On Mon, 02 Jan 2017, Wols Lists wrote:
On 01/01/17 18:13, Dave Howorth wrote:
On Sat, 31 Dec 2016 20:23:48 +0100 Richard Brown <RBrownCCB@opensuse.org> wrote:
In the real world I expect users to spend some time to understand the tools they have chosen to use and to use them appropriately
I'm sorry but that is completely unrealistic, IMHO. I see two situations:
I see a third. The wife who abdicates responsibility for filling the car up to her husband, and then wonders why she gets stranded on a long journey because the car's run out of petrol (and she doesn't have a clue where the filler cap is).
It is only reasonable to expect users to have SOME understanding of the technology they are using, not least because ignoramuses have a habit of breaking things they don't understand.
Don't forget - every time the engineers invent a better foolproof gadget, nature invents a better fool.
To expect users to use technology without understanding, is to expect engineers to fix things that should never have got broken. (And I curse blue bloody murder at home when all my stuff gets broken because the family "expect it to work" and have no desire to know how to make it work properly. A computer is a lot more complicated than most home appliances ...)
Cheers, Wol
In respect to the car analogy: in the btrfs car we have old fashioned du/df fuel gauges and a new set of btrfs du/df fuel gauges. Both sets of gauges still function, but they can disagree. I'm not sure that would be acceptable in a car (hybrids perhaps?). Richard used the word "reasonable." That's the key here: what is a reasonable expectation of a users responsibility to help themselves? I appreciate the efforts that have gone into trying to make openSUSE a more feature full and sophisticated tool. I feel part of the process toward improvement should be to encourage some feedback from users. Feedback concerning issues and problems is particularly valuable as it may flag areas that impact the take up of the improvements or of the OS as a whole. I see issues with the reasonableness of the openSUSE btrfs rootfs. Previous implementations of the rootfs had far fewer dimensions to understand and manipulate, it was quite approachable for a home DIY setup. The btrfs rootfs comes together from a far more complex accumulated layering of tools and conventions: some of which are visible in the filesystem, some of which is only visible in various places in the filesystem metadata, and some of which is only visible in the documentation or from Googling. I feel that the tooling, documentation, and maybe even the structure still need work to make them more approachable to the "average" home or desktop user (if that's who's being targetted). If you read through my Unreviewed Howto on the root filesystem subvolume structure you can pick up an underlying critique of some aspects of the btrfs rootfs: https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/521277-LEAP-42-2-btrfs-root-files... My write-up hints at where new tools and documentation might be needed. I explicitly state what made me reluctant to switch as well as stating some of the things have concerns with. I feel I've made reasonable efforts at coming to grips with these changes. I've made some reasonable effort to provide feedback. I feel I've made a reasonable decision to stay with ext4. I don't think its reasonable to dump on those raising usability issues. I don't think its reasonable to dump on those attempting to move openSUSE forward either. But it is completely reasonable to discuss actual usage experiences and problems and how they might be resolved. If openSUSE is built/revised to solve real world usage issues it will be much the better for it. Cheers, Michael -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org