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

On Fri, 23 May 2008 01:52:58 -0400, Edmund Fitzgerald wrote:

Jim Henderson wrote:
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.

No problem.

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!

Yeah, but a quick search on the error message (the INT 14 problem) told
me that a more up-to-date kernel was in the factory, and that's working
great.

I haven't tried it on a laptop yet.

Handy thing for me here is that I've got two T42p laptops - one with
10.3, and one with 11.0 Beta3 + some factory updates on it. Nice to have
a point of comparison. The only difference between the two machines is
that the one running 11.0 Beta3 is a little slower (1.7 GHz instead of
2.0 GHz).

This is very easy for me to do, [...]

Thanks for clarifying that.

Again, no problem...

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.

There's no rule that says that you have to reply to what you perceive as
rudeness with more rudeness. Clearly that doesn't help and isn't getting
people the answers they want. One definition of insanity that I've heard
recently is "continuing to do the same thing and expect a different
result".

I've had pretty good response from the developers here when I've asked
questions. I make a point of sticking to the facts of my question, and
when I share an opinion, I make an effort to do so in an unemotional way.

Maybe there's something to that.

And then when they banned Sam from a list [...]

Well, I don't know anything about that, so I'm hardly in a position to
comment or judge. Even so, the one thing I'd say is that the devs are
the hosts here; if they came into your home and acted rude and called you
names, you'd be justified in throwing them out - and I'd be very
surprised if anyone here didn't throw someone out who was being rude.
It's really no different here.

There's nothing wrong with behaving in a professional and respectful way,
even in the face of perceived rudeness or slights. Aren't we supposed to
be working together here?

Like many others here, I've participated in online discussion areas of
one kind of another for many, many years. It's very easy to interpret
something in writing as being "angry" or "upset" or "rude" when it wasn't
meant that way. Why not try giving people the benefit of the doubt
instead of lashing out in response to something you think is rudeness?
With all the different cultures and opinions, there are bound to be
disagreements and misunderstandings. Those can be dealt with without
escalation of hostilities.

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.

I would say this: Don't try to interpret what people *feel* or their
emotional state from a written response. It doesn't translate well to
writing, especially if the people doing the writing don't natively speak
the language (I have had interactions with some of the internal SUSE
folks over the last few years, and knowing that some don't speak English
natively has helped me understand when they come across as forceful that
they really don't mean to do that - it's just how they translate from
German to English. German is a very direct (some would say blunt)
language). Again, there's no reason to respond to perceived hostility
with *more* hostility. Just grab the facts presented and comment on
those.

Perhaps this is a difference in the U.S. vs European culture, [...] 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).

It's also important to bear in mind that when it comes to building a
release, there are all kind of other factors (in addition to the
technical factors) that figure into the decision making process.
Resource management, schedule timelines - general project management.
While I'm sure *everyone* wants a technically perfect release, there are
other factors that come into play that affect the outcome.

That doesn't mean the input isn't valuable - as I said somewhere else
here, *listening* to input doesn't mean taking every suggestion and
implementing it - that's just not feasible. Listening means evaluating
feedback against criteria and determining the impact of the change on
other parts of the system and (a) whether or not it's something that
would be a benefit to a larger part of the customer base, and (b) whether
any given proposed change will require a delay in release - and whether
such a delay is acceptable or not.

Sometimes the best product enhancement suggestions can't be implemented
simply due to resource constraints. That's the reality of a development
schedule.

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.

Sure, and I don't know that anyone disagrees with that. Where there are
differing opinions are in whether what's been done is sufficient or not.
As a general rule, people who are happy tend not to say anything, so it
is important to take into consideration not only the feedback that comes
in that's negative, but also to understand that in the context of the
overall user base (which yes, does include the new user, not just the
experienced user).

I spent a little time doing training material course development for
eDirectory. Early on, the suggestion came in from a single large customer
to modify the course development to cover trees with over a million
objects in them. Labs were proposed and such, and we incorporated the
changes. Turned out that most of the customers in the class thought that
was interesting, but well beyond what they needed to know for their
environments.

As a developer, you can't play the game that the loudest complainer gets
their way all the time. You have to look at all the data and make a
decision based on what's best overall.

In looking at the installer again when I installed beta3, I felt that the
wording and arrangement of the choices on the page was appropriate. I
didn't feel "pushed" into installing KDE4 - quite the contrary, the
wording of "stable and mature" on the KDE3.5 item and the lack of that
wording on the KDE4 item, plus the fact that the first item was GNOME and
the last was KDE3.5 made me feel that I was being directed to select the
first or last item rather than the middle item.

(I exclude the real last item in the last - "Other" - because that's an
extra step to get into, and so again, psychologically speaking, most
people aren't even willing to go into that to see what the other options
are.)

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.

Absolutely. But at the same time, I don't know many Linux neophytes who
will ask for an opinion and then go off and do the installation on their
own. There are some, sure, but the vast majority are more likely to ask
an experienced user to walk through the installation with them rather
than try to remember what they've been told. That's been my experience -
and in my team at Novell, I'm constantly helping the new Linux users
(using SLED) with questions about how to do things. A few of them are
likely able to install the product on their own, but if they were to
decide to install it on their home machine, for example, they'd ask me if
I could be available in case they had questions along the way.

The reason for that is that they know it's a change, and so they are
assuming some risk as well in changing to Linux. Most people will want
to mitigate that risk by having someone available to help out with the
installation if they get stuck.

These sorts of effects seem to be completely ignored by the SUSE 11.0
folks,

"Seem to be" is the operative phrase here. Again, remember that this is
a written medium, and you don't necessarily know that the feedback has
been ignored. But in the end they do have a job to do - and that is to
get the release ready to be put out there. Often times that may mean
that they get the feedback, digest it, and incorporate it (or not)
without writing a response on every suggestion made.

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 can see how some might feel that way, sure. In the end, maybe we
should grant a little more trust to the team that they are taking
feedback into consideration and that they want the release to be a
success. Nobody *wants* to fail, but some of those who are getting
annoyed seem to be of the opinion that the release team is looking
forward to celebrating a huge failure. That's simply not the case (and I
can say that without knowing anyone on the team - because nobody
inherently *wants* to fail).

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?

Well, some people have the opinion that the install screens are
misleading, and some have the opinion that they're not. In the end, we
(on the list) could fuss over the specific wording for months and still
not make everyone happy. Perhaps - and I'm just guessing here - the
release team realised this early on in the discussion, took the feedback,
incorporated what changes they felt were appropriate, but ultimately
decided that it was a better use of their time to fix some of the
technical glitches than to continue to spend time refining wording until
everyone on this list was satisfied with it.

IOW, maybe they're trying to avoid "death by analysis" of this one little
element of the product.

Again, just a guess on my part - not speaking for the team at all. I
wouldn't dare.

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.

Then it is perhaps a good thing that the discussion wasn't a face-to-face
conversation. Of course, the flip side of that is that if it had been
f2f, maybe people would've been satisfied with the answers. It's easier
to be angry at a screen full of words than an actual live, breathing
human being. Online, nobody knows that you're really a dog. ;-)

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.

Well, like I said above, at some point a development team has to call an
issue closed and move on to more important things. If they tried to make
everyone 100% happy with every thing that people don't like, the product
would never reach release.

Jim

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