is K3B. To rip MP3s from an audio CD, it required LAME. But the openSUSE version of K3B was not compiled with the flag that made it look for the LAME libs, and therefore it couldn't use LAME even if it was installed. Perhaps a more modern example are the gstreamer -bad and -ugly packages. They are offered in the official openSUSE repos, but they don't seem to actually contain any proprietary codec support, because even after installing them I couldn't play MP3 or MP4 files. I'm sure there's more examples of this sort of crippling of openSUSE packages, but these are some easy examples. Of course, us seasoned openSUSE users know that it's just a matter of adding Packman, setting its priority to a lower number to increase the priority (rather counter-intuitive for beginners) and switching installed packages to the Packman versions, then adding the gstreamer -bad and -ugly -addon packages. But that process is long and convoluted compared to other distros. I know that openSUSE can't offer proprietary codecs out of the box with the ISOs, but would it be possible to add a YaST module called "Proprietary Software Support" that offers a "Install proprietary codecs from Packman" checkbox that runs a simple script to do the whole process I described in the previous paragraph? Roger Luedecke wrote:
We need an integrated 'command-center' for the project so that communication will be more transparent and issues can be tracked in order to avoid regressions.
I see. Meanwhile until that gets implemented, would Bugzilla reports of these individual issues I mentioned be sufficient? jdd wrote:
so, the good way now should be to enable packman, give it some lower number as priorité, go to yast software, *repositories view* and call for software from there. A bit complicated.
My thoughts exactly. I think that if openSUSE can offer a wiki page to do this whole process manually, it should be possible to add a YaST module and script to do the same thing, still pulling from Packman and thus avoiding hosting proprietary software on openSUSE's repos. Lars Müller wrote:
Has one of you thought about filing bug reports for the individual issues and create one meta bug which references all these reports?
I can do that, I just wanted to make sure it wouldn't be too vague to report some of these issues that don't relate to a specific package. Regarding my #2 issue "Automatic installation of extraneous/unrequested packages, especially after initial installation": I think that there should be a prompt or something when using YaST Software for the first time, asking users if they want the resolver to #1) install recommends for already installed packages, and/or #2 install recommends for future installed packages. Additionally, I think that there should be a YaST Software option to enable/disable installation of recommends for future installed packages-- currently the option is only available for previously installed packages' recommends. Of course it is possible to adjust the /etc/zypp/zypp.conf option to not install recommends, which is obeyed by YaST, but I think a simple GUI checkbox would be better. Also, I think that adding a YaST module with checkboxes for installing common stuff like Flash and openJDK would be better than using the update mechanism with packages like "pullin-fluendo-mp3" and "pullin-flash-player" to arbitrarily add this proprietary software, whether the user wants it or not. Sorry for the long email. I'd be very interested to read your further thoughts. Thanks for your time! -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org