Torsdag 20 juli 2006 11:03 skrev Marcus Meissner: > On Thu, Jul 20, 2006 at 07:32:53AM +0100, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > Greetings all, > > > > I would like to share some of the concerns I have about the state of SUSE > > Linux / The openSUSE project. I hope this does not come across as a rant > > as it is not intended as such, but to point out issues in the hope that > > something may be done about them. > > > > The perceived problem : Declining product quality > > > > Obviously there is the unfortunate situation of 10.1 where critical flaws > > were allowed to remain in the final product, making it in my opinion > > There was just 1 critical flaw in the development process, the very > late introduction of the new package management. > > What is bad in the rest of the distribution? > > > unsuitable for use by people who don't know what they're doing, probably > > I dont think so. > > > the first version of suse for a very long time for which this applies. I > > have not heard anything about what steps are being taken to ensure that > > this will not happen again, which has perhaps lead to the feeling amongst > > some that this is the sign of things to come. > > Even we learn from our mistakes, rest assured. > > > In the past 3 or 4 years what has really improved in terms of the value > > added by SUSE? Every 6 months we get a new set of packages with exactly > > the same suse additions. Very little has really changed since the 7.x > > days compared to prior to that point. > > Better hardware integration. > More smoother installation. > Always delivering the latest and greatest to you. > > We work with the upstream community, so most of our work also goes > to the upstream packages. > > > And the new values for 10.1: > - Greatly enhanced handling of external package repositories, which was > only handled step fatherly in older distributions. > - Better wireless support by Novell/SUSE developed NetworkManager + GUIs. > > > Possible causes: > > > > 1: Lack of vision / communication > > > > What causes the above observations? Is there really no vision of where > > SUSE Linux / openSUSE should be in 2-3 years time. What tangible > > What needs to be done in larger scale work? Linux is at a point where > there is not much work to do to make it working for everyone. > > Having a vision of where to go is difficult for us as "integrators". > > Yes, we might need some vision ... And you can help here too. > > > 2: Difficulty of community involvement > > > > - Communication (Lack of) > > Without communication of what the long term goals are, people generally > > have no idea of what they can be working on to help. The google summer > > of code project suggestions were good, but there is no reason these sort > > of things should be restricted to google summer of code. Suggestions of > > projects that could be taken on by community members would be helpful. > > We try to communicate, see our biweekly meetings, our presence here, > our talks at various conferences. > > > - Documentation (Lack of) > > It is difficult for people to work on things useful for SUSE if SUSE > > specific things are undocumented. Not everyone has time to read reams of > > code to determine how to use something. An example: libzypp - wonderful > > (apparently) new library for package management related stuff. Is there > > any api documentation beyond the automatically generated docs in the > > -devel package? No. Is there any documentation about what it actually > > does? No. Is there any documentation for packagers etc wishing to make > > use of new features like add on products? No. > > Wrong, for the overview what it does at least: > http://en.opensuse.org/Libzypp > > The regular user really would not care about it, since the tools drive it > forward. > > > Solutions: > > > > - Communicate the long term strategies to the community. If they really > > do not exist then leverage the community in deciding upon some. > > We are listening to you. :) > > Ciao, Marcus > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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