On Thu, 2010-06-10 at 23:40 +0530, Atri Bhattacharya wrote:
Couple of my observations on how we as a community can make openSUSE better:- (Disclaimer: This is for the normal user and not the expert) 1. Simplify zypper: The whole upgrading procedure where patches and packages are treated separately have to be streamlined. It is a tad confusing for the normal user. Mandriva provides a very elegant and neat way to upgrade the system through their mdkonline applet. Something we should look at as well There is an applet that does the updating job for openSUSE as well, whether you use KDE or GNOME. It only installs patches to avoid the
On Thu, 2010-06-10 at 21:46 +0530, Anshul Jain wrote: possibility of problems. The patches are quality checked by a maintenance team and only then pushed out to the public. Speaking from the point of view of a "normal" user nothing could be better than this.
+1
A normal user does not need to have to update his packages to those pushed into the repositories every other day, which are also not quality checked. This update mechanism is one of the best things in openSUSE in my opinion. SO this patch and upgrade separation is necessary in zypper to cater to different types of users, some who would not like new upgrades to their system, some more curious who would love to be on the bleeding edge.
+1 I don't see a problem. If a "normal user" leaves well enough alone then they see no complexity.
3. Better bootsplash experience by using Plymouth This is being discussed in openFATE [https://features.opensuse.org/305493]. The boot up graphics of openSUSE has been rather nice even without using Plymouth thanks to the good artwork.
Eh. This whole obsession with booting baffles me. I don't do it that often. Workstations just run; laptops suspend/resume.... I'm way more interested in getting work done post-boot than the boot process.
4. Simplify the repository structure. There are too many confusing ones, Factory, STABLE, UNSTABLE etc...the KDE guys are working on simplifying it...I guess. GNOME needs simplification. While true, I don't know why a normal user would always want to use these repositories. Is it not enough that his system is solid and it works, and the little bugs he encounters are fixed by the online updates? It is meant primarily for the intermediate user who knows what to do with these repositories and also knows how to look up information in the wiki [http://en.opensuse.org/GNOME/Software_Repositories].
+1 A "normal user" shouldn't mess with the repos, except maybe one-click install to get the latest Banshee.
Many mistake Ubuntu to have the best user experience distro....
Many are talking out of their proverbial butts. Making any assertion likes that requires rigorous testing [not casual testing] and quantitative comparison - I've yet to see a distro review talk about their usability matrix - so nobody is doing that. People should stop making such broad/sweeping generalizations, all it does is indicate laziness, bias, or ignorance. I use openSUSE all day for both commercial and personal work. It works *very* well and *I* have no significant issues that inhibit my productivity. [Well... cut-n-paste from Java apps is irritating.... but aside from that - nothing].
There is no one distro that does everything well, let alone Mandriva.
I've no idea. I boot Ubuntu in a VM occasionally. I don't *personally*
like their packaging or the non-standard way they structure system
tools. But it seems to work fine [my poking is merely casual].
I don't have any other distro's around anymore except boring-old CentOS
for servers.
That I have no real interest in hot-distro-of-the-week is because I'm
very happy on openSUSE w/GNOME.
--
Adam Tauno Williams