Re: Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 07:53:55AM +0200, Josselin Mouette wrote: Le lundi 26 juillet 2010 à 20:19 +0200, Magnus Berg a écrit : And you wonder: How to make Debian more attractive for users. :-) First thing: Average Linux user may not be very interested in spam hunting. Second thing: If you intend to be attractive for the average Linux user - Ubuntu users for instance - keep in mind that most users want a user friendly, easy to use distro, with helpful and understanding crew. If you intend to keep on working with computer nerds in mind you will never be attractive for the average Linux user. We want the distribution to be friendly and easy to use by anyone. We want to receive bug reports only from computer nerds since they are the ones who write useful reports. How are those two statements incompatible? IMO because lambda user and average nerd don't use the same software, or at least not in the same way, so they don't experience the same bugs. (gnome-app-install, some specific usages of gedit or gui admin apps, games for children) That would be interessting to get a stats per source pkg: number of bugs submitted / popcon(vote) -- Simon Paillard -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100728213814.ga31...@dedibox.ebzao.info
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
Hi, On Mon, 26 Jul 2010, Michael Gilbert wrote: On Mon, 26 Jul 2010 12:49:00 +0100, Ian Jackson wrote: Simply, we do not need to, and should not, make reporting bugs easier. As a point of reference, Ubuntu disabled their easy-to-find http bug submission page because of this very problem. Although it is still possible to submit bugs via http, you need to know the url scheme; something like http://launchpad.net/bugs/package/+submit. While I remember such a proposal, it doesn't look like implemented. On https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nautilus, you have Report a bug on the right and it takes you to the web-based submission form. But in various places they are documenting the use of ubuntu-bug rather than going through the web interface. Cheers, -- Raphaël Hertzog ◈ Debian Developer ◈ [Flattr=20693] Follow my Debian News ▶ http://RaphaelHertzog.com (English) ▶ http://RaphaelHertzog.fr (Français) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100727061312.gb26...@rivendell
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
Le lundi 26 juillet 2010 à 14:57 -0400, Andres Mejia a écrit : Here's a template reportbug prints out for iceweasel. [snip] Versions of packages iceweasel depends on: ii debianutils 3.4Miscellaneous utilities specific t ii fontconfig2.8.0-2.1 generic font configuration library ii libc6 2.11.2-2 Embedded GNU C Library: Shared lib [snip] Now with some additional prompts to the user to get subject and body, I don't see how a web app that can get this same information as reportbug can not be developed. Yeah sure. With an ActiveX maybe? -- .''`. : :' : “Fuck you sir, don’t be suprised when you die if `. `' you burn in Hell, because I am a solid Christian `-and I am praying for you.” -- Mike -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/1280213881.8738.4.ca...@meh
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
Hi, Fernando: On Tuesday 27 July 2010 04:00:11 Fernando Lemos wrote: 2010/7/26 Jesús M. Navarro jesus.nava...@undominio.net: [...] How many BTS reports have you closed? I don't mean to sound offensive here, but this thread is fruitless. All I see is people talking and talking over something they have no say in. Fair enough. Now: I'm not a DD nor I want to commit time to become one, while I may have time from time to time. What's the way I can help? Since parent poster was worried about more bugs meaning more time to triage, how can I help triaging bugs? This is free software. If you want to get your idea implemented, either file a bug report and patiently wait (and leave debian-devel alone) or implement it yourself. Talk is cheap. Now I stepped forward. Show me your talk wasn't a cheap one too. Cheers. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/201007271113.04612.jesus.nava...@undominio.net
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
On 27/07/10 at 11:13 +0200, Jesús M. Navarro wrote: Hi, Fernando: On Tuesday 27 July 2010 04:00:11 Fernando Lemos wrote: 2010/7/26 Jesús M. Navarro jesus.nava...@undominio.net: [...] How many BTS reports have you closed? I don't mean to sound offensive here, but this thread is fruitless. All I see is people talking and talking over something they have no say in. Fair enough. Now: I'm not a DD nor I want to commit time to become one, while I may have time from time to time. What's the way I can help? Since parent poster was worried about more bugs meaning more time to triage, how can I help triaging bugs? This is free software. If you want to get your idea implemented, either file a bug report and patiently wait (and leave debian-devel alone) or implement it yourself. Talk is cheap. Now I stepped forward. Show me your talk wasn't a cheap one too. While it is a nice move to step forward, it is even better when would-be contributors step forward and figure out by themselves what they should do and how. Like all free software projects, we lack contributors, but what we lack even more strongly are people able to take the initiative/lead on small subprojects. Now, regarding triaging, just find a package or a set of packages you are interested in, look it its bugs, figure out a strategy to go through the bugs (oldest first, more recent first, higher severity first), and try to add valuable information to each bug log (have you reproduced it? it it an upstream problem? is there an upstream bug for that debian bug? can you think of a patch?) - Lucas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100727092600.ga3...@xanadu.blop.info
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
On 2010-07-27, Jesús M. Navarro jesus.nava...@undominio.net wrote: Now: I'm not a DD nor I want to commit time to become one, while I may have time from time to time. What's the way I can help? Since parent poster was worried about more bugs meaning more time to triage, how can I help triaging bugs? contact the maintainers behind some applications you are interested in. I'm sure the kde people gnome people xfce people firefox/iceweasel people thunderbird/icedove people OOo people Apache people and many others would love to have people helping with the bugs. but a important thing for your motivation is that you help with things you actively use. I can give pointers to the various groups of people after having heard about your preferences. /Sune - one of the kde'ers. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/slrni4t9kg.rvp.nos...@sshway.ssh.pusling.com
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
Fernando Lemos writes (Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling): This is free software. If you want to get your idea implemented, either file a bug report and patiently wait (and leave debian-devel alone) or implement it yourself. Talk is cheap. In context this could be read as an invitation to write the code to allow web bug submission. Of course such code would not be accepted, and no-one should be encouraged to write it. Ian. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/19534.48146.634688.560...@chiark.greenend.org.uk
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
On 27/07/2010 12:59, Ian Jackson wrote: Fernando Lemos writes (Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling): This is free software. If you want to get your idea implemented, either file a bug report and patiently wait (and leave debian-devel alone) or implement it yourself. Talk is cheap. In context this could be read as an invitation to write the code to allow web bug submission. Of course such code would not be accepted, and no-one should be encouraged to write it. Isn't that what #590269 is about? Cheers, -- Yves-Alexis -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4c4ecd6b.7060...@debian.org
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 8:13 AM, Yves-Alexis Perez cor...@debian.org wrote: Isn't that what #590269 is about? No, that seems to be more about a SOAP (over HTTP) transport for reportbug/bts to file and manipulate bugs. Ian is probably talking about a Web 2.0 site with social bookmarking, tag clouds, AJAX, microformats, HTML5 video tutorials, mashups, growing front-end infomediaries, recontextualizable cross-platform deliverables and no way to automatically report dependencies or run bug scripts. More seriously, I wonder if the latter could be achieved with a browser plugin and if anyone is interested in working on that. I imagine Ubuntu would be very interested in such a plugin too. -- bye, pabs http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/aanlkti=husskrxrfu2oe_9hqcc2ef+rsip-bxbwjj...@mail.gmail.com
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
Yves-Alexis Perez writes (Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling): On 27/07/2010 12:59, Ian Jackson wrote: In context this could be read as an invitation to write the code to allow web bug submission. Of course such code would not be accepted, and no-one should be encouraged to write it. Isn't that what #590269 is about? No, as Paul Wise says, #590269 is about using HTTP as a data transport rather than SMTP, which is fine. The thing that is not fine is making a web page so that people who don't know how to write bug reports can use their browser to submit messages saying it didn't work. Ian. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/19534.60502.905846.540...@chiark.greenend.org.uk
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
On Tue, 27 Jul 2010, Josselin Mouette wrote: Le lundi 26 juillet 2010 à 14:57 -0400, Andres Mejia a écrit : Here's a template reportbug prints out for iceweasel. [snip] Versions of packages iceweasel depends on: ii debianutils 3.4Miscellaneous utilities specific t ii fontconfig2.8.0-2.1 generic font configuration library ii libc6 2.11.2-2 Embedded GNU C Library: Shared lib [snip] Now with some additional prompts to the user to get subject and body, I don't see how a web app that can get this same information as reportbug can not be developed. Yeah sure. With an ActiveX maybe? With a free form field called System specific information, please paste here the output of “reportbug --template package”. That could even be reasonable. Cheers, -- Raphaël Hertzog ◈ Debian Developer ◈ [Flattr=20693] Follow my Debian News ▶ http://RaphaelHertzog.com (English) ▶ http://RaphaelHertzog.fr (Français) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100727145603.gd30...@rivendell
