Hi, I'm not an OP in #suse, and I'm not related in any way to Novell/openSUSE, if not as a user and external contributor. During the last 6 years I've been using Linux starting from Mandriva, then Fedora and finally openSUSE, being around in the channels for about three years.
I have been in the IRC channel on freenode now for a few days, and I am utterly appalled.
By FreeNode naming conventions #opensuse (which forwards to #suse) is an official project channel. I am starting to see why OpenSUSE is lacking users, the surrounding community is outright rude. The project needs to understand that such places are exactly where people first encounter Novell and OpenSUSE on a personal basis.
I really think it is the first impression, because #suse is usually a helpful channel, surely not as rough as you are describing it here. Please, do not exchange discussions or explicit opinions for rough behaviour. I had some animated discussions myself when I started to take part to the community life, but well, that's part of the game. It simply means that they listen to you, and they are open to discuss. I sincerely prefer this to a completely "politically correct" but unhelpful channel.
While I understand statements made do not represent Novell, or OpenSUSE at all, the general mood in the channel has turned me away repeatedly in the past, and it will do again if nothing is done.
Could you specifically cite examples of what causes problems to you?
I have used Linux for almost 10 years, people all over IRC talk bad about #debian, but they are not even half as bad as #opensuse. I would suggest contacting FreeNode and having #opensuse and #suse separated and started again, it's really appalling.
I think this discussion was already done in the past, and no real reason was found to split the two channels. Users in #opensuse would be in #suse anyway, OP or not.
OpenSUSE is technically very good, but the personal interactions with the community is what people judge a Linux distro on, look at Ubuntu, it's buggy as anything, nothing at all special about the distro, yet their channel regularly has 1500 people. Ask yourself why... it's because of the community. If nothing changes, OpenSUSE will never be a popular project, and I seem to recall that being a stated goal?
It's hard to support this statemet. OpenSUSE already is a popular project. Give a look at reviews, for example. Maybe you could try to be part of the community a bit longer than a few days, and start to look beyond your first impression.
If you don't know what this is about, I challenge anyone reading to just hang out in #opensuse for a few days, look at the way the project is represented there. I'm not sure if OpenSUSE has a community board or anything that is intended to mediate this sort of thing, but I think it's a serious mistake to overlook this.
Yes. OpenSUSE has a board: http://en.opensuse.org/Board Regards, A. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org