subject:"Re\: \[Mageia\-dev\] How will be the realese cycle\?"


Le 2010-10-16 02:56, Luca Berra a écrit :

On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 10:00:14PM -0500, Fernando Parra wrote:

The basic/novice user doesn't read anything,

remove basic/novice from the sentence and i will agree ;)


doesn't request anything to some like a bugzilla,

but give him a forum and he probably will



This statement I totally agree with! If a user is told to submit in 
bugzilla, I find that they will not do it. Reporting to bugzilla for a 
user, is one more level of serious commitment on their part and most 
will not want to commit themselves to it.


However, if they can report to a forum, this is different. Users view 
forums as community involvement with community feedback. They may be ask 
to test out the problem and report back on the result (just like in 
bugzilla) but they know that other community members will be there to 
lend a hand and support.


If we are going to be really interested in quashing bugs with a lot of 
community involvement, IMHO, I think that we should offer


-- bugzilla for the enthused and commited users. These people are 
interested on reporting bugs the right way and will replicated and help 
in debugging.


-- but for ordinary users, we could offer them a Report a bug forum 
where they can report a bug; the community could then replicated the 
bug; have a Bug-ambassador or bug-reporter or  who could then 
submit it officially on bugzilla. Tracking of that particular bug could 
then be the responsibility of the Bug-ambassador; once the bug is 
quashed, the Bug-ambassador could report back to the Report a bug 
forum of the bug fix and thank the community for their help. This would 
help validate the user who reported the bug and make him/her feel like a 
part of the contributing team.


IMHO, this would work a lot better for the majority of users who do not 
want to commit to any more than reporting the bug; the devs would get a 
more constant stream of bug submissions by Bug-ambassadors who are 
able to triage submitted bugs on the forum.


Doing it this way would still make bugzilla the only place where devs 
would go to pick up bug information and the Bug-ambassadors would be 
the people who triage the bugs at the forum level.


Marc

Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?

2010-10-16 Thread Fernando Parra

On Sat, 16 Oct 2010 11:52:27 +0200
Renaud MICHEL r.h.michel+mageia-re5jqeeqqe8avxtiumw...@public.gmane.org wrote:

 Hello
 On samedi 16 octobre 2010 at 05:00, Fernando Parra wrote :
   On Friday, 15 October 2010 03:48:56 Fernando Parra wrote:
   So, we must dumb down everything, and not provide openldap backports
   for people running servers who want a convenient way to run the
   software version that will allow them to file bugs upstream (OpenLDAP
   team doesn't respond to bugs filed on non-current releases)?
  
  Specially here the answer is obvious: The novice doesn't now what is
  OpenLDAP! and maybe he wont hear about it for the rest of his life. New
  versions of OpenLDAP should be stay available in the backports
  repository, not as an automatic available upgrade.
 
 Well, for example like OpenLDAP it is not a problem, because only users that 
 need it will install it, and those that might need it are most likely aware 
 what it implies to upgrade it to a newer version. So it will not bother 
 other users if it is in backports or even updates, because as they won't 
 have it installed, they won't be proposed to update.
 
 It is more of a concern for things like cups or dbus, which most users will 
 use without knowing it, and won't know how to fix if it breaks (not even 
 knowing which package actually broke).
 
   What do we do in the case where a new version of some software is
   available, and has been sent to cooker? How do we decide whether it
   should go to backports or not? And for which releases?
   
   (FYI, for Mandriva users can typically request backports in bugzilla or
   on IRC, but we may need better means).
  
  Ok, first at all, we must deicide what packages (not all of them!) will
  be at the Rolling Ligth model. After that, all this packages must have
  an appropriate path.
 
 I don't understand what you mean by appropriate path.
 

Well, if we are talking about a new model, I think we need to redefine what 
will be the way that's Mageia offer these particular (Rolling Light) packages. 
I'm not closed to any method in particular.

 I think we should not decide before hand what packages will be backported, 
 we should maybe have a (short) list of packages that must not be backported 
 (like glibc) and then have backports either when contributors are willing to 
 make (and test) them, or on request.
 
 Maybe we could also have a (short also) list of packages that we should 
 really try (the packaging team could decide to dedicate some of his 
 resources to that) to backport to the latest stable release, and maybe the 
 previous latest.
 Such packages would be for example firefox or OOo, packages that we know are 
 used by many (most) users, and many users are likely to want a newer 
 version.
 
  Anyway, after decide what packages will be in the Rolling Light, The OS
  must be gentle with the user and show a Window with a Message like that:
  
  There are available a new version of Firefox(as an example). Do you want
  to install it? NO,   Maybe Later,   Show me more information,Yes
 
 A little OT, but:
 
 Dialog windows should (almost) never have yes/no or ok/cancel choices, 
 because when an user see a yes/ok choice, he generally interpret it as yes, 
 I want to keep on doing what I was doing. (and I know I have done it some 
 times myself)
 
 In your example, the No/yes should be labelled something like keep current 
 version and install new version.
 

Ok, as more clear options, as it will be better.

 
 cheers
 -- 
 Renaud Michel
 

Regards from Mexico
-- 
Fernando Parra gato2...@yahoo.com.mx

Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?

2010-10-16 Thread Ahmad Samir

On 16 October 2010 17:31, Marc Paré m...@marcpare.com wrote:
 Le 2010-10-16 02:56, Luca Berra a écrit :

 On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 10:00:14PM -0500, Fernando Parra wrote:

 The basic/novice user doesn't read anything,

 remove basic/novice from the sentence and i will agree ;)

 doesn't request anything to some like a bugzilla,

 but give him a forum and he probably will


 This statement I totally agree with! If a user is told to submit in
 bugzilla, I find that they will not do it. Reporting to bugzilla for a user,
 is one more level of serious commitment on their part and most will not want
 to commit themselves to it.

 However, if they can report to a forum, this is different. Users view forums
 as community involvement with community feedback. They may be ask to test
 out the problem and report back on the result (just like in bugzilla) but
 they know that other community members will be there to lend a hand and
 support.

And other community members are there in bugzilla to to lend a hand
and support (although a bit different kind of support as bugzilla's
have stricter rules, more organised).


 If we are going to be really interested in quashing bugs with a lot of
 community involvement, IMHO, I think that we should offer

 -- bugzilla for the enthused and commited users. These people are interested
 on reporting bugs the right way and will replicated and help in debugging.

 -- but for ordinary users, we could offer them a Report a bug forum where
 they can report a bug; the community could then replicated the bug; have a
 Bug-ambassador or bug-reporter or  who could then submit it
 officially on bugzilla. Tracking of that particular bug could then be the
 responsibility of the Bug-ambassador; once the bug is quashed, the
 Bug-ambassador could report back to the Report a bug forum of the bug
 fix and thank the community for their help. This would help validate the
 user who reported the bug and make him/her feel like a part of the
 contributing team.