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 04:56:03PM +0200, Raphael Hertzog wrote: With a free form field called System specific information, please paste here the output of “reportbug --template package”. That could even be reasonable. Except many people won't bother doing that. Currently, the barrier to submitting bugs manually (that is, through mail but without the use of reportbug) makes it less common for people to file useless bug reports. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with a webinterface, but perhaps make it easier to find that webinterface if people use reportbug. That is, have a desktop icon file a bug that causes reportbug to gather the necessary information from the local system, submit an HTTP request with template information over SOAP or some such, receive an HTTP URL from the server, and then fire off sensible-browser with said URL to allow the user to fill in whatever needs to be filled in. People who know what they're doing can of course still figure out how to file bug reports using just their web interface, just like people who know what they're doing can file bug reports using just their MUA today. But I don't see why we should make it easy for people to file useless bugreports. -- The biometric identification system at the gates of the CIA headquarters works because there's a guard with a large gun making sure no one is trying to fool the system. http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/01/biometrics.html -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100727151217.gh11...@celtic.nixsys.be
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
Josselin Mouette, 2010-07-27 08:58:01 +0200 : [...] Now with some additional prompts to the user to get subject and body, I don't see how a web app that can get this same information as reportbug can not be developed. Yeah sure. With an ActiveX maybe? Probably easier: add a CGI-like interface to reportbug, and open a browser on it? Since it *is* reportbug, it can continue grabbing whatever information is relevant using its scripts. And then it's a matter of a menu entry (or a big fat icon) running reportbug --http sensible-browser http://localhost:$some-port/;. AJAX to taste, then submit via local or remote SMTP. Roland. -- Roland Mas Plus on en fout, plus y'en a du riz. -- Proverbe chinois. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87wrsgyl4t@mirexpress.internal.placard.fr.eu.org
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
On Tue, 27 Jul 2010, Wouter Verhelst wrote: On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 04:56:03PM +0200, Raphael Hertzog wrote: With a free form field called System specific information, please paste here the output of “reportbug --template package”. That could even be reasonable. Except many people won't bother doing that. The CGI could verify that the field is not empty and that it contains the usual reportbug markers (like -- System Information:). I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with a webinterface, but perhaps make it easier to find that webinterface if people use reportbug. That is, have a desktop icon file a bug that causes reportbug to gather the necessary information from the local system, submit an HTTP request with template information over SOAP or some such, receive an HTTP URL from the server, and then fire off sensible-browser with said URL to allow the user to fill in whatever needs to be filled in. That's another interesting alternative. But it requires status storage on the server between the SOAP request and the HTTP request coming from the user's browser. Cheers, -- Raphaël Hertzog ◈ Debian Developer ◈ [Flattr=20693] Follow my Debian News ▶ http://RaphaelHertzog.com (English) ▶ http://RaphaelHertzog.fr (Français) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100727160442.ga31...@rivendell
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 06:04:42PM +0200, Raphael Hertzog wrote: On Tue, 27 Jul 2010, Wouter Verhelst wrote: On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 04:56:03PM +0200, Raphael Hertzog wrote: With a free form field called System specific information, please paste here the output of “reportbug --template package”. That could even be reasonable. Except many people won't bother doing that. The CGI could verify that the field is not empty and that it contains the usual reportbug markers (like -- System Information:). I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with a webinterface, but perhaps make it easier to find that webinterface if people use reportbug. That is, have a desktop icon file a bug that causes reportbug to gather the necessary information from the local system, submit an HTTP request with template information over SOAP or some such, receive an HTTP URL from the server, and then fire off sensible-browser with said URL to allow the user to fill in whatever needs to be filled in. That's another interesting alternative. But it requires status storage on the server between the SOAP request and the HTTP request coming from the user's browser. Yes, of course, but that's not the biggest problem -- there are many ways of doing that in a sane manner. -- The biometric identification system at the gates of the CIA headquarters works because there's a guard with a large gun making sure no one is trying to fool the system. http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/01/biometrics.html -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100727165201.go11...@celtic.nixsys.be
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
OoO Lors de la soirée naissante du mardi 27 juillet 2010, vers 17:55, Roland Mas lola...@debian.org disait : Probably easier: add a CGI-like interface to reportbug, and open a browser on it? Since it *is* reportbug, it can continue grabbing whatever information is relevant using its scripts. And then it's a matter of a menu entry (or a big fat icon) running reportbug --http sensible-browser http://localhost:$some-port/;. AJAX to taste, then submit via local or remote SMTP. This seems a sensible idea. However, any web interface would lead to the same problems that were raised with reportbug-ng. To my knowledge, useful bug reports need to run interactive console scripts for some packages. This could be solved with some AJAX terminal. -- panic(Unable to find empty mailbox for aha1542.\n); 2.2.16 /usr/src/linux/drivers/scsi/aha1542.c pgp9MTWJEILpw.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 17:12, Wouter Verhelst wou...@debian.org wrote: On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 04:56:03PM +0200, Raphael Hertzog wrote: With a free form field called System specific information, please paste here the output of “reportbug --template package”. That could even be reasonable. Except many people won't bother doing that. exactly Currently, the barrier to submitting bugs manually (that is, through mail but without the use of reportbug) makes it less common for people to file useless bug reports. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with a webinterface, but perhaps make it easier to find that webinterface if people use reportbug. That is, have a desktop icon file a bug that causes reportbug to gather the necessary information from the local system, submit an HTTP request with template information over SOAP or some such, receive an HTTP URL from the server, and then fire off sensible-browser with said URL to allow the user to fill in whatever needs to be filled in. I find this method very nice to give the users an immediate feedback their bugs was successfully reported. OTOH, the proposal above would use something similar to --template output to feed a webform where only teh body and the subject of the repot is missing (or those the only 2 things a john doe user would add), in that case, I don't see the advantage over a simple reportbug. you don't like cli? ok, give it a try to GTK+ UI - make that file a bug icon open the GTK+ UI for reportbug. We develop it with being user friendlier than the cli version, so use it, let us know if you like it and if there something to fix/adjust, report a bug :) Regards, -- Sandro Tosi (aka morph, morpheus, matrixhasu) My website: http://matrixhasu.altervista.org/ Me at Debian: http://wiki.debian.org/SandroTosi -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/aanlktimrst5xj2v085v6xe59mo9qpythfq4b=cvig...@mail.gmail.com
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
On Sun, 25 Jul 2010, Teemu Likonen wrote: * 2010-07-25 12:54 (+0200), Marc Haber wrote: stable = release testing = current unstable = development I like these. They describe the three distributions well and current might encourage more users than testing. Advertising constantly usable and trendy rolling release would surely help. +1 I would not introduce release but just keep stable, it describes the distribution well. But current is definitely a better name for testing and development (or devel) would be a nice alias for unstable. Cheers, -- Raphaël Hertzog ◈ Debian Developer ◈ [Flattr=20693] Follow my Debian News ▶ http://RaphaelHertzog.com (English) ▶ http://RaphaelHertzog.fr (Français) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100726061329.ge26...@rivendell
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
On 26/07/2010 06:08, Olivier Bonvalet wrote: PS: I don't know how much of this still belongs to d-devel (honestly, very few of the discussions about reportbug arisen from this thread does) and so you might probably want to move the conversation to reportbug-ma...@lists.alioth.debian.org . I agree, and I already mailed ow...@bugs.debian.org to know if I can help for that. So I will continue discussion with them. Olivier, If you need any help, I'd like to help creating the web-interface. I have some years of experience in php. All the best. -arief -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4c4d46bd.10...@gmail.com
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
Le 26/07/2010 10:26, Arief M Utama a écrit : On 26/07/2010 06:08, Olivier Bonvalet wrote: PS: I don't know how much of this still belongs to d-devel (honestly, very few of the discussions about reportbug arisen from this thread does) and so you might probably want to move the conversation to reportbug-ma...@lists.alioth.debian.org . I agree, and I already mailed ow...@bugs.debian.org to know if I can help for that. So I will continue discussion with them. Olivier, If you need any help, I'd like to help creating the web-interface. I have some years of experience in php. All the best. -arief Thanks but it's Perl only :( And of course everybody know that PHP stand for People Hate Perl ;) So not sure I can help. Olivier -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4c4d4891.3080...@daevel.fr
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
