Firstly, and as a side result of the 'developers == users' approach, very rarely is there ever any avenue for user feedback available. Most large scale distro's have no place to discuss what they like/dislike/need about the software in question.
Yes, I fully agree with you on that point. It is very vital and invaluable for us to get feedback from "real" users. And I want to reassure you that we are open to any kind of suggestions/comments/criticism as long as it is part of a fair discussion.
Bugzilla, and the GPL, is largely the reason for the first point. Everyone has the power to either submit a bug report or fix it themselves. The problem with this approach is that Bugzilla, while fine for crash reports, is entirely incapable of handling usability issues. Improving the software through a refined UI is simply not on the table with regards to Bugzilla.
Well, you can of course add some screenshots :-) But I agree with you, that there are better ways to discuss these issues. We are trying now to do this by presenting our ideas in the openSUSE wiki (http://en.opensuse.org/UX) and to discuss them via this mailing list.
You can also, of course, code the changes yourself, but the enormous investment of time (that most people simply don't have) and the skill required makes this highly impractical.
Besides that, it might be a potential way to make things inconsistent.
I admit I have not tried Suse for more than a few minutes (it does seem much more professional than Ubuntu though)
Thanks :-)
so I will use Ubuntu as an example of what I mean.
To be honest, we have a similar "problems" with our YaST GUI. But we start working on that, so maybe not for 10.3 but for further version.
I'm not a fan of MS by any stretch, but I use software to achieve an end and don't care about ideology + politics, yet the FOSS community has a larger propaganda and FUD machine than Microsoft could ever hope to have. Software is judged on ideological considerations, rather than based on impartial considerations. It makes having rational, honest discussions nigh on impossible.
Yes! You got a very good point on that.
Linux needs to find out why people *don't* use it, not why they do.
So, what do you think, what might be their reasons not to use Linux? Wow! Thanks for your comments, Andrew. I have to admit that they are in many way similar to my own thoughts. I would really like to encourage you to comment our stuff and/or to bring up your own ideas. Thanks a lot, Martin -- Martin Schmidkunz User Experience Specialist martin.schmidkunz@novell.com +49 (0) 911 740 53-346 ------------------------------------- SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg) ------------------------------------- Novell, Inc. SUSE® Linux Enterprise 10 Your Linux is ready http://www.novell.com/linux -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-ux+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-ux+help@opensuse.org