 IMHO, this would work a lot better for the majority of users who do not want
 to commit to any more than reporting the bug; the devs would get a more
 constant stream of bug submissions by Bug-ambassadors who are able to
 triage submitted bugs on the forum.

 Doing it this way would still make bugzilla the only place where devs would
 go to pick up bug information and the Bug-ambassadors would be the people
 who triage the bugs at the forum level.

 Marc



Backport requests are a special case as they're usually a 2-line
report hey, could you backport the latest version of package foo to
stable release I am running?, so basically anyone can do it, either
the user or someone on his behalf.

But generally reporting bugs by proxy is always a bad idea, unless the
guy who'll play middle-man can reproduce the exact same bug on his own
box. You see, triage team / package maintainer / dev will ask for info
about the bug, more than once depending on the bug itself; now Mr.
middle-man will have to go to and fro a lot of times, taking info from
the user and posting it in bugzilla then taking questions/info from
the bugzilla and conveying it to the user; now that's a tedious and
tiresome job that's very prone to failure. (it's like a friend being
sick and instead of him going to the doctor he sends you on his behalf
because you know the symptoms :)).

It's much better to help the user formulate a useful bug report,
that's easier / more productive for all involved parties.

-- 
Ahmad Samir

Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?


Le 2010-10-16 12:36, Ahmad Samir a écrit :



But generally reporting bugs by proxy is always a bad idea, unless the
guy who'll play middle-man can reproduce the exact same bug on his own
box. You see, triage team / package maintainer / dev will ask for info
about the bug, more than once depending on the bug itself; now Mr.
middle-man will have to go to and fro a lot of times, taking info from
the user and posting it in bugzilla then taking questions/info from
the bugzilla and conveying it to the user; now that's a tedious and
tiresome job that's very prone to failure. (it's like a friend being
sick and instead of him going to the doctor he sends you on his behalf
because you know the symptoms :)).

It's much better to help the user formulate a useful bug report,
that's easier / more productive for all involved parties.



There would be no middle man. Once the middle-man could replicate the 
bug and verify the bug with other users, then the middle-man would 
submit to bugzilla. That's it. From there on, the middle-man will take 
care of testing requests from devs.


As far as reporting back to the original user who reported the bug, as 
an extra gesture of kindness, the middle-man would just post on the 
Report a bug forum that the bug has been quashed or is still under 
review ... but not to the user but to the Report a bug forum.


The idea is to keep the flow of possible bug reports coming in an 
organised way. The middle-man would have to be someone with a little 
more experience than that of a new user and also someone who has an 
interest in working this way. We will get more bug reports from users by 
keeping it simple and easy.


Marc

Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?

2010-10-16 Thread Frederic Janssens

On Sat, Oct 16, 2010 at 21:52, Renaud MICHEL
r.h.michel+mag...@gmail.comr.h.michel%2bmag...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 I think it may work if those bug friends (don't remember who proposed
 that
 name) only take for themselves the simple, one package, software only bugs,
 and suggest to the reporter to create himself a bugreport (eventually
 providing assistance if the reporter has never done it before)


yes, it is mainly there that 'help with followup' is needed.
If that help is well done, a certain number of the helped could become
helpers later on.

describing
 his problem, because the devs will really need his feedback first hand.
 That forum would be an easier entry point than bugzilla for users not
 familiar with bugreports.

 --
 Renaud Michel




-- 

Frederic

Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?


Le 2010-10-16 15:52, Renaud MICHEL a écrit :

On samedi 16 octobre 2010 at 21:29, Marc Paré wrote :

There would be no middle man. Once the middle-man could replicate the
bug and verify the bug with other users, then the middle-man would
submit to bugzilla. That's it. From there on, the middle-man will take
care of testing requests from devs.


That would only work for pure software bugs.
If the bug is hardware related, it is unlikely that the middle man will be
able to reproduce it. For those we really need the input from the real bug
reporter.

And for software bugs, the middle man would have to reproduce the software
environment of the reporter, which may be complicated if he installed
software from third party (or worse, proprietary software).
Sometimes the problem is obvious and only related to a single package, and
for such case a forum with some contributors reproducing the bug and then
submitting a bug report may work.
But if the problem is related to a particular combination of packages then
the middle man could spend a considerable amount of time replicating the
reporter particular configuration before he can actually reproduce the bug.

I think it may work if those bug friends (don't remember who proposed that
name) only take for themselves the simple, one package, software only bugs,
and suggest to the reporter to create himself a bugreport (eventually
providing assistance if the reporter has never done it before) describing
his problem, because the devs will really need his feedback first hand.
That forum would be an easier entry point than bugzilla for users not
familiar with bugreports.



Yes you are perfectly right. This is where the the bug report would be 
ramped up to the bugzilla stage, and at the point, the reporter would 
have obviously shown an interest in the resolution/fix of the bug. This 
would in effect would create a mentorhsip/reporter relationship and a 
great training opportunity for the reporter. We would then have, by 
default, a mentorship programme in the Report a bug forum that may 
eventually form other bug friends This would be a great opportunity 
for Mageia to teach reporters how to use bugzilla.


IMHO, this would still be a simple way of dealing with normal users who 
do not want to involve themselves any more than reporting a bug. And for 
those who develop a taste for furthering their knowledge of the process 
of bug reporting, the bug friend could then mentor this person ... who 
could eventually become a bug friend himself/herself.


Marc

Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?


Le 2010-10-16 16:08, Frederic Janssens a écrit :



On Sat, Oct 16, 2010 at 21:52, Renaud MICHEL
r.h.michel+mag...@gmail.com
mailto:r.h.michel%2bmag...@gmail.com wrote:

I think it may work if those bug friends (don't remember who
proposed that
name) only take for themselves the simple, one package, software
only bugs,
and suggest to the reporter to create himself a bugreport (eventually
providing assistance if the reporter has never done it before)

yes, it is mainly there that 'help with followup' is needed.
If that help is well done, a certain number of the helped could become
helpers later on.

describing
his problem, because the devs will really need his feedback first hand.
That forum would be an easier entry point than bugzilla for users not
familiar with bugreports.

--
Renaud Michel

Frederic


Thanks Frederic, my feeling also.

Marc

Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?