On Mon, 26 Jul 2010, Daniel Reurich wrote: 2) store output in a file, read it, then copy/paste on my MUA : you call that user friendly ? ;) No, but it's a viable solution (and I heard several people are already doing similar stuff). you could improve this and have it call sensible-browser mailto:u...@example.com?subject=bug\ Subject\body=bug\ report\ body. This would automagically put the appropriate information directly into the users default email client. (It would be easier still if sensible-utils included a mail user agent as well, then we could just call that.) Alternatively we could ask the user what mua they use (provide a list out of the installed mua's) - and use that. That's the approach followed by reportbug-ng. I've read reports from the author that it's not working very well for all the MUA when used through the xdg-email indirection. Hence reportbug-ng allows you to pick up your MUA in a list and it uses MUA specifict options to achieve its goal. Cheers, -- Raphaël Hertzog ◈ Debian Developer ◈ [Flattr=20693] Follow my Debian News ▶ http://RaphaelHertzog.com (English) ▶ http://RaphaelHertzog.fr (Français) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100726095637.gb13...@rivendell
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
Brian May writes (Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling): I would really like to see a HTML/HTTP browser based interface for the BTS. I would have several advantages: I would strongly resist any such suggestion, for the reasons I have already explained. In summary: We don't have a lack of bug reports, we have a lack of developer time. Increasing the number of bug reports will take away developer time for triage, for no benefit. Simply, we do not need to, and should not, make reporting bugs easier. Ian. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/19533.30252.279157.139...@chiark.greenend.org.uk
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
* 2010-07-26 08:13 (+0200), Raphael Hertzog wrote: * 2010-07-25 12:54 (+0200), Marc Haber wrote: stable = release testing = current unstable = development I would not introduce release but just keep stable, it describes the distribution well. Yes, that's it: stable - current - development. Now, who will proceed to make the change? :-) (I can't, I'm not a DD.) -- Feel free to Cc me your replies if you want to make sure I'll notice them. I can't read all the list mail. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87y6cy2xiu@mithlond.arda
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
Am 26.07.2010 11:56, schrieb Raphael Hertzog: On Mon, 26 Jul 2010, Daniel Reurich wrote: (It would be easier still if sensible-utils included a mail user agent as well, then we could just call that.) Alternatively we could ask the user what mua they use (provide a list out of the installed mua's) - and use that. That's the approach followed by reportbug-ng. I've read reports from the author that it's not working very well for all the MUA when used through the xdg-email indirection. Hence reportbug-ng allows you to pick up your MUA in a list and it uses MUA specifict options to achieve its goal. Yep, that's correct. I wish xdg-email would work as expected but it does not so I have to take care of each and every quirk of a MUA if it wants to be used by reportbug-ng. If my summer of code project works well, debbugs' SOAP interface will offer write operations. Then we don't need a MUA to report/manipulate bugs anymore. That will make things much easier. Cheers, Bastian -- Bastian Venthur http://venthur.de Debian Developer venthur at debian org -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/i2k8mo$mh...@dough.gmane.org
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 11:13 AM, Bastian Venthur vent...@debian.org wrote: Yep, that's correct. I wish xdg-email would work as expected but it does not so I have to take care of each and every quirk of a MUA if it wants to be used by reportbug-ng. Shouldn't those quirks be moved into xdg-email? -- bye, pabs http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/aanlkti=1fq-2owlsyajhqnmzr1snuskz-lrdwf0tz...@mail.gmail.com
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
On Mon, 26 Jul 2010 12:49:00 +0100, Ian Jackson wrote: Brian May writes (Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling): I would really like to see a HTML/HTTP browser based interface for the BTS. I would have several advantages: I would strongly resist any such suggestion, for the reasons I have already explained. In summary: We don't have a lack of bug reports, we have a lack of developer time. Increasing the number of bug reports will take away developer time for triage, for no benefit. Simply, we do not need to, and should not, make reporting bugs easier. As a point of reference, Ubuntu disabled their easy-to-find http bug submission page because of this very problem. Although it is still possible to submit bugs via http, you need to know the url scheme; something like http://launchpad.net/bugs/package/+submit. I think detailed bug submission instructions (including philosophy on why bugs are useful, how Debian is different/good WRT bug fixing, and how to write a good report) in the default browser home pages would go a lot further toward educating users and improving bug reports than anything else. A reportbug-ng quicklaunch icon by default on all of the desktop environments may be useful as well. Best wishes, Mike -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100726112350.65da7d58.michael.s.gilb...@gmail.com
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
On Mon, 26 Jul 2010 08:13:29 +0200, Raphael Hertzog hert...@debian.org wrote: On Sun, 25 Jul 2010, Teemu Likonen wrote: * 2010-07-25 12:54 (+0200), Marc Haber wrote: stable = release testing = current unstable = development I like these. They describe the three distributions well and current might encourage more users than testing. Advertising constantly usable and trendy rolling release would surely help. +1 I would not introduce release but just keep stable, it describes the distribution well. I thought about that, but to me it is not clear whether stable current or stable current. That relationship is easier with release current, and release explains well why that distribution only moves twice a year. Greetings Marc -- -- !! No courtesy copies, please !! - Marc Haber |Questions are the | Mailadresse im Header Mannheim, Germany | Beginning of Wisdom | http://www.zugschlus.de/ Nordisch by Nature | Lt. Worf, TNG Rightful Heir | Fon: *49 621 72739834 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/e1odq6o-00051u...@swivel.zugschlus.de
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
On Sun, 25 Jul 2010 13:32:49 -0400, Will ay1...@gmail.com wrote: Additionally, an HTTP interface to reportbug would be a good idea. Many new users find it difficult or unnecessary to set up an MTA when they first install, so allowing to use some kind of HTTP interface would be very nice indeed. This will decrease the quality of bugs even more since the bug reports are not going to contain even the minimum of information collected by reportbug. Greetings Marc -- -- !! No courtesy copies, please !! - Marc Haber |Questions are the | Mailadresse im Header Mannheim, Germany | Beginning of Wisdom | http://www.zugschlus.de/ Nordisch by Nature | Lt. Worf, TNG Rightful Heir | Fon: *49 621 72739834 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/e1odq0b-0004mg...@swivel.zugschlus.de
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 12:49:00PM +0100, Ian Jackson wrote: Brian May writes (Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling): I would really like to see a HTML/HTTP browser based interface for the BTS. I would have several advantages: I would strongly resist any such suggestion, for the reasons I have already explained. In summary: We don't have a lack of bug reports, we have a lack of developer time. Increasing the number of bug reports will take away developer time for triage, for no benefit. Simply, we do not need to, and should not, make reporting bugs easier. An HTTP interface for /manipulating/ (not necessarily submitting) bugs would be a huge timesaver for me at least. If I'm working through the list of bugs in a package and setting tags, for example, sending mail after mail to cont...@bugs (or even using bts) is an inefficient use of my time. Simply ticking a tag and submitting the changes á la bugzilla is much quicker and with instant feedback (I don't need to check all the mail replies to make sure the operation succeeded, and I don't need to carefully compose a mail with the correct syntax or spend time copying and pasting bug numbers and other details onto the command line). The same applies to other common BTS operations. While it's very useful to do all BTS operations by mail, mail is not the be-all and end-all of BTS interaction. I do find I spend most of my time browsing bugs using the web interface, and being able to submit changes (and even attach patches and comments) would save me a lot of time, which translates to being able to do more Debian work in the time I have available. Regards, Roger -- .''`. Roger Leigh : :' : Debian GNU/Linux http://people.debian.org/~rleigh/ `. `' Printing on GNU/Linux? http://gutenprint.sourceforge.net/ `-GPG Public Key: 0x25BFB848 Please GPG sign your mail. signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
Am 26.07.2010 17:21, schrieb Paul Wise: On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 11:13 AM, Bastian Venthur vent...@debian.org wrote: Yep, that's correct. I wish xdg-email would work as expected but it does not so I have to take care of each and every quirk of a MUA if it wants to be used by reportbug-ng. Shouldn't those quirks be moved into xdg-email? Maybe, but xdg-email does not quite work the way I expected. Xdg-email tries to detect the desktop environment and calls the relevant helper. In case of KDE4 it just calls /usr/lib/kde4/libexec/kmailservice with a mailto-URL and hopes that kmailservice does the right thing. Unfortunately kmailservice is very buggy, resulting in terribly formatted mails and even omitted parts (like subject or to-field). Cheers, Bastian -- Bastian Venthur http://venthur.de Debian Developer venthur at debian org -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/i2kegp$cu...@dough.gmane.org
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 05:47:53PM +0100, Roger Leigh wrote:
An HTTP interface for /manipulating/ (not necessarily submitting) bugs
would be a huge timesaver for me at least.
Preliminary code for that has been around for a while now:
https://alioth.debian.org/projects/bts-webui/. It's even possible that
Marga still has a running instance somewhere, although I'm not sure
about that.
If you or anyone else is interested in the topic, you might want to join
the project and push for an actual deployment.
Cheers.
