On 2004-04-08 03:38 +0200, Anders Johansson wrote, in regards to Carlos E. R.'s suggestion for a clear, well-known site detailing known issues for SuSE:
Nice, but useless. The time you've spent on this list should have taught you that no one ever reads anything, ever. No FAQ, no support forum, no mail archives, ever (and yes, that includes me I'm sad to say
On 2004-04-08 15:37 +0200, Carlos E. R. responded:
But "I" do...
And the vast majority of the rest of us do, as well. There will always be new users, many of whom come from a situation where the authors of their operating system keep information about it well-hidden, who don't even think to look for themselves before asking questions. We will continue to educate them even though a few of them will simply not listen. Carlos E. R. went on to suggest:
The YOU program knows what is installed; therefore, it could download a note of READMEs for installed packages with known issues since distribution date.
How about a Web page detailing a package with a link to bug information for that package? Then anyone could view this information before or after installation of the package, and if Yast Online Update needed to automatically display the information, it could either direct a Web browser there, or retrieve it directly internal display. For a *great* example of how this could work, take a look at <http://packages.debian.org/stable/net/ntp>. That page shows a description of Debian's package `ntp', along with package dependencies and recommendations, links to source code, package contents, changelog, package maintainer, past versions, and more. It's concise, accurate, and extremely informative. Most relevant to this discussion, though, (involving SuSE's insistence that unless their customers purchase a SLES support contract, we're on our own when it comes to discovering known issues with their software) is the link from the package page to that package's bug reports. That page is <http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?pkg=ntp>. This is all produced automatically, for every one of the 10,000 or so Debian packages, by Free Software. There's nothing preventing SuSE from using it for their own packages. I've grown accustomed to this level of detail (which is coming from an entirely volunteer-based organization), and am really disappointed to find that SuSE, a commercial distribution, refuses to provide it. -- Phil Mocek