2010-10-16 Thread Luca Berra

On Sat, Oct 16, 2010 at 10:41:31AM -0500, Fernando Parra wrote:

On Sat, 16 Oct 2010 08:56:06 +0200
Luca Berra bluca-1wc7or56...@public.gmane.org wrote:

On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 10:00:14PM -0500, Fernando Parra wrote:
The basic/novice user doesn't read anything,
remove basic/novice from the sentence and i will agree ;)

Are you agree with some like that?
Only the geek/expert/professional users read?

I think most people don't read, sometime even geek/expert/professional
don't. This is probably due to an overload of information, and trying to
create messages that are actually 'seen' by users is becoming a new
branch of science.

doesn't request anything to some like a bugzilla,
but give him a forum and he probably will

Here I'm not completely sure, How many forums, blogs, etc. about software are
there (including Windows, Mac and others)? and How many users they have? At
present time the number of pc's in the entire world are estimated in 1,500
millions, the number of users can be estimated without force the numbers as a
twice of this number. Worst, we are in the Wikipedia age; in example, when I
request an investigation to my students, about any theme. I need strictly keep
out Wikipedia (Oh well, yes Encarta too) as a valid source.

Then it is difficult to do what user want, if we don't get any feedback.

...

Seriuosly speaking, i'd like to make a distinguo:
The real basic(*) user just uses a computer to get her work done, he
does not give a damn about a new version of firefox, kde or wathever, as
long as the version she is using is functioning.

...

Are you sure? I'll try to explain me with a practical example: I really don't remember what of the
versions of the Open Office 3.x branch open the road to read and write the MS Office 2007 (docx,
etc) but when its happen, it was the great success How many users really need this
particular goodie, I think a big share of them!

well i had in mind a real life example when i wrote the above
...

we should not mix the needs of this two categories, neither would like
it.

Ok, I call these users intermediate users and here in Mexico we have an idiomatic
expression for these situations: El qué quiera azul celeste, ¡que le cueste! A poor
translation of that is: If someone want something special, pays for get it!

the above stands, these categories have different needs and whishes.

btw, we also have users interested in backports of stuff like openldap,
samba or such, these users will actually contribute to the technical
making of the distro, either by using bugzilla when they find bugs or
actually doing packaging work. Ignoring the will of such users will,
sooner or later, force mageia to employ paid personnel to do packaging
work.

I disagree here, a big share of the users are sick (including me) of an illness called
versionitis gravis. Good I'm sick!:) As I can see there are two variants of
the illness:

I just meant that many people working on packaging are also using the
distro for running servers, so we are interested in server stuff, which
the average user wont' prolly give a sh@@@ about.

--
Luca Berra -- bl...@vodka.it

Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?

2010-10-16 Thread Romain d'Alverny

On Sat, Oct 16, 2010 at 21:29, Marc Paré m...@marcpare.com wrote:
 Le 2010-10-16 12:36, Ahmad Samir a écrit :

 It's much better to help the user formulate a useful bug report,
 that's easier / more productive for all involved parties.

 There would be no middle man. Once the middle-man could replicate the bug
 and verify the bug with other users, then the middle-man would submit to
 bugzilla. That's it. From there on, the middle-man will take care of testing
 requests from devs.

 As far as reporting back to the original user who reported the bug, as an
 extra gesture of kindness, the middle-man would just post on the Report a
 bug forum that the bug has been quashed or is still under review ... but
 not to the user but to the Report a bug forum.

 The idea is to keep the flow of possible bug reports coming in an organised
 way. The middle-man would have to be someone with a little more experience
 than that of a new user and also someone who has an interest in working this
 way. We will get more bug reports from users by keeping it simple and easy.

Yes, and for everyone.

I tend to agree with Ahmad, as well as with you.

You may as well imagine we improve the Bugzilla process with a
front-process, guiding the reporter about her bug report.

That may be a forum with people active there, educating the user about
the bug and the reporting process;

And/or that may be a better designed bug reporting process with a
better flow (providing and getting info to/from the user), querying a
knowledge-base, filtering known/resolved queries out of
yet-another-duplicate-bug-report and ultimately opening a bug in
Bugzilla with a specific interaction to the user (so she knows what
happens next).*

That removes the middle-man issue and that filters out as well people
that are not concerned enough to report/follow-up on a bug (provided
the process is, indeed, better designed and better welcomes the end
user).


* moreover, I believe this type of improvement would benefit many,
many, if not all, projects using a bug report tool.

Cheers,

Romain

Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?

2010-10-16 Thread Fernando Parra

On Sat, 16 Oct 2010 23:28:32 +0200
Luca Berra bluca-1wc7or56...@public.gmane.org wrote:

 On Sat, Oct 16, 2010 at 10:41:31AM -0500, Fernando Parra wrote:
 On Sat, 16 Oct 2010 08:56:06 +0200
 Luca Berra bluca-1wc7or56oao-xmd5yjdbdmrexy1tmh2...@public.gmane.org wrote:
 
  On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 10:00:14PM -0500, Fernando Parra wrote:
  The basic/novice user doesn't read anything,
  remove basic/novice from the sentence and i will agree ;)
  
 
 Are you agree with some like that?
 Only the geek/expert/professional users read?
 I think most people don't read, sometime even geek/expert/professional
 don't. This is probably due to an overload of information, and trying to
 create messages that are actually 'seen' by users is becoming a new
 branch of science.
 

I will try to answer. Nobody reads, yes it's the true (I'm a teacher I really 
know about the situation), but there are a magic exception. The user reads when 
he wants something. By example a lot of my students has a Notebook or a Laptop, 
and always have installed the last version of MSN Live, and of course the 
latest versions of their favourite games. How we can explain that? Are all this 
programs magically installed? No they install them as their wishes. But first 
appear a nice message invite them to upgrade.

   doesn't request anything to some like a bugzilla,
  but give him a forum and he probably will
 
 Here I'm not completely sure, How many forums, blogs, etc. about software 
 are there (including Windows, Mac and others)? and How many users they have? 
 At present time the number of pc's in the entire world are estimated in 
 1,500 millions, the number of users can be estimated without force the 
 numbers as a twice of this number. Worst, we are in the Wikipedia age; in 
 example, when I request an investigation to my students, about any theme. I 
 need strictly keep out Wikipedia (Oh well, yes Encarta too) as a valid 
 source.
 
 Then it is difficult to do what user want, if we don't get any feedback.
 

Well, you are right its difficult, but it isn't impossible. The big share of 
software publishers has statistics about at least of the number of downloads of 
their programs. And there are a lot of independent statistical measures. More, 
we have common sense (I hope!). And a final resource: we can make experiments, 
The Rolling Ligth program list shouldn't be like the 10 commandments (static 
per secula seculorum), As the software it is permanent state of change, the 
user's preferences are in a permanent evolution.