--
Stefano Zacchiroli -o- PhD in Computer Science \ PostDoc @ Univ. Paris 7
z...@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} -- http://upsilon.cc/zack/
Dietro un grande uomo c'è ..| . |. Et ne m'en veux pas si je te tutoie
sempre uno zaino ...| ..: | Je dis tu à tous ceux que j'aime
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Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
Marc Haber mh+debian-de...@zugschlus.de wrote on 07/26/2010 12:00:28 PM: Marc Haber mh+debian-de...@zugschlus.de 07/26/2010 12:00 PM To debian-devel@lists.debian.org cc Subject Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling On Mon, 26 Jul 2010 08:13:29 +0200, Raphael Hertzog hert...@debian.org wrote: On Sun, 25 Jul 2010, Teemu Likonen wrote: * 2010-07-25 12:54 (+0200), Marc Haber wrote: stable = release testing = current unstable = development I like these. They describe the three distributions well and current might encourage more users than testing. Advertising constantly usable and trendy rolling release would surely help. +1 I would not introduce release but just keep stable, it describes the distribution well. I thought about that, but to me it is not clear whether stable current or stable current. That relationship is easier with release current, and release explains well why that distribution only moves twice a year. How about conservative -- stable edgy -- testing high-risk -- unstable ? Greetings Marc -- -- !! No courtesy copies, please !! - Marc Haber |Questions are the | Mailadresse im Header Mannheim, Germany | Beginning of Wisdom | http://www.zugschlus.de/ Nordisch by Nature | Lt. Worf, TNG Rightful Heir | Fon: *49 621 72739834 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/e1odq6o-00051u...@swivel.zugschlus.de
Re: Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
Why is it neccecary to show mail adresses in bug reports and mail list? This help spammers, take capacity from the internet and makes people who are friendly to contribute once to bug reports and mail list crasy. I think that sucks and I don't help you with sending any bug reports because of that. Magnus Berg -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4c4dbade.8050...@burgsvik.se
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
On Mon, 26 Jul 2010, Magnus Berg wrote: I think that sucks and I don't help you with sending any bug reports because of that. See http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=63995 Don Armstrong -- I shall require that [a scientific system's] logical form shall be such that it can be singled out, by means of emperical tests, in a negative sense: it must be possible for an emperical scientific system to be refuted by experience. -- Sir Karl Popper _Logic of Scientific Discovery_ §6 http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100726173509.ga19...@teltox.donarmstrong.com
Re: Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
On Lu, 26 iul 10, 18:42:06, Magnus Berg wrote: Why is it neccecary to show mail adresses in bug reports and mail list? This help spammers, take capacity from the internet and makes people who are friendly to contribute once to bug reports and mail list crasy. I think that sucks and I don't help you with sending any bug reports because of that. http://www.interhack.net/pubs/munging-harmful/ Regards, Andrei -- Offtopic discussions among Debian users and developers: http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/d-community-offtopic signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
Am Montag, 26. Juli 2010 schrieb Teemu Likonen: * 2010-07-26 08:13 (+0200), Raphael Hertzog wrote: * 2010-07-25 12:54 (+0200), Marc Haber wrote: stable = release testing = current unstable = development Yeah, I like it, too. This is better than the suggetion, with that I initiated this conversation. Thumbs up! Hans -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/201007261943.52540.hans.ullr...@loop.de
Re: Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
Magnus Berg wrote: I think that sucks and I don't help you with sending any bug reports because of that. See http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=63995 Don Armstrong And you wonder: How to make Debian more attractive for users. :-) First thing: Average Linux user may not be very interested in spam hunting. Second thing: If you intend to be attractive for the average Linux user - Ubuntu users for instance - keep in mind that most users want a user friendly, easy to use distro, with helpful and understanding crew. If you intend to keep on working with computer nerds in mind you will never be attractive for the average Linux user. You chose Magnus Berg -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4c4dd1cd.3070...@burgsvik.se
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
On Monday 26 July 2010 11:54:29 Marc Haber wrote:
On Sun, 25 Jul 2010 13:32:49 -0400, Will ay1...@gmail.com wrote:
Additionally, an HTTP interface to reportbug would be a good idea.
Many new users find it difficult or unnecessary to set up an MTA when
they first install, so allowing to use some kind of HTTP interface
would be very nice indeed.
This will decrease the quality of bugs even more since the bug reports
are not going to contain even the minimum of information collected by
reportbug.
Greetings
Marc
Here's a template reportbug prints out for iceweasel.
Subject: none
Package: iceweasel
Version: 3.6.3-1
Severity: wishlist
-- Package-specific info:
-- Extensions information
Name: Default
Location: /usr/lib/iceweasel/extensions/{972ce4c6-7e08-4474-a285-3208198ce6fd}
Package: iceweasel
Status: enabled
-- Plugins information
Name: IcedTea NPR Web Browser Plugin (using IcedTea6 1.8 (6b18-1.8-4))
Location: /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-openjdk/jre/lib/amd64/IcedTeaPlugin.so
Package: icedtea6-plugin
Status: enabled
Name: Shockwave Flash
Location: /usr/lib/flashplugin-nonfree/libflashplayer.so
Status: enabled
Name: Silverlight Plug-In
Location: /usr/lib/moon/plugin/libmoonloader.so
Package: moonlight-plugin-core
Status: enabled
Name: Skype Buttons for Kopete
Location: /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/skypebuttons.so
Package: kopete
Status: enabled
Name: VLC Multimedia Plug-in
Location: /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libvlcplugin.so
Package: mozilla-plugin-vlc
Status: enabled
-- Addons package information
ii icedtea6-plugi 6b18-1.8-4 web browser plugin based on OpenJDK and Iced
ii iceweasel 3.6.3-1Web browser based on Firefox
ii kopete 4:4.4.5-1 instant messaging and chat application
ii moonlight-plug 1.0.1-3+b1 Free Software clone of Silverlight 1.0 - plu
ii mozilla-plugin 1.1.1-1multimedia plugin for web browsers based on
-- System Information:
Debian Release: squeeze/sid
APT prefers unstable
APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.32-5-amd64 (SMP w/8 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Versions of packages iceweasel depends on:
ii debianutils 3.4Miscellaneous utilities specific t
ii fontconfig2.8.0-2.1 generic font configuration library
ii libc6 2.11.2-2 Embedded GNU C Library: Shared
lib
ii libglib2.0-0 2.24.1-1 The GLib library of C routines
ii libgtk2.0-0 2.20.1-1 The GTK+ graphical user interface
ii libnspr4-0d 4.8.4-2NetScape Portable Runtime Library
ii libstdc++64.4.4-7The GNU Standard C++ Library v3
ii procps1:3.2.8-9 /proc file system utilities
ii psmisc22.12-1utilities that use the proc file s
ii xulrunner-1.9.2 1.9.2.3-2 XUL + XPCOM application runner
iceweasel recommends no packages.
Versions of packages iceweasel suggests:
ii libgssapi-krb5-21.8.1+dfsg-5 MIT Kerberos runtime libraries -
k
pn mozplugger none (no description available)
ii ttf-lyx 1.6.7-1 TrueType versions of some TeX
font
pn ttf-mathematica4.1 none (no description available)
ii xfonts-mathml 4Type1 Symbol font for MathML
pn xprint none (no description available)
Versions of packages xulrunner-1.9.2 depends on:
ii libasound2 1.0.23-1 shared library for ALSA
applicatio
ii libatk1.0-0 1.30.0-1 The ATK accessibility toolkit
ii libbz2-1.0 1.0.5-4 high-quality block-sorting file co
ii libc6 2.11.2-2 Embedded GNU C Library: Shared
lib
ii libcairo2 1.9.6-6 The Cairo 2D vector graphics
libra
ii libdbus-1-3 1.2.24-2 simple interprocess messaging
syst
ii libffi5 3.0.9-2 Foreign Function Interface library
ii libfontconfig1 2.8.0-2.1generic font configuration library
ii libfreetype62.4.0-2 FreeType 2 font engine, shared
lib
ii libgcc1 1:4.4.4-7GCC support library
ii libglib2.0-02.24.1-1 The GLib library of C routines
ii libgtk2.0-0 2.20.1-1 The GTK+ graphical user interface
ii libhunspell-1.2-0 1.2.11-1 spell checker and morphological
an
ii libjpeg62 6b1-1The Independent JPEG Group's JPEG
ii libmozjs3d 1.9.2.3-2The Mozilla SpiderMonkey
JavaScrip
ii libnspr4-0d 4.8.4-2 NetScape Portable Runtime Library
ii libnss3-1d 3.12.6-3 Network Security Service
libraries
ii libpango1.0-0 1.28.1-1
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
On Mon, 26 Jul 2010, Magnus Berg wrote: Magnus Berg wrote: I think that sucks and I don't help you with sending any bug reports because of that. See http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=63995 And you wonder: How to make Debian more attractive for users. :-) First thing: Average Linux user may not be very interested in spam hunting. That's fine; there are numerous e-mail providers which handle the spam problem for you. Second thing: If you intend to be attractive for the average Linux user - Ubuntu users for instance - keep in mind that most users want a user friendly, easy to use distro, with helpful and understanding crew. If you intend to keep on working with computer nerds in mind you will never be attractive for the average Linux user. While I have no problem with changes to make Debian and reporting bugs more attractive and useful for new users, I will not make changes that make the BTS more difficult to use for the people who are already using it and doing the work. Obscuring bug reporters makes it much more difficult for people to contact bug reporters and other interested parties for very little gain. [After all, my e-mail address is on (almost) every single page that the BTS generates...] Don Armstrong -- S: Make me a sandwich B: What? Make it yourself. S: sudo make me a sandwich B: Okay. -- xkcd http://xkcd.com/c149.html http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100726192420.gb19...@teltox.donarmstrong.com
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
