Il giorno ven, 02/03/2007 alle 23.15 +0100, Marcus Meissner ha scritto:
On Fri, Mar 02, 2007 at 10:52:25PM +0100, Alberto Passalacqua wrote:
After quite a long time, I decided to do some considerations on the status of OpenSUSE as a community and as a distribution, starting from everyday experience.
I'll start from some bug reports, which affects me directly and which have been waiting for a solution for a long time since the release of 10.2 final. They're only examples, you can find many others on bugzilla.
* main-menu Hangs https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=240727
The bugnr is incorrect.
* Banshee doesn't recognize ipod https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=215301
* yast is still unable to list printers https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=240727
* Gimp can't print: https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=230887 which sends to bug #226710, which is not accessible.
The main menu bug is a blocker and it's really strange no-one in the development team noticed it during the development stage. A patch was recently released on bugzilla, but it only partially solves the problem for some user and does nothing for others, which indicates the issue is quite serious.
It just helps to be insistent. And if there is no reaction, just bring it up on this list.
These and other reports were discussed on IRC with some of you and on this list too, recently ([opensuse-factory] meeting minutes of last dist meeting).
The helix-banshee bug is really a mystery. It's there since beta stage, but no solution is coming. It seems that recompiling a package is impossible at SuSE.
It is not. Just the package maintainer (Aaron) seems not be as responsive as probably necessary.
I'd remove the probably ;-)
In my opinion these issues are serious and the lack of consideration they receive is very disappointing considering that solutions were promised in many occasions, and they're not provided in an acceptable time (~3 months after the official release). The bugzilla is full of other examples of problems which could be easily solved in a short time, but never received a comment. There are many easily fixable bugs with many comments and no solution.
It is also full of examples where we released bugfixes.
Yes and no. Many are security issues, which of course have higher priority. But for a distribution which targets "the home desktop user" also usability and features issue are important.
OpenSUSE, in the opinion of most users, is the mean through which users know SUSE, evaluate it and start using it. There are many users who approached to SUSE through OpenSUSE to evaluate the enterprise line too and to see how the team/community works.
I don't think OpenSUSE is giving a good image of itself neither as a distribution nor as a team/community.
This is your view.
Of course. It's the only thing I can talk about. But it's based on daily experience on discussion boards of users.
The quality of the distribution is lower then in the past due to the choice to release too quickly and the lack of testing.
8 months is "too quickly"?
Or do you mean the Alpha->Beta->Release turnaround time?
The problem is, that we also have business products on the side to do.
And you always want the latest and greatest, so long test cycles only cause other frustrations.
Btw, openSUSE alpha1 is out _NOW_ while 10.3 will be released in August... So you can already start testing.
8 months are OK. I meant that if serious bugs are present, the release should be delayed and not released with issues which will affect many users. Especially if these issues are easily fixable. I know and understand you have enterprise products to do and that they have to receive more attention. But there is a general perception that openSUSE is becoming an experimenting lab for the enterprise line. I don't thing it's wrong in principle, but I think that, if true, it should be clarified so to allow the users to decide what to do accordingly.
* no guidelines are given to community testers.
Well, we do publish the major changes done. And _you_ know best on what _you_ want to do with openSUSE. We necessarily do not.
Yes. I meant the most important areas to check should be pointed out in the release notes for example. Something similar was done for some aspects with testing requests. For example, no doubt the gnome updated has to be tested, or the new printer configuration thing proposed on the ML. I think this should help who tries the testing releases to pay more attention and give more precise feedback.
Guidelines would help us a lot to look for problems in specific areas and to test things more carefully
Everything you do should work ;)
Yes but sometime it just _seems_to_work. I tried all the betas, and the menu seemed to work ok! :-(
Both DE should be considered as alternatives, not as rivals. I do myself this mistake, I know. But it's really annoying to read "Use KDE" or "Use a KDE app" when a user asks for help about GNOME.
And WHY NOT? KDE apps work in GNOME, GNOME apps work in KDE.
I use GIMP regulary. I use Firefox occasionaly. Under KDE.
I didn't mean I want to use only GNOME apps under GNOME and only KDE apps under KDE. But often the answer "use kde" is used as an excuse not to answer to a real issue, and it's annoying. More on IRC than on official sources, of course. My considerations involved also the community, not only the development team. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
If things are going to stay as they are at the moment, I would really prefer a strong but clear decision to make openSUSE again a KDE based distribution instead of having a two-DE distribution only in appearance.
The problem in general is that our GNOME developers work more on the enterprise desktop , while the KDE guys work more on the openSUSE snapshots, for above reasons.
OK. But this really makes me thing openSUSE should make a choice between going back to be a KDE based distribution or improve the quality of GNOME too (which should not require a huge effort, considering all the job is done for SLED anyway). Regards, Alberto --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org