 ...
  Seriuosly speaking, i'd like to make a distinguo:
  The real basic(*) user just uses a computer to get her work done, he
  does not give a damn about a new version of firefox, kde or wathever, as
  long as the version she is using is functioning.
 ...
 Are you sure? I'll try to explain me with a practical example: I really 
 don't remember what of the versions of the Open Office 3.x branch open the 
 road to read and write the MS Office 2007 (docx, etc) but when its happen, 
 it was the great success How many users really need this particular 
 goodie, I think a big share of them!
 
 well i had in mind a real life example when i wrote the above
 ...
  we should not mix the needs of this two categories, neither would like
  it.
 
 Ok, I call these users intermediate users and here in Mexico we have an 
 idiomatic expression for these situations: El qué quiera azul celeste, ¡que 
 le cueste! A poor translation of that is: If someone want something 
 special, pays for get it!
 the above stands, these categories have different needs and whishes.
 
  btw, we also have users interested in backports of stuff like openldap,
  samba or such, these users will actually contribute to the technical
  making of the distro, either by using bugzilla when they find bugs or
  actually doing packaging work. Ignoring the will of such users will,
  sooner or later, force mageia to employ paid personnel to do packaging
  work.
 
 I disagree here, a big share of the users are sick (including me) of an 
 illness called versionitis gravis. Good I'm sick!:) As I can see there are 
 two variants of the illness:
 I just meant that many people working on packaging are also using the
 distro for running servers, so we are interested in server stuff, which
 the average user wont' prolly give a sh@@@ about.

Well, I'm thinking a lot in the server users, As a server administrator I'm 
very conservative (but it is only my POV) before to say anything I'm reading 
more opinions about the Rolling Light in servers.

You can read an interesting thread a the discuss mail list, specially one of 
the mails is about a college that prefer install CentOS in their desktops PC, 
because they don't want to support two different distros, and they choose 
CentOS as a server.

Well the ball is on the air. The Mageia Server should be a Rolling Ligth 
distro, yes or no?

Regards from Mexico.
-- 
Fernando Parra gato2...@yahoo.com.mx

Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?


Le 2010-10-16 18:35, Romain d'Alverny a écrit :

On Sat, Oct 16, 2010 at 21:29, Marc Parém...@marcpare.com  wrote:

Le 2010-10-16 12:36, Ahmad Samir a écrit :


It's much better to help the user formulate a useful bug report,
that's easier / more productive for all involved parties.


There would be no middle man. Once the middle-man could replicate the bug
and verify the bug with other users, then the middle-man would submit to
bugzilla. That's it. From there on, the middle-man will take care of testing
requests from devs.

As far as reporting back to the original user who reported the bug, as an
extra gesture of kindness, the middle-man would just post on the Report a
bug forum that the bug has been quashed or is still under review ... but
not to the user but to the Report a bug forum.

The idea is to keep the flow of possible bug reports coming in an organised
way. The middle-man would have to be someone with a little more experience
than that of a new user and also someone who has an interest in working this
way. We will get more bug reports from users by keeping it simple and easy.


Yes, and for everyone.

I tend to agree with Ahmad, as well as with you.

You may as well imagine we improve the Bugzilla process with a
front-process, guiding the reporter about her bug report.

That may be a forum with people active there, educating the user about
the bug and the reporting process;

And/or that may be a better designed bug reporting process with a
better flow (providing and getting info to/from the user), querying a
knowledge-base, filtering known/resolved queries out of
yet-another-duplicate-bug-report and ultimately opening a bug in
Bugzilla with a specific interaction to the user (so she knows what
happens next).*

That removes the middle-man issue and that filters out as well people
that are not concerned enough to report/follow-up on a bug (provided
the process is, indeed, better designed and better welcomes the end
user).


* moreover, I believe this type of improvement would benefit many,
many, if not all, projects using a bug report tool.

Cheers,

Romain



Thanks for the note Romain.

I think what this all boils down to is, does the Mageia project want to 
actively seek out bugs and encourage its users to report bugs? If Mageia 
is interested in seriously quashing bugs, then the reporting process has 
to be streamlined in such a way as to encourage the reporting of bug as 
painlessly as possible for users. Human nature being what it is, people 
will gladly report a bug if there is a way to do so quickly and easily. 
However, it gets more complicated if you ask users to follow up on their 
bug report, as in bugzilla.


IMHO, it would be easier if Mageia offered users:

-- The reporting of bugs through bugzilla as is usually done, and the 
devs can work out these problems with the normal messaging that normally 
goes along with the bugzilla process.


-- For users who have no intention of being part of bugzilla and who 
would still like to report a bug, a forum discussion where a middle 
man or bug facilitator would help triage the bugs in this forum, 
verify the bug and then submit it in their name. The user would not be 
obligated from this point on to involve herself with the testing of 
possible bug repairs. The bug facilitator would be obligated to the 
usual bugzilla process. Of course if the user wished to learn more and 
participate in the bugzilla process, then the bug-facilitator could 
help mentor the user to the bugzilla process.


This way the user would have 2 methods of reporting, one with a certain 
amount of commitment and the other with no commitments other than 
reporting and doing a quick verification with the help of the bug 
facilitator.


The devs would not be part of this process and would work through the 
bugzilla as usual. And the bug reporting would, IMOH, be more streamlined.


Marc

Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?

2010-10-16 Thread Liam R E Quin

On Sat, 2010-10-16 at 23:11 -0400, Marc Paré wrote:

[...]

 I think what this all boils down to is, does the Mageia project want to 
 actively seek out bugs and encourage its users to report bugs? If Mageia 
 is interested in seriously quashing bugs, then the reporting process has 
 to be streamlined in such a way as to encourage the reporting of bug as 
 painlessly as possible for users.

It's a good question (although some projects prefer to keep it so that
the people reporting bugs tend to be the ones able to give a clear
description of the problem and ways to reproduce it)... but...

Please do change the subject line if you go this-far off thread.

I'm only checking each thread once a week or so and probably others
do the same, not trying to read every message, as the volume is too
high.  But, more people could contribute if the mail-flood was easier.
Which is not unlike your point about the bugs :-)

Best,

Liam

-- 
Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/
Ankh: irc.sorcery.net irc.gnome.org www.advogato.org

Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?

2010-10-15 Thread Fernando Parra

On Fri, 15 Oct 2010 12:42:03 +0100
Buchan Milne bgmilne-tobu8pog+uhswrhanm7...@public.gmane.org wrote:

Hi Buchan.

First, I believe this is the beginning of a long term friendship, I really love 
your answers, Is very clear for myself we aren't agree in a lot of points, but 
both are looking the same thing, we only differ in the method.