Magnus Berg debianjunkm...@burgsvik.se writes: And you wonder: How to make Debian more attractive for users. :-) First thing: Average Linux user may not be very interested in spam hunting. Second thing: If you intend to be attractive for the average Linux user - Ubuntu users for instance - keep in mind that most users want a user friendly, easy to use distro, with helpful and understanding crew. If you intend to keep on working with computer nerds in mind you will never be attractive for the average Linux user. A bug report is a conversation. If the user doesn't want to be contactable, I would strongly prefer they not file a bug report at all, since frequently I won't be able to do anything about it without having that conversation. You chose I tend towards Ian's position on this. I don't think enabling more, lower-quality, unrepliable bug reports is going to make Debian any better or any more user-friendly than it is now. I have plenty of high-quality bug reports from contactable people to work on already. I think you're chasing the wrong problem. -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87vd82xbck@windlord.stanford.edu
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
Hi, Ian: On Monday 26 July 2010 13:49:00 Ian Jackson wrote: Brian May writes (Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling): I would really like to see a HTML/HTTP browser based interface for the BTS. I would have several advantages: I would strongly resist any such suggestion, for the reasons I have already explained. In summary: We don't have a lack of bug reports, we have a lack of developer time. Increasing the number of bug reports will take away developer time for triage, for no benefit. Simply, we do not need to, and should not, make reporting bugs easier. I would say bug reports should be always welcome. The easier to fill bug reports, the better. Good quality bug reports, I mean. Then the problem would be not how many bug reports Debian gets but what's its quality and how it can be made better. But still the premise holds: the easier to fill bug reports, the better. If more bug reports is a problem then it can be only because the quality of them, not their quantity. If you fill there are too many bug reports I'd say that's because their quality is not as good as desired so the problem is how to increase the bug report quality not to make difficult to fill more of them. Cheers. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/201007270315.26900.jesus.nava...@undominio.net
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
Hi Marc: On Monday 26 July 2010 17:54:29 Marc Haber wrote: On Sun, 25 Jul 2010 13:32:49 -0400, Will ay1...@gmail.com wrote: Additionally, an HTTP interface to reportbug would be a good idea. Many new users find it difficult or unnecessary to set up an MTA when they first install, so allowing to use some kind of HTTP interface would be very nice indeed. This will decrease the quality of bugs even more since the bug reports are not going to contain even the minimum of information collected by reportbug. Filling a bug report by HTTP doesn't absolutly mean information must be lost, does it? Cheers. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/201007270317.08118.jesus.nava...@undominio.net
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
6, 2010 at 11:54 AM, Marc Haber mh+debian-de...@zugschlus.de wrote: On Sun, 25 Jul 2010 13:32:49 -0400, Will ay1...@gmail.com wrote: Additionally, an HTTP interface to reportbug would be a good idea. Many new users find it difficult or unnecessary to set up an MTA when they first install, so allowing to use some kind of HTTP interface would be very nice indeed. This will decrease the quality of bugs even more since the bug reports are not going to contain even the minimum of information collected by reportbug. Greetings Marc -- -- !! No courtesy copies, please !! - Marc Haber | Questions are the | Mailadresse im Header Mannheim, Germany | Beginning of Wisdom | http://www.zugschlus.de/ Nordisch by Nature | Lt. Worf, TNG Rightful Heir | Fon: *49 621 72739834 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/e1odq0b-0004mg...@swivel.zugschlus.de I said HTTP interface. I did not say web interface. I have not commented on making a web frontend to the BTS. I was suggesting using HTTP as an alternative transport mechanism since it would require less configuration on the user's part. Any GUI bug reporter/reportbug could transmit information to the BTS via HTTP, and it would be easy to slap a web frontend on top of that if people so desired. It would definitely easier than building one off of the SMTP interface we have currently. -- -Will Orr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/aanlkti=d+a84mwncvukjfl6fkxbagw8bvvup8dp+-...@mail.gmail.com
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
2010/7/26 Jesús M. Navarro jesus.nava...@undominio.net: Hi, Ian: On Monday 26 July 2010 13:49:00 Ian Jackson wrote: Brian May writes (Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling): I would really like to see a HTML/HTTP browser based interface for the BTS. I would have several advantages: I would strongly resist any such suggestion, for the reasons I have already explained. In summary: We don't have a lack of bug reports, we have a lack of developer time. Increasing the number of bug reports will take away developer time for triage, for no benefit. Simply, we do not need to, and should not, make reporting bugs easier. I would say bug reports should be always welcome. The easier to fill bug reports, the better. How many BTS reports have you closed? I don't mean to sound offensive here, but this thread is fruitless. All I see is people talking and talking over something they have no say in. This is free software. If you want to get your idea implemented, either file a bug report and patiently wait (and leave debian-devel alone) or implement it yourself. Talk is cheap. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/aanlkti=qbc20s5o26ue+rjjt9ow-dwwsrybbrk=sq...@mail.gmail.com
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
On 26 July 2010 21:49, Ian Jackson ijack...@chiark.greenend.org.uk wrote: Brian May writes (Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling): I would really like to see a HTML/HTTP browser based interface for the BTS. I would have several advantages: I would strongly resist any such suggestion, for the reasons I have already explained. In summary: We don't have a lack of bug reports, we have a lack of developer time. Increasing the number of bug reports will take away developer time for triage, for no benefit. My proposal would save developers time in managing bug reports. I have lost track of how much time I have wasted because I made a mistake in an email to cont...@bugs.debian.org, only to have to try and fix up the mess through the same interface. This time wasted would have been better spent on fixing problems with my package. -- Brian May br...@microcomaustralia.com.au -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/aanlktinta_wmvv0zch2zjb24xsefdgwwgxoxkchxj...@mail.gmail.com
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
Le 26/07/2010 10:26, Arief M Utama a écrit : Olivier, If you need any help, I'd like to help creating the web-interface. I have some years of experience in php. All the best. -arief Thanks but it's Perl only :( Ahh.. :-( No possibilities to implement the interface in php while leaving the rest in perl? And of course everybody know that PHP stand for People Hate Perl ;) :-) I dont hate perl. I just cant read most of it, yet ;-) So not sure I can help. Well, better luck next time. All the best. -arief -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4c4e5580.2000...@gmail.com
Re: Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
Le lundi 26 juillet 2010 à 20:19 +0200, Magnus Berg a écrit : And you wonder: How to make Debian more attractive for users. :-) First thing: Average Linux user may not be very interested in spam hunting. Second thing: If you intend to be attractive for the average Linux user - Ubuntu users for instance - keep in mind that most users want a user friendly, easy to use distro, with helpful and understanding crew. If you intend to keep on working with computer nerds in mind you will never be attractive for the average Linux user. We want the distribution to be friendly and easy to use by anyone. We want to receive bug reports only from computer nerds since they are the ones who write useful reports. How are those two statements incompatible? -- .''`. Josselin Mouette : :' : `. `' “If you behave this way because you are blackmailed by someone, `-[…] I will see what I can do for you.” -- Jörg Schilling signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
On Thu, 22 Jul 2010 08:02:52 +0200, Lucas Nussbaum lu...@lucas-nussbaum.net wrote: On 22/07/10 at 14:22 +1000, Russell Coker wrote: On Thu, 22 Jul 2010, Lucas Nussbaum lu...@lucas-nussbaum.net wrote: That's an interesting idea. But where is the money going to come from? This idea is likely to get so much people against it that it's not worth discussing. Involvement of Debian funds would cause problems, but there are other options. We could have Debian maintain a list of consultants and companies that provide phone and Jabber support. Also a mapping of consultants to areas of expertise would be good (EG if someone happens to need some paid expert advice on Debian SE Linux ;). We currently have 827 consultants in 64 countries listed on http://www.debian.org/consultants/, which is pretty easy to find. It's true that this listing could be improved, but still, it's there (also, you are not listed). It is also grossly ineffective. My company is listed there since 2004 and has received like three incoming questions and not a single buck of revenue via this medium. Greetings Marc -- -- !! No courtesy copies, please !! - Marc Haber |Questions are the | Mailadresse im Header Mannheim, Germany | Beginning of Wisdom | http://www.zugschlus.de/ Nordisch by Nature | Lt. Worf, TNG Rightful Heir | Fon: *49 621 72739834 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/e1ocxt4-0001ow...@swivel.zugschlus.de
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
On Thu, 22 Jul 2010 11:08:28 +0200, Bastien ROUCARIES roucaries.bast...@gmail.com wrote: For isntance the bug sytem could be made simplier for joe simpler user, What's so hard about typing reportbug? Greetings Marc -- -- !! No courtesy copies, please !! - Marc Haber |Questions are the | Mailadresse im Header Mannheim, Germany | Beginning of Wisdom | http://www.zugschlus.de/ Nordisch by Nature | Lt. Worf, TNG Rightful Heir | Fon: *49 621 72739834 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/e1ocxtg-0001og...@swivel.zugschlus.de
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
Twas brillig at 11:53:28 25.07.2010 UTC+02 when mh+debian-de...@zugschlus.de did gyre and gimble: For isntance the bug sytem could be made simplier for joe simpler user, MH What's so hard about typing reportbug? Lack of distributed global hypnoeducation which pre-fills users' minds with this information. -- http://fossarchy.blogspot.com/ pgpRpXhzrOS9I.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
