Re: [opensuse] Re: Suse 10.3 install - oh dear (rant only)

Jim Henderson wrote:
On Fri, 23 May 2008 00:10:22 -0400, Edmund Fitzgerald wrote:

Jim Henderson wrote:
On Thu, 22 May 2008 23:21:02 -0400, Washington Irving wrote:

Going from KDE 3 to a KDE with the functionality of Gnome is alpha.

We expect more from KDE.
*You* perhaps do. I don't know who this "we" is to whom you refer.
Jim, you earlier said you work for Novell.

Now, are you interested in the opinions inside the Novell echo chamber
(every company has one about their products), or are you interested in
hearing about how the rest of the world views and uses your products.

Let me be absolutely clear about one thing: My role inside Novell has nothing to do with the Linux product lines. I'm the manager of the instructor programs.


Ok... Thanks for making that clear.

More below.


My specific areas of product expertise (from when I was an IT professional) were NDS, eDirectory, and the identity management products, along with NetWare.

My participation here is solely as an openSUSE *user*, not as a corporate person with anything to do with the product. Most of the openSUSE team here - if not all of them - don't know me from Adam. Nothing I say about the product should be taken by *anybody* as any sort of official statement. I'm just another participant in the community; an end user.

I mentioned my affiliation earlier because I felt it only fair to disclose that so people wouldn't accuse me of being a corporate shill of some sort (I've seen that happen in other venues) trying to push a corporate perspective on the community. That is *absolutely not* my reason for writing on this list. My purpose in reading and writing the messages here is the same as nearly everyone else's - to learn what's going on in 11.0, to get help with problems I might run into, and to get a feel for what it's going to be like.

And I have to say, I'm damned impressed with Beta3. If it hadn't been for the factory kernel that breaks when ACPI is enabled on my laptop, I'd have said it was already an outstanding release.

Ouch!

I haven't tried it on a laptop yet.


[...]

Forget what the company THINKS users should be doing with your product
and think about it, and start paying attention to how we, the user base
think use it and think about it. What people on this list like about KDE
as opposed to Gnome is that KDE has so much more functionality and
configurability. Push a KDE version which has no more functionality than
Gnome, and you're going to have a LOT of pissed-off people.

This is very easy for me to do, because I don't know what "the company thinks" users should be doing with the product. I'm not particularly privy to that information. All I know is what I see as a user who is using the product. Like I said, I use GNOME (and have since long before Novell acquired Ximian - I started using Red Carpet because I was too cheap to buy update support from RedHat, and Ximian provided the same updates at no charge), and I happen to like it. Before GNOME, I preferred Enlightenment, and if DR17 had been developed faster, I'd probably be using that instead. I've tried KDE and found that I don't like it. <shrug> That's my personal preference; not because it's what Novell wants to put on the corporate desktops in SLED, but because I've tried both and it's what works best for me.


Thanks for clarifying that.

The other thing I do know (and this is not directed at you, Edmund, just something I want to say) is that there are some on this list who seem to think that swearing at the developers is a way to effect change. In my experience, that's a great way to get ignored. Hold an intelligent conversation, debate the merits, and understand that when an organization says they'll listen to you, that doesn't mean they'll implement every change everyone suggests every time. In the first place, invariably two suggestions will come in that directly conflict with each other.


I think you have it reversed.

The "swearing at the developers" seems to have came about because
the devs were ignoring the concerns of the users and replying to
them with brush-off statements. Basically, rudeness was
responded to with rudeness.

And then when they banned Sam from a list just because he was
asking questions which made the SUSE people uncomfortable is
the absolute height of bad form -- this compounds the original
insult of blowing off the users concerns. Isn't it much better
to satisfy the user-base by changing a few words on an install
screen to address the problem he's concerned about than to
create the impression that the SUSE product is run by a bunch
of insecure goons who can't handle constructive criticism.

It's clear the level of frustration he was feeling when he
asked repeatedly for someone at SuSE to "put an adult in
charge" of the 11.0 distribution -- precisely because of the
thoroughly unsatisfactory answers coming out of the SUSE folks.

For all I know, technologically, the 11.0 release will be
very good -- but the answers coming from the team come off
as anywhere from blase' disinterest for the concerns of those
raising them to barely concealed contempt and hostility
for even asking questions.

Perhaps this is a difference in the U.S. vs European culture,
(and I would put UK culture closer to American culture than
European, as the initial philosophical view of the colonists
was that they were Englishmen first, and the Revolution was
merely the last resort to securing their rights, as Englishman,
which the Crown was denying them solely because they weren't
living on the home islands.) as the European point of view
is rather more stratified and specialized, and "the experts"
are generally not to be questioned by the public. However,
it seems to escape the SUSE people that many of those who
have been prodding them for better answers have actually
been in the Unix and/or IT field longer than the SUSE people
themselves. Some of us still have nostalgiac memories of
PDP-11's running version 7 Unix and/or 2.x BSD (even though
these same machines were thoroughly thrashing with as few
as 10 users).

-

Anyways, about the KDE 3 vs KDE 4 discussion, I think it's
a valid concern coming from those who deal with people who
are completely new to Linux, and oftentimes suggest it to
people who are willing to try something new -- that the
KDE 3/KDE 4 issue be handled properly--not only for the
sake of Novell and SUSE, but for the Linux community as
a whole.

When suggesting to a complete Linux neophyte that they try
SUSE 11.0, do we really want to rely on the recollection
of said neophyte to remember any caveats about KDE 4, when
they probably didn't understand the verbal warning in the
first place? (it's difficult to remember a message which
you never understood to begin with). People don't want
to suggest something to a friend, and then have it
blow up in the friend's face, and have it harm their
friendship or business connection.

These sorts of effects seem to be completely ignored by
the SUSE 11.0 folks, and yes, that seems to be making a
lot of the list subscribers annoyed, because they get the
feeling that the SUSE team is making a distro which is
going to have a big "gotcha" in the install phase, and
which will likely bite ANY new/neophyte user.

I once heard the remark that there are no good physics
text books, because a good physics text book would be
written for students, whereas actual physics text books
are written to impress other physics professors.

Is it asking too much that the install screens for the
11.0 release be written appropriately so that it won't
mislead new users?

That's ALL that the users have been asking for concerning
this issue...for several *months* -- and rather than giving
forthright answers, the SUSE people have been stonewalling
and dismissive.

To tell you the truth, if these were face-to-face
conversations. the whole thing would have gotten to
the point of swearing in FAR less than the time it
took on this list -- a couple of hours..or days, at
most.





I trust that the openSUSE team is taking all of the input into account and will make what they feel is the best decision. As users, we have two options once those decisions are made - live with it, or move. But a development team makes decisions based on *facts*, not *emotions* (or at least IMO they should), so people need to stop being so emotional over the appearance of KDE4 in the menu and just state the facts from their point of view. Calling people names is not only unhelpful, it's counterproductive.

Not if you look in the archives. This issue has been raised
repeatedly over the last few months; and what's been bugging
the users on this list is the lack of satisfactory answers,
either of the dismissal "don't worry about it" type, or just
purely outlandish fiction and claims to clairvoyance.

Back to lurking.


Jim


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