 On Friday, 15 October 2010 03:48:56 Fernando Parra wrote:
  Hi everybody.
  
  I feel that the concept of a new way, as it exist into my mind is not
  completely understood. Let me try to re-explain again. Please be patient
  and excuses any mistake with my English (I'm totally out of practice):
  
  I'm talking about to liberate to novice/novel/without experience user,
  about concepts like backports, but I'm not talking about
  close/disappear/eliminate/forgot backports.
  
  Why? because a big share of them will arrive from a very different
  environment (especially windows), and as you now, in there those concepts
  are not only estrange, they simply don't exists. When a Windows user
  wants/needs to update a program, as much the only thing that he/she must
  do is unninstall the old/previous version and then install the new one.
  
  What programs? Following the same idea, about these kind of users, we
  should ask: what programs they usually upgrade? The answer could be found
  asking to the user's themselves, but certainly could be another ways.
  
  Why not all backports? Reason 1: Because a lot of them don't care about the
  new version of CUPS (in example) or the new version of Maxima (I'm sure
  there are a lot clearly examples). Reason 2: Because there are packages
  that may causes some incidents after upgrade them.
  
  How we can solve this situation? Offering a default automatic upgrade for a
  small group of packages, especially when they change in an important way,
  in example Firefox 3.6x 3.6x+ or to 4.x
  
  With this in mind:
   What aspects of the Mandriva backports solution are not satisfactory?
   
   -The fact that not everything is available as a backport?
  
  Not all are in backports, more these users don't want/understand a big
  share of them
 
 So, we must dumb down everything, and not provide openldap backports for 
 people running servers who want a convenient way to run the software version 
 that will allow them to file bugs upstream (OpenLDAP team doesn't respond to 
 bugs filed on non-current releases)?

Specially here the answer is obvious: The novice doesn't now what is OpenLDAP! 
and maybe he wont hear about it for the rest of his life. New versions of 
OpenLDAP should be stay available in the backports repository, not as an 
automatic available upgrade.

 
   -That users don't know how to request a backport?
  
  That is true, more, they don't want to learn about that, they only want a
  new version of their favourite program.
 
 What do we do in the case where a new version of some software is available, 
 and has been sent to cooker? How do we decide whether it should go to 
 backports or not? And for which releases?
 
 (FYI, for Mandriva users can typically request backports in bugzilla or on 
 IRC, but we may need better means).
 

Ok, first at all, we must deicide what packages (not all of them!) will be at 
the Rolling Ligth model. After that, all this packages must have an appropriate 
path.

   -That too many backports are available?
  
  This is matter of who are revising backports, for novice? Yes there are to
  many. For the geek or the expert? Maybe never there will enough of them.
  
   -That all users don't get them by default?
   -That users doing network installs by default don't get the backport on
   initial installation?
  
  No, they are not get them if we will use a potentially problematic
  repository.
  
   -That users aren't aware of backports?
   -Something else?
  
  Panic? Fear? Baal, Luzbel and other demons in their minds?
  
   Technically speaking?
   Less than 'urpmi --searchmedia Backports chromium' ?
  
  If I was a novice my answer will be: What hell is that?
 
 This was a response to 'users must do less', not 'it must be very easy'. At 
 present, users need to do just one thing. We can fix the ease of doing that 
 one thing, if we understand the problem correctly.

Some times easy doesn't means do less, I think in this particular case must 
means Understandable.

 
 I note you chose to leave out:
 
   Or, should it be more obvious in rpmdrake or similar? How about
   commenting on my proposal for UI change in rpmdrake making backports
   more obvious?
 
 The proposal I refer to is:
 
 Now, maybe the user interface needs to be improved. For example, maybe there 
 should be no dropdown box, but instead when searching for a package by name, 
 it should show you all the versions:
 
 
 Find: | digikam | In: -Graphical applications   |By: -Package Name

Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?

2010-10-14 Thread Sinner from the Prairy

Marc Paré wrote:

 Thanks for posting the site Tux99. There was talk of more user groups
 doing the poll/survey. Does anyone know if this is being done? Great
 data for the devs to consider.
 
 Marc

This in the Spanish-speaking Mandriva community BlogDrake:


http://blogdrake.net/encuesta/que-tipo-de-ciclo-de-releases-deberia-tener-
mageia

In case the URL gets cut, here it is shortened with Bit.ly: 

 http://bit.ly/am7Ivg


Salut,
Sinner

Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?



Quote: Buchan Milne wrote on Thu, 14 October 2010 15:27

 What aspects of the Mandriva backports solution are not satisfactory?
 
 -The fact that not everything is available as a backport?

Yes, more packages should be available
(and as future packager I will do my part to make that happen)

 -That users don't know how to request a backport?

It certainly could help publicizing backports and giving the user an easy
way to request specific packages

 -That users doing network installs by default don't get the backport on
 
 initial installation?

That would be very useful as it reduces bandwidth and speed up
installation.

 -That users aren't aware of backports?

Yes, backports should be promoted better in drakrpm and in the web site.

 -Something else?

backports should be supported for security patches and bug fixes just like
the main packages (if not instead of the main packages).
Of course the security patch could be simply provided by backporting a
newer version of the package, no need to make patches for each version.

  The end users need to do less than now for to get new versions of
  their
  favourites applications.
 
 Less than 'urpmi --searchmedia Backports chromium' ?

CLI is not ideal for 'normal' users.

 Or, should it be more obvious in rpmdrake or similar?

I think they should be enabled by default, since it's my impression that
the majority of 'normal' users wants new versions of apps, those users who
DON'T want them can still always disable them.

Backports shouldn't be second choice, it should be the default, since that
would make Mageia stand out from other distros as being the distro were
users get the latest versions of apps before any other major distro
provides them.

-- 
Mageia ML Forum Gateway: http://mageia.linuxtech.net/forum/

Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?


Le 2010-10-14 09:08, Sinner from the Prairy a écrit :

Marc Paré wrote:


Thanks for posting the site Tux99. There was talk of more user groups
doing the poll/survey. Does anyone know if this is being done? Great
data for the devs to consider.

Marc


This in the Spanish-speaking Mandriva community BlogDrake:


http://blogdrake.net/encuesta/que-tipo-de-ciclo-de-releases-deberia-tener-
mageia

In case the URL gets cut, here it is shortened with Bit.ly:

  http://bit.ly/am7Ivg


Salut,
Sinner




Gracias Sinner:

Is it me or is the poll different? The overall feeling on the Spanish 
Blogdrake is to like Mandriva a stable system with upgrades and 
backports at 58%. I imagine this means keeping to Mandriva release 
cycle with no changes.


Wouldn't it make sense to have the same poll? I guess, this way we still 
get the results of a poll and a sense of the community feeling anyway.


Marc

Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?



Just to add to my last post:
It would be useful if users could disable specifc packages from being
updated via the update GUI.
What I mean is basically when new updates get presented (which would
include new backports) the user could untick specific packages (as is
possible now) but also have a second tick-box to store the choice
permanently in the skip.list.
This would give the user more choice of which packages he wants to always
update to the newest version and wich ones he/she prefers to keep frozen
at the same version.
-- 
Mageia ML Forum Gateway: http://mageia.linuxtech.net/forum/

Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?



Quote: marc wrote on Thu, 14 October 2010 15:49

 Is it me or is the poll different? The overall feeling on the Spanish 
 Blogdrake is to like Mandriva a stable system with upgrades and 
 backports at 58%. I imagine this means keeping to Mandriva release 
 cycle with no changes.
 
 Wouldn't it make sense to have the same poll? I guess, this way we
 still 
 get the results of a poll and a sense of the community feeling anyway.

I guess the old rule of polls applies:
depending on how you formulate the poll question and the description of the
options you can hugely influence the results...

Personally I think a poll without educating everyone about what exactly
each choice would mean is useless. We first need to elaborate detailed
alternatives before anyone can make an informed choice.

-- 
Mageia ML Forum Gateway: http://mageia.linuxtech.net/forum/

Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?

2010-10-14 Thread Ahmad Samir

On 14 October 2010 15:41, Tux99 tux99-...@uridium.org wrote:


 Quote: Buchan Milne wrote on Thu, 14 October 2010 15:27

 What aspects of the Mandriva backports solution are not satisfactory?

 -The fact that not everything is available as a backport?

 Yes, more packages should be available
 (and as future packager I will do my part to make that happen)

Well, backporting a package is a one-liner, so it takes less than
minute to be done; that's not the issue. The issue is that a new
version of package A may need a new version or package B to work, so
package B needs to be backported too; and/or that the new version of A
doesn't work with older libs/kernels, so backporting isn't too much
time consuming for packagers, but making sure that that backport has a
good chance of working(tm) is the bigger burden/responsibility.

I've seen, too many times, trigger-happy packagers backporting
packages that're not maintained by them (so they know it less than
those package maintainer(s)), breaking those packages and annoying the
maintainers of said packages. It's usually irresponsible to backport a
package without taking that package maintainer's opinion into account.
(an infamous example on that is gwibber being backported to 2010.1).


 -That users don't know how to request a backport?

 It certainly could help publicizing backports and giving the user an easy
 way to request specific packages

New users who frequented the forums always got to know what backports
are pretty fast. And bugzilla is the perfect system for asking for a
backport, that worked pretty good.

[...]

 -That users aren't aware of backports?

 Yes, backports should be promoted better in drakrpm and in the web site.

 -Something else?

 backports should be supported for security patches and bug fixes just like
 the main packages (if not instead of the main packages).
 Of course the security patch could be simply provided by backporting a
 newer version of the package, no need to make patches for each version.


That's they way backports has always worked, no specific patches, just
the latest cooker package pushed to backports as is with no official
support, that's reasonable, packagers shouldn't promise to support
backports when they can't due to various reasons (time, effort.. etc).

  The end users need to do less than now for to get new versions of
  their
  favourites applications.

 Less than 'urpmi --searchmedia Backports chromium' ?

 CLI is not ideal for 'normal' users.


rpmdrake has a Backports filter that shows packages from backports
repos, that's easy to use even for new users.

 Or, should it be more obvious in rpmdrake or similar?

 I think they should be enabled by default, since it's my impression that
 the majority of 'normal' users wants new versions of apps, those users who
 DON'T want them can still always disable them.

 Backports shouldn't be second choice, it should be the default, since that
 would make Mageia stand out from other distros as being the distro were
 users get the latest versions of apps before any other major distro
 provides them.


Enabling them by default defies the purpose of having backports at
all; it's not for new users, it's more for slightly experienced users
or power users who want the latest versions of apps.

-- 
Ahmad Samir

Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?



Quote: Ahmad Samir wrote on Thu, 14 October 2010 16:00

 I've seen, too many times, trigger-happy packagers backporting
 packages that're not maintained by them (so they know it less than
 those package maintainer(s)), breaking those packages and annoying the
 maintainers of said packages. It's usually irresponsible to backport a
 package without taking that package maintainer's opinion into account.
 (an infamous example on that is gwibber being backported to 2010.1).

I agree it should be preferably the maintainer doing the backport, or he
should at least be consulted.
 
 New users who frequented the forums always got to know what backports
 are pretty fast. And bugzilla is the perfect system for asking for a
 backport, that worked pretty good.

The wast majority of 'normal' users never uses the forum.
Backports shouldn't be something that only users who frequent the forum
find out about.

 That's they way backports has always worked, no specific patches, just
 the latest cooker package pushed to backports as is with no official
 support, that's reasonable, packagers shouldn't promise to support
 backports when they can't due to various reasons (time, effort.. etc).

But IMHO that should change in Mageia, we should promise support by the way
of timely updates, especially when security issues are present.

  Backports shouldn't be second choice, it should be the default,
  since that
  would make Mageia stand out from other distros as being the distro
  were
  users get the latest versions of apps before any other major
  distro
  provides them.
 
 Enabling them by default defies the purpose of having backports at
 all; it's not for new users, it's more for slightly experienced users
 or power users who want the latest versions of apps.

That's exactly the crucial bit that IMHO needs to change, backports are
very interesting for 'normal' users so we should make sure normal users
can use them.
Don't you see how attractive it is especially for 'normal' users to have
access to the latest versions all the time?
Sure, not everyone wants them, but by integrating the skip.list in the
update GUI we could keep 'conservative' users happy too.


-- 
Mageia ML Forum Gateway: http://mageia.linuxtech.net/forum/

Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?

2010-10-14 Thread Ahmad Samir

On 14 October 2010 16:14, Tux99 tux99-...@uridium.org wrote:


 Quote: Ahmad Samir wrote on Thu, 14 October 2010 16:00

[]

 Enabling them by default defies the purpose of having backports at
 all; it's not for new users, it's more for slightly experienced users
 or power users who want the latest versions of apps.

 That's exactly the crucial bit that IMHO needs to change, backports are
 very interesting for 'normal' users so we should make sure normal users
 can use them.
 Don't you see how attractive it is especially for 'normal' users to have
 access to the latest versions all the time?
 Sure, not everyone wants them, but by integrating the skip.list in the
 update GUI we could keep 'conservative' users happy too.


Then you're not talking about new users any more...

-- 
Ahmad Samir

Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?