On Thu, 22 Jul 2010 07:37:41 +0100, Fuentes, Adolfo a.fuen...@liverpool.ac.uk wrote: Well, then the problem I think is that people don't get to know what we all already know: That Debian is perhaps the best distro (in general terms). As Paul Wise commented, we need more promotion and more people creating screenshots. At least this would be the easiest and cheapest way to start with helping users discover these features. I have never understood the reason why a screenshot may be relevant to show what a distribution can do. I am prett sure that my Debian system (even the desktops) don't remotely resemble what such a screenshot would show. Please use reasonable line lengths and do not top post. Greetings Marc -- -- !! No courtesy copies, please !! - Marc Haber |Questions are the | Mailadresse im Header Mannheim, Germany | Beginning of Wisdom | http://www.zugschlus.de/ Nordisch by Nature | Lt. Worf, TNG Rightful Heir | Fon: *49 621 72739834 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/e1ocyik-0002js...@swivel.zugschlus.de
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
On Thu, 22 Jul 2010 14:46:22 +0200, Hans-J. Ullrich hans.ullr...@loop.de wrote: I suggest for this, to thinlk about other names, for example - stable = server - testing = desktop - unstable = super_modern stable = release testing = current unstable = development (kind of copied from FreeBSD). Greetings Marc -- -- !! No courtesy copies, please !! - Marc Haber |Questions are the | Mailadresse im Header Mannheim, Germany | Beginning of Wisdom | http://www.zugschlus.de/ Nordisch by Nature | Lt. Worf, TNG Rightful Heir | Fon: *49 621 72739834 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/e1ocyrc-0002rj...@swivel.zugschlus.de
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
Le 25/07/2010 11:53, Marc Haber a écrit : On Thu, 22 Jul 2010 11:08:28 +0200, Bastien ROUCARIES roucaries.bast...@gmail.com wrote: For isntance the bug sytem could be made simplier for joe simpler user, What's so hard about typing reportbug? Greetings Marc It's dependent of a (good) local MTA configuration, or use of a distant SMTP server on which we have to remember login and password. I would like have an alternative and independent protocol (thought HTTP for example), when we can't easily use MTA/SMTP. Olivier -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4c4c1b7c.6020...@daevel.fr
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
On Sun, 25 Jul 2010 13:09:48 +0200, Olivier Bonvalet debian.l...@daevel.fr wrote: I would like have an alternative and independent protocol (thought HTTP for example), when we can't easily use MTA/SMTP. Agreed, but HTTP is not the ultimative help. See corporate networks with a non-transparent proxy which is configured centrally into the windows boxes, so that users might not readily know that there is one. Greetings Marc -- -- !! No courtesy copies, please !! - Marc Haber |Questions are the | Mailadresse im Header Mannheim, Germany | Beginning of Wisdom | http://www.zugschlus.de/ Nordisch by Nature | Lt. Worf, TNG Rightful Heir | Fon: *49 621 72739834 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/e1od16k-0006gp...@swivel.zugschlus.de
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
Le 25/07/2010 15:19, Marc Haber a écrit : On Sun, 25 Jul 2010 13:09:48 +0200, Olivier Bonvalet debian.l...@daevel.fr wrote: I would like have an alternative and independent protocol (thought HTTP for example), when we can't easily use MTA/SMTP. Agreed, but HTTP is not the ultimative help. See corporate networks with a non-transparent proxy which is configured centrally into the windows boxes, so that users might not readily know that there is one. Greetings Marc HTTP was just an example. But like said on the thread teaching users how to submit good bug reports we can support proxies too, and there always be setups we will not have any remote access, it's not a reason to do not do anything to help those who can't easily use SMTP. Nowadays, require SMTP doesn't seem judicious. Olivier -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4c4c3c6a.8040...@daevel.fr
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
stable = release testing = current unstable = development (kind of copied from FreeBSD). This. Additionally, an HTTP interface to reportbug would be a good idea. Many new users find it difficult or unnecessary to set up an MTA when they first install, so allowing to use some kind of HTTP interface would be very nice indeed. Where I go to school, there are a lot of people who try Linux for the first time hearing that it's a nice dev environment. They understand software bugs, know what information to provide, and aren't always afraid to delve into source code. But a lot of the time, they just don't wanna be bothered to set up exim. -- -Will Orr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/aanlkti=sgzgq3o5kzy1hfajeihuwlx8mkndpk82j8...@mail.gmail.com
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
* 2010-07-25 12:54 (+0200), Marc Haber wrote: stable = release testing = current unstable = development I like these. They describe the three distributions well and current might encourage more users than testing. Advertising constantly usable and trendy rolling release would surely help. -- Feel free to Cc me your replies if you want to make sure I'll notice them. I can't read all the list mail. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87zkxfjuld@mithlond.arda
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
Hello, On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 19:32, Will ay1...@gmail.com wrote: Additionally, an HTTP interface to reportbug would be a good idea. are you (and all the others asking for this) willing to help developing one? Many new users find it difficult or unnecessary to set up an MTA when they first install, Could you please point to any reference where it's written that the only way for reportbug to work it's thru a local MTA and not also with a remote SMTP server? Regards, -- Sandro Tosi (aka morph, morpheus, matrixhasu) My website: http://matrixhasu.altervista.org/ Me at Debian: http://wiki.debian.org/SandroTosi -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/aanlktinxgxvmlarjaosfenndyi+f7swrxuhvwda=h...@mail.gmail.com
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
Le 26/07/2010 00:07, Sandro Tosi a écrit : Hello, On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 19:32, Willay1...@gmail.com wrote: Additionally, an HTTP interface to reportbug would be a good idea. are you (and all the others asking for this) willing to help developing one? As a PHP developper, I can help if needed, yes. Many new users find it difficult or unnecessary to set up an MTA when they first install, Could you please point to any reference where it's written that the only way for reportbug to work it's thru a local MTA and not also with a remote SMTP server? You can use remote SMTP server too, but it's not really easy too : you have to setup service host and login each time you install reportbug on a server, and remember the password (password often choosen by your FAI) each time you will use reportbug. Olivier -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4c4cb6cf.9000...@daevel.fr
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 11:52:50AM +0200, Marc Haber wrote: On Thu, 22 Jul 2010 08:02:52 +0200, Lucas Nussbaum lu...@lucas-nussbaum.net wrote: On 22/07/10 at 14:22 +1000, Russell Coker wrote: On Thu, 22 Jul 2010, Lucas Nussbaum lu...@lucas-nussbaum.net wrote: That's an interesting idea. But where is the money going to come from? This idea is likely to get so much people against it that it's not worth discussing. Involvement of Debian funds would cause problems, but there are other options. We could have Debian maintain a list of consultants and companies that provide phone and Jabber support. Also a mapping of consultants to areas of expertise would be good (EG if someone happens to need some paid expert advice on Debian SE Linux ;). We currently have 827 consultants in 64 countries listed on http://www.debian.org/consultants/, which is pretty easy to find. It's true that this listing could be improved, but still, it's there (also, you are not listed). It is also grossly ineffective. My company is listed there since 2004 and has received like three incoming questions and not a single buck of revenue via this medium. Mine has been listed since it was incorporated (about a year more than yours, apparently) and has received two or three inquiries and one customer. That's actually even better than the amount of inquiries we've received through the phone book, FWIW. But, hey, YMMV. -- The biometric identification system at the gates of the CIA headquarters works because there's a guard with a large gun making sure no one is trying to fool the system. http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/01/biometrics.html -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100725223157.ga3...@celtic.nixsys.be
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
Hi, On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 00:12, Olivier Bonvalet debian.l...@daevel.fr wrote: Le 26/07/2010 00:07, Sandro Tosi a écrit : Hello, On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 19:32, Willay1...@gmail.com wrote: Additionally, an HTTP interface to reportbug would be a good idea. are you (and all the others asking for this) willing to help developing one? As a PHP developper, I can help if needed, yes. That's great! so I suggest to contact ow...@bugs.debian.org and ask what kind of support you can give. And the same applies to everyone else that wants a web bug reporting interface: step up and give help! that's the fastest way to achieve anything in the floss world :) Many new users find it difficult or unnecessary to set up an MTA when they first install, Could you please point to any reference where it's written that the only way for reportbug to work it's thru a local MTA and not also with a remote SMTP server? You can use remote SMTP server too, but it's not really easy too : you have to setup service host and login each time you install reportbug on a server, is copying (or configure) a file, /etc/reportbug.conf, a problem when creating a new server, that's not done so often and usually requires a huge amount of other steps? and remember the password (password often choosen by your FAI) each time you will use reportbug. then set the right permission on the config file and use smtppasswd (man reportbug.conf for more info). You can also save the output from reportbug on a file and send the report from another machine. Regards, -- Sandro Tosi (aka morph, morpheus, matrixhasu) My website: http://matrixhasu.altervista.org/ Me at Debian: http://wiki.debian.org/SandroTosi -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/aanlktin6wss=5q7dkw-idqecqss=jfjpctikxdgqm...@mail.gmail.com
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
5, 2010 at 6:07 PM, Sandro Tosi mo...@debian.org wrote: Hello, On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 19:32, Will ay1...@gmail.com wrote: Additionally, an HTTP interface to reportbug would be a good idea. are you (and all the others asking for this) willing to help developing one? Many new users find it difficult or unnecessary to set up an MTA when they first install, Yes, as a Python developer I'd be glad to add in HTTP support given an HTTP interface to the BTS. Could you please point to any reference where it's written that the only way for reportbug to work it's thru a local MTA and not also with a remote SMTP server? It's not, I was working off old information. When I used reportbug a few years ago, just SMTP was broken, so I just set up an MTA and forgot about it. Sorry. Regards, -- Sandro Tosi (aka morph, morpheus, matrixhasu) My website: http://matrixhasu.altervista.org/ Me at Debian: http://wiki.debian.org/SandroTosi -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/aanlktinxgxvmlarjaosfenndyi+f7swrxuhvwda=h...@mail.gmail.com -- -Will Orr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/aanlktikg4pt8uyrz=uoxaxrpqrc1jrrhdc-p_fzxo...@mail.gmail.com
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
hi, On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 00:22, Will ay1...@gmail.com wrote: 5, 2010 at 6:07 PM, Sandro Tosi mo...@debian.org wrote: Hello, On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 19:32, Will ay1...@gmail.com wrote: Additionally, an HTTP interface to reportbug would be a good idea. are you (and all the others asking for this) willing to help developing one? Many new users find it difficult or unnecessary to set up an MTA when they first install, Yes, as a Python developer I'd be glad to add in HTTP support given an HTTP interface to the BTS. That's great! given it might take a while to the BTS owner to think about a proper way to implement that in the current architecture, I'd suggest to give a look to the small list of bugs against reportbug and propose some solutions or patches: I'd be happy to review and ultimately incorporate any valuable work! Could you please point to any reference where it's written that the only way for reportbug to work it's thru a local MTA and not also with a remote SMTP server? It's not, I was working off old information. When I used reportbug a few years ago, just SMTP was broken, so I just set up an MTA and forgot about it. Sorry. Good, at least we don't have any (known) outdated documentation to fix :) Regards, -- Sandro Tosi (aka morph, morpheus, matrixhasu) My website: http://matrixhasu.altervista.org/ Me at Debian: http://wiki.debian.org/SandroTosi -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/aanlktimjdcb8dmimjm+=i3i_fq4qdxlbkccca1bg0...@mail.gmail.com
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
Le 26/07/2010 00:36, Sandro Tosi a écrit : Hi, On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 00:12, Olivier Bonvaletdebian.l...@daevel.fr wrote: Le 26/07/2010 00:07, Sandro Tosi a écrit : Hello, On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 19:32, Willay1...@gmail.comwrote: Additionally, an HTTP interface to reportbug would be a good idea. are you (and all the others asking for this) willing to help developing one? As a PHP developper, I can help if needed, yes. That's great! so I suggest to contact ow...@bugs.debian.org and ask what kind of support you can give. And the same applies to everyone else that wants a web bug reporting interface: step up and give help! that's the fastest way to achieve anything in the floss world :) Ok, I will do that. Many new users find it difficult or unnecessary to set up an MTA when they first install, Could you please point to any reference where it's written that the only way for reportbug to work it's thru a local MTA and not also with a remote SMTP server? You can use remote SMTP server too, but it's not really easy too : you have to setup service host and login each time you install reportbug on a server, is copying (or configure) a file, /etc/reportbug.conf, a problem when creating a new server, that's not done so often and usually requires a huge amount of other steps? well, I have not installed all the Debian setups I use. If I can automate the reportbug installation, I can also automate the MTA installation (but it doesn't resolve the DKIM/SPF problem). and remember the password (password often choosen by your FAI) each time you will use reportbug. then set the right permission on the config file and use smtppasswd (man reportbug.conf for more info). You can also save the output from reportbug on a file and send the report from another machine. 1) store smtppasswd in reportbug.conf : for sure, I will let my SMTP passwords in clear text everywhere. 2) store output in a file, read it, then copy/paste on my MUA : you call that user friendly ? ;) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4c4cbf6d.10...@daevel.fr
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
Hi, On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 00:49, Olivier Bonvalet debian.l...@daevel.fr wrote: then set the right permission on the config file and use smtppasswd (man reportbug.conf for more info). You can also save the output from reportbug on a file and send the report from another machine. 1) store smtppasswd in reportbug.conf : for sure, I will let my SMTP passwords in clear text everywhere. you missed the part where I said then set the right permission on the config file :) if you're not the only one (and so you could use the ~/.reportbugrc file with perms that *only* the user read it) reporting bugs on that machine, then either you don't provide an email capability for users on that server (f.e. a local MTA forwarding to the real one) or any other users have to know that pwd. 2) store output in a file, read it, then copy/paste on my MUA : you call that user friendly ? ;) No, but it's a viable solution (and I heard several people are already doing similar stuff). Regards, Sandro PS: I don't know how much of this still belongs to d-devel (honestly, very few of the discussions about reportbug arisen from this thread does) and so you might probably want to move the conversation to reportbug-ma...@lists.alioth.debian.org . -- Sandro Tosi (aka morph, morpheus, matrixhasu) My website: http://matrixhasu.altervista.org/ Me at Debian: http://wiki.debian.org/SandroTosi -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/aanlktin3gz2xvx_vrlit7o+pemzoja7uqcrvdtd3u...@mail.gmail.com
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
Le 26/07/2010 01:01, Sandro Tosi a écrit : Hi, On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 00:49, Olivier Bonvaletdebian.l...@daevel.fr wrote: then set the right permission on the config file and use smtppasswd (man reportbug.conf for more info). You can also save the output from reportbug on a file and send the report from another machine. 1) store smtppasswd in reportbug.conf : for sure, I will let my SMTP passwords in clear text everywhere. you missed the part where I said then set the right permission on the config file :) if you're not the only one (and so you could use the ~/.reportbugrc file with perms that *only* the user read it) reporting bugs on that machine, then either you don't provide an email capability for users on that server (f.e. a local MTA forwarding to the real one) or any other users have to know that pwd. No I didn't missed that part. But I'm not necessary root on that server (and I don't trust him), and I don't necessary have my own account on that server. So the unix grants are not of any help for me. 2) store output in a file, read it, then copy/paste on my MUA : you call that user friendly ? ;) No, but it's a viable solution (and I heard several people are already doing similar stuff). Regards, Sandro PS: I don't know how much of this still belongs to d-devel (honestly, very few of the discussions about reportbug arisen from this thread does) and so you might probably want to move the conversation to reportbug-ma...@lists.alioth.debian.org . I agree, and I already mailed ow...@bugs.debian.org to know if I can help for that. So I will continue discussion with them. Olivier -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4c4cc3eb.5070...@daevel.fr
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
On 26 July 2010 03:32, Will ay1...@gmail.com wrote: Additionally, an HTTP interface to reportbug would be a good idea. Many new users find it difficult or unnecessary to set up an MTA when they first install, so allowing to use some kind of HTTP interface would be very nice indeed. I would really like to see a HTML/HTTP browser based interface for the BTS. I would have several advantages: * Practically everyone has a web browser that is set up and works. Yes, some companies do filter HTTP requests due to paranoia - these companies probably also block other ports too. * A good setup would mean I can make changes to bug reports and get instant feedback on what happened. * Yes, the bts command in devscripts does help get these emails correct, but there is still room to make mistakes, and with the current setup you have to wait a long time to find out you got something wrong. By this stage I have gone on to the next task, and find it a big disruption. * Can centrally maintain list of questions asked for given package. * E-Mail only system makes the Debian BTS look arcade to outsiders, even if it does have unique features that make it stand out from alternatives (e.g. version tracking). The one downside I see, is that it is going to be harder, especially for new users, to give the detailed system information that apparently can be helpful for some maintainers. So such a system is possibly can never be a replacement for the traditional reportbug. The last point (above) may seem cosmetic, however this is a discussion on getting more Debian users, and may be an important reason people avoid Debian. -- Brian May br...@microcomaustralia.com.au -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/aanlktimducojcnhw278uo=xyajv=adcb2bgg67c3_...@mail.gmail.com
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
2) store output in a file, read it, then copy/paste on my MUA : you call that user friendly ? ;) No, but it's a viable solution (and I heard several people are already doing similar stuff). you could improve this and have it call sensible-browser mailto:u...@example.com?subject=bug\ Subject\body=bug\ report\ body. This would automagically put the appropriate information directly into the users default email client. (It would be easier still if sensible-utils included a mail user agent as well, then we could just call that.) Alternatively we could ask the user what mua they use (provide a list out of the installed mua's) - and use that. -- Daniel Reurich. Centurion Computer Technology (2005) Ltd Mobile 021 797 722 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/1280112012.19481.413.ca...@localhost.localdomain
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