Quote: Ahmad Samir wrote on Thu, 14 October 2010 16:21

 Then you're not talking about new users any more...

I don't know what you mean by new users, but I was talking about 'normal'
user by which I mean general users without technical background (like my
wife for example :) ), people that have used a computer before, but not
necessarily with Linux, just an average Windows user for example.
-- 
Mageia ML Forum Gateway: http://mageia.linuxtech.net/forum/

Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?

2010-10-14 Thread Romain d'Alverny

Does anyone take notes to summarize and make a consistent proposal (be
it in some way or the other) of what should be done, as well as
defining some sort of personas for users (unaware, new, occasional,
frequent, expert) for evaluation?

Romain

Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?


Le 2010-10-14 09:57, Tux99 a écrit :



Quote: marc wrote on Thu, 14 October 2010 15:49


Is it me or is the poll different? The overall feeling on the Spanish
Blogdrake is to like Mandriva a stable system with upgrades and
backports at 58%. I imagine this means keeping to Mandriva release
cycle with no changes.

Wouldn't it make sense to have the same poll? I guess, this way we
still
get the results of a poll and a sense of the community feeling anyway.


I guess the old rule of polls applies:
depending on how you formulate the poll question and the description of the
options you can hugely influence the results...

Personally I think a poll without educating everyone about what exactly
each choice would mean is useless. We first need to elaborate detailed
alternatives before anyone can make an informed choice.



I agree. However, I would view these polls as both a way to inform 
people and a short measure of what the community members think at this 
point. It does hold a little value. I am not sure if we all really 
understand the meaning behind rolling distro, but the polls still do 
give a little value at this point in time.


If we are going to poll communities, the community leaders should really 
get together and decide on the process and questions so that the 
information collected is valuable. But Ok, this way we still get a 
little data to look at.


Marc

Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?


Le 2010-10-14 09:53, Tux99 a écrit :



Just to add to my last post:
It would be useful if users could disable specifc packages from being
updated via the update GUI.
What I mean is basically when new updates get presented (which would
include new backports) the user could untick specific packages (as is
possible now) but also have a second tick-box to store the choice
permanently in the skip.list.
This would give the user more choice of which packages he wants to always
update to the newest version and wich ones he/she prefers to keep frozen
at the same version.


This is a great idea. Someone should make a note of it.

Marc

Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?

2010-10-14 Thread Sinner from the Prairy

Tux99 wrote:
 Quote: Ahmad Samir wrote on Thu, 14 October 2010 16:00

 Enabling them by default defies the purpose of having backports at
 all; it's not for new users, it's more for slightly experienced users
 or power users who want the latest versions of apps.
 
 That's exactly the crucial bit that IMHO needs to change, backports are
 very interesting for 'normal' users so we should make sure normal users
 can use them.

I believe you are both right:

* backports are for power users
* Mandriva/Mageia are power users [*]

[*] 1. they chose Linux. 2. They chose a Not Ubuntu distro 


So, what about?

1. Changing name of backports to something more dscriptive
2. Making backports part of official repos
3. NOT activating backports repo by default.

Salut,
Sinner

Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?

2010-10-14 Thread nicolas vigier

On Thu, 14 Oct 2010, Tux99 wrote:

 
 I think they should be enabled by default, since it's my impression that
 the majority of 'normal' users wants new versions of apps, those users who
 DON'T want them can still always disable them.

If backports repository is enabled by default, it should be stable. How
do you garantee that backports will never break ?

 Backports shouldn't be second choice, it should be the default, since that
 would make Mageia stand out from other distros as being the distro were
 users get the latest versions of apps before any other major distro
 provides them.

Just providing the latest version of apps is not enough to stand out
from other distros. All distros could do it, and they usually already
do it in their developement version. But the problem is always the same:
adding new versions create instability.

Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?

2010-10-14 Thread Sinner from the Prairy

Tux99 wrote:

 I guess the old rule of polls applies:
 depending on how you formulate the poll question and the description of
 the options you can hugely influence the results...

This is so true.

I follow the politics blog FiveThirtyEight (warning! statistics nerd alert 
activated!) and again and again, strange-resulting polls are caused by 
poorly formulated questions, guided answers or lack of proper options.

 Personally I think a poll without educating everyone about what exactly
 each choice would mean is useless. We first need to elaborate detailed
 alternatives before anyone can make an informed choice.

This is mostly what Romain has been asking: someone to provide clear 
definitions of what Rolling Release is. And why Backports does not work.


Salut,
Sinner

Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?

On Thu, 14 Oct 2010, nicolas vigier wrote:

 On Thu, 14 Oct 2010, Tux99 wrote:

  I think they should be enabled by default, since it's my impression that
  the majority of 'normal' users wants new versions of apps, those users who
  DON'T want them can still always disable them.
 
 If backports repository is enabled by default, it should be stable. How
 do you garantee that backports will never break ?

Nicolas, please re-read old posts of this thread we discussed this 
already, the conclusion was that there are no guarantees in 
life. Experience tells us backports don't normally break any more than 
the regular security/bugfix updates.

  Backports shouldn't be second choice, it should be the default, since that
  would make Mageia stand out from other distros as being the distro were
  users get the latest versions of apps before any other major distro
  provides them.
 
 Just providing the latest version of apps is not enough to stand out
 from other distros.

I didn't say this should be the ONLY unique feature of Mageia.

 All distros could do it, and they usually already do it in their 
 developement version. But the problem is always the same:
 adding new versions create instability.

All distros COULD do it but they don't, the dev version doesn't count
as that is obviously much more unstable, since it's meant for 
experimenting.

Providing new versions usually gives MORE stability since newer version 
normally include loads of bug fixes too, but again we debated this 
already, see old posts in this thread.

Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?

2010-10-14 Thread nicolas vigier

On Thu, 14 Oct 2010, Tux99 wrote:

 On Thu, 14 Oct 2010, nicolas vigier wrote:
 
  On Thu, 14 Oct 2010, Tux99 wrote:
 
   I think they should be enabled by default, since it's my impression that
   the majority of 'normal' users wants new versions of apps, those users who
   DON'T want them can still always disable them.
  
  If backports repository is enabled by default, it should be stable. How
  do you garantee that backports will never break ?
 
 Nicolas, please re-read old posts of this thread we discussed this 
 already, the conclusion was that there are no guarantees in 
 life. Experience tells us backports don't normally break any more than 
 the regular security/bugfix updates.

Experience tells me that backports break much more than regular
security/bugfix updates.

   Backports shouldn't be second choice, it should be the default, since that
   would make Mageia stand out from other distros as being the distro were
   users get the latest versions of apps before any other major distro
   provides them.
  
  Just providing the latest version of apps is not enough to stand out
  from other distros.
 
 I didn't say this should be the ONLY unique feature of Mageia.
 
  All distros could do it, and they usually already do it in their 
  developement version. But the problem is always the same:
  adding new versions create instability.
 
 All distros COULD do it but they don't, the dev version doesn't count
 as that is obviously much more unstable, since it's meant for 
 experimenting.

They could do it, but they don't do it in the stable branch. Maybe there
is a reason ?

 Providing new versions usually gives MORE stability since newer version 
 normally include loads of bug fixes too, but again we debated this 
 already, see old posts in this thread.

The software itself can be more stable, but not the integration with
the other software.

This was debated already, but you're still not answering the question
about how you can guarantee that it will be stable enough (the
integration between all the software, not only the software themself).

Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?


Le 2010-10-14 10:56, Sinner from the Prairy a écrit :

Tux99 wrote:


I guess the old rule of polls applies:
depending on how you formulate the poll question and the description of
the options you can hugely influence the results...


This is so true.

I follow the politics blog FiveThirtyEight (warning! statistics nerd alert
activated!) and again and again, strange-resulting polls are caused by
poorly formulated questions, guided answers or lack of proper options.


Personally I think a poll without educating everyone about what exactly
each choice would mean is useless. We first need to elaborate detailed
alternatives before anyone can make an informed choice.


This is mostly what Romain has been asking: someone to provide clear
definitions of what Rolling Release is. And why Backports does not work.


Salut,
Sinner




Is there a dedicated mailist for the leaders of the different 
communities? It would probably make sense to have a closed list for them 
to coordinate projects such as polls, marketing, sharing of resource 
materials agreemtns etc. Just a place where they could meet and 
conference to build consensus on different issues.


Does this exist? Do we have a list of all the communities that have come 
on-board to the project?


Marc

Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?


Le 2010-10-14 10:50, nicolas vigier a écrit :

On Thu, 14 Oct 2010, Tux99 wrote:



I think they should be enabled by default, since it's my impression that
the majority of 'normal' users wants new versions of apps, those users who
DON'T want them can still always disable them.


If backports repository is enabled by default, it should be stable. How
do you garantee that backports will never break ?


Backports shouldn't be second choice, it should be the default, since that
would make Mageia stand out from other distros as being the distro were
users get the latest versions of apps before any other major distro
provides them.


Just providing the latest version of apps is not enough to stand out
from other distros. All distros could do it, and they usually already
do it in their developement version. But the problem is always the same:
adding new versions create instability.




Actually, there is a thread on the Mandriva nntp where the latest CUPS 
in backports break the install. So we are passing the word to people 
about this. DO NOT INSTALL THE CUPS backports, it may break your Mdv 
installation.


I think the Backport name should just be changed to a more descriptive 
name and an info button (bubble or Wiki link) describing its intended 
use to the users.


There is a thread on the Mandriva nntp discussing the use of Backport 
(I started it) as many users had no idea what it meant or the reason 
behind it. We (users) are ill-informed of its purpose. But ... I like 
it, and I think it should stay, but in a renamed form and for all users 
to use ... maybe also add a user help link on that particular page 
where users could turn to for help.


IMHO, what makes or breaks a distro is the communication and the help 
users get from their knowledgeable counterparts. Use-help and 
Documentation should be front and centre to the distro.


IMHO, if you have enough experience, then you should be helping out on 
the user help mailists and user help forums to help out those in 
need of help.


Marc

Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?

2010-10-14 Thread Romain d'Alverny

On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 18:32, Marc Paré m...@marcpare.com wrote:
 Is there a dedicated mailist for the leaders of the different communities?
 It would probably make sense to have a closed list for them to coordinate
 projects such as polls, marketing, sharing of resource materials agreemtns
 etc. Just a place where they could meet and conference to build consensus on
 different issues.

 Does this exist? Do we have a list of all the communities that have come
 on-board to the project?

You mean, the Mageia Community Council? or something else?

We're in the process to setup the Council, but we will need each team
to coordinate on its own first (so we're blocked by the mailing-list
availability, which should come soon - we've been delayed because of
hosting issues).

Romain

Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?

2010-10-14 Thread Maurice Batey

On Thu, 14 Oct 2010 17:33:31 +0200, Tux99 wrote:

 I have been using backports on all my PCs and enabled them on all PCs of 
 friends whom I installed Mandriva and so far I have yet to see a single 
 breakage caused by backports.

  Having never had Backports enabled, I was encouraged by postings
here to try it.  Several app's were updated (e.g. VLC, CUPS).

However, I then found that the new version of VLC had problems with
DVD menus, and the new CUPS introduced problems (not just in my
installation but at least one other Mandriva user).

So I have reverted my Root partition to its state before the Backports
update, and all is well again.

My experience tells me that I should only use Backports - temporarily
- when looking for an update to some application, i.e. not as a source
for regular overall software updates.

-- 
/\/\aurice 
(Retired in Surrey, UK) Registered Linux User #487649
 Linux Mandriva 2010.0 32-bit  PowerPack (i686 kernel) 
   KDE 4.4.3   Virtualbox 3.2.6 Firefox 3.6.10

Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?

On Thu, 14 Oct 2010, Maurice Batey wrote:

 However, I then found that the new version of VLC had problems with
 DVD menus, and the new CUPS introduced problems (not just in my
 installation but at least one other Mandriva user).

I would put this down to the fact that currently in Mandriva backports 
are given little attention by the packagers (as has been mentioned by 
the Mandriva packagers here themselves).
Of course if we make them more central to the Mageia strategy then more 
care and testing is needed before a backport is pushed out.
So I wouldn't consider that a fundamental issue with backports, just a 
procedural issue.
Also personally I would consider CUPS a core app so I wouldn't have 
included that in backports at all.

Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?


Le 2010-10-14 12:42, Romain d'Alverny a écrit :

On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 18:32, Marc Parém...@marcpare.com  wrote:

Is there a dedicated mailist for the leaders of the different communities?
It would probably make sense to have a closed list for them to coordinate
projects such as polls, marketing, sharing of resource materials agreemtns
etc. Just a place where they could meet and conference to build consensus on
different issues.

Does this exist? Do we have a list of all the communities that have come
on-board to the project?


You mean, the Mageia Community Council? or something else?

We're in the process to setup the Council, but we will need each team
to coordinate on its own first (so we're blocked by the mailing-list
availability, which should come soon - we've been delayed because of
hosting issues).

Romain



Merci Romain

I guess this is it. Ok, work in progress.

Do we have an on-going list the different communities published that 
have joined somewhere on the website? Just curious.


Marc

Re: [Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?