On 07/22/2010 02:46 PM, Hans-J. Ullrich wrote: Hi all, and there is another point, I would like to mention. The naming of the repository is not well chosen, as it let new and unexperienced people to debian feel a wrong way. The names stable testing and unstable let the poeople think, debian is using crippled software, which is unstable, not well tested. In fact, even software from unstable is often running better, than other (including closed source) software. I suggest for this, to thinlk about other names, for example - stable = server - testing = desktop - unstable = super_modern So all the OMGTHISISCOOL kids install unstable and have a messed up system because there is something broken in unstable? Thats probably the worst example for a renaming ever. Just an example. Have fun! Hans-J. Ullrich Just an example -- Bernd ZeimetzDebian GNU/Linux Developer http://bzed.dehttp://www.debian.org GPG Fingerprints: 06C8 C9A2 EAAD E37E 5B2C BE93 067A AD04 C93B FF79 ECA1 E3F2 8E11 2432 D485 DD95 EB36 171A 6FF9 435F -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4c4ad066.4020...@bzed.de
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
Hello DD's and Debian Users, I have installed Debian around an year ago. Recently, I have subscribed to various mailing lists and reading them on daily basis, whether they are relevant to me or not. I am still learning about debian. Prior to the installation of Debian, I don't have any experience with Linux or any kind of Linux Distributions. I did some research and concluded that Debian suits me well due to it's rock solid stability. When I was first installing Debian, my room mate was also with me. My room mate has some kind of exposure to linux distros. When the option has come for installation of popularity-contest, he suggested me not to install it. He told me that it will take you to places. Eventhough I never understood what that phrase was meant. I have contacted some other people and they too has same kind of impression. The issue lies with a person's perception and privacy fears. The issue has to be dealt in a careful manner and with a holistic approach. This is my two step approach : Step 1 : We should know a person's idea about the package. Q1 : Did you install the popularity-contest package at the time of installation ? A : Yes or No. Q2 : Do you know the purpose and use of popularity-contest package ? A : Yes or No. Q3 : What is a popularity-contest package ? A : O1 : It sends the installed packages list to the Debian server anonymously. O2 : It collects the data about the system architecture anonmyously. O3 : It collects the information about your system hardware and installed packages and distributes to various third party organisations for commercial and non-commercial purposes. Step 2 : The above step will give us a clear impression about the package perception. If most of them think that package is [1] invading the privacy : then we should dispel their fear. The popcon website should provide more information and it should be more interactive too. Like providing stats on weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly basis for each architecture. [2] if they have right impression but did not installed the package : There are two reasons for the answer : [a] they do not have an active internet connection [b] they are not simply interested, since they find that it has no value. [a] We can have a package similar to bugreport and ask them to send an e-mail. The user will know what they are disclosing exactly. [b] Can be solved with more information and interactive popcon website. The Step 1 can achieved by a detailed survey. The survey might be carried on the website or wiki page of debian. We can also encourage debian users with websites or blogs to carry out the surveys independently. To me there is nothing wrong collecting information about system architecture and installed packages, as long it is anonymous. I hope this might be helpful for the community. Excuse for broken english. vishnuvardhan.
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
On Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 01:53:22AM +0200, Jesús M. Navarro wrote: Hi again, Russ: On Thursday 22 July 2010 14:21:09 Russ Allbery wrote: Jesús M. Navarro jesus.nava...@undominio.net writes: [...] I don't agree; I think it's very hard to say the same thing about testing. I already told you that's about perceptions and that each one has his own so I'll try this once more, after that I'll leave. Yes, sid sometimes breaks hard, It's more than that: Sid is *intended* to break hard; it's not a undesired side effect. No. sid is *intended* to continuously integrate new versions of software into Debian, for testing and use. Breaking hard *is* an undesired (but often unavoidable) side effect. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developerhttp://www.debian.org/ slanga...@ubuntu.com vor...@debian.org signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
On 22/07/10 at 14:22 +1000, Russell Coker wrote: On Thu, 22 Jul 2010, Lucas Nussbaum lu...@lucas-nussbaum.net wrote: That's an interesting idea. But where is the money going to come from? This idea is likely to get so much people against it that it's not worth discussing. Involvement of Debian funds would cause problems, but there are other options. We could have Debian maintain a list of consultants and companies that provide phone and Jabber support. Also a mapping of consultants to areas of expertise would be good (EG if someone happens to need some paid expert advice on Debian SE Linux ;). We currently have 827 consultants in 64 countries listed on http://www.debian.org/consultants/, which is pretty easy to find. It's true that this listing could be improved, but still, it's there (also, you are not listed). Maybe we could have an IRC channel where people could post questions like I want to pay $50 per hour to have someone fix a bug in my Perl code on Debian/Lenny. If such a channel was available then I'd occasionally use it for my clients, early last year one DD got a small series of $US100 contracts through me that probably took him about 30 mins each to complete - that's a rate of $US200 per hour and the client was totally happy! With some of these jobs the faster the response is the more the client is willing to pay. If you can fix something within the next hour the client will often pay twice what they would pay to have it fixed tomorrow. In the past I've had ongoing requirements for rapid expert advice on Perl in Debian/Lenny and PHP with libraries backported to Lenny from Squeeze which I couldn't find adequate resources in a small enough amount of time. So what you are proposing is that an entity would setup a service where users would post support requests (or development requests), and developers would, sometimes, pick up the offers and get paid for that. While I would be totally against using Debian funds to set up such a service, there's nothing preventing someone from investigating the idea of creating a company that would provide that service without the official endorsement of Debian. However, there are several problems: - are there enough potential clients? If they are willing to pay, why would they choose this instead of one of the 827 consultants we already have listed? - is it legally possible/easy to do? this would potentially involve developers from many countries with different regulations. - are there enough interested developers? This doesn't seem very different from bounty-sponsored development. It has been tried before. Why did it fail? L. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100722060252.ga13...@xanadu.blop.info
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 1:38 AM, Hans-J. Ullrich hans.ullr...@loop.de wrote: Group 1 can be interested, either when there are Debian (and I mean really Debian, not derivates like Ubuntu) preinstalled Computers available. These should be easily configurable. A graphical interface (for example in the style of webmin) is absolutely necessary. There are a lot of people outside, which are NOT gamers, but like internet surfing, need office, e-mail and other stuff. A couple of netbook models ship with Debian: http://wiki.debian.org/Hardware/ShippingWithDebian Group 2 IMO can only be motivated, if it will be possible, to prove customers and distributors, that a fine installed debian is running much faster than a windows system. I imagine, that preconfigured gaming images or -packages might help them. The Debian games team created goplay to help users discover games in Debian. Perhaps this needs more promotion and more people creating screenshots and probably a rewrite to look more flashy. -- bye, pabs http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/aanlktinykauy0ieteupyhzumxnm-kf7_rml318jyi...@mail.gmail.com
RE: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
Well, then the problem I think is that people don't get to know what we all already know: That Debian is perhaps the best distro (in general terms). As Paul Wise commented, we need more promotion and more people creating screenshots. At least this would be the easiest and cheapest way to start with helping users discover these features. Sincerely, Adolfo --- Department of Chemistry -- Surface Science Research Centre University of Liverpool Crown Street Liverpool, L69 7ZD United Kingdom Treat the Earth well. It was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. (Ancient native American Indian proverb) From: paul.is.w...@gmail.com [paul.is.w...@gmail.com] On Behalf Of Paul Wise [p...@debian.org] Sent: 22 July 2010 07:09 To: debian-devel@lists.debian.org Subject: Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 1:38 AM, Hans-J. Ullrich hans.ullr...@loop.de wrote: Group 1 can be interested, either when there are Debian (and I mean really Debian, not derivates like Ubuntu) preinstalled Computers available. These should be easily configurable. A graphical interface (for example in the style of webmin) is absolutely necessary. There are a lot of people outside, which are NOT gamers, but like internet surfing, need office, e-mail and other stuff. A couple of netbook models ship with Debian: http://wiki.debian.org/Hardware/ShippingWithDebian Group 2 IMO can only be motivated, if it will be possible, to prove customers and distributors, that a fine installed debian is running much faster than a windows system. I imagine, that preconfigured gaming images or -packages might help them. The Debian games team created goplay to help users discover games in Debian. Perhaps this needs more promotion and more people creating screenshots and probably a rewrite to look more flashy. -- bye, pabs http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/aanlktinykauy0ieteupyhzumxnm-kf7_rml318jyi...@mail.gmail.com -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/debb97ea3eef8e489b88cefa9b3f36e255f8229...@staffmbx2.livad.liv.ac.uk
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
Le mercredi 21 juillet 2010 à 23:15 +0200, Patrick Matthäi a écrit : I think with our next release, we will have got less users. Why? We stripped out all binary only firmware images from Linux and put them mostly into the non-free linux-firmware image. If you think this is a problem, you could help with providing non-free enabled installation images instead of whining. Cheers, -- .''`. : :' : “Fuck you sir, don’t be suprised when you die if `. `' you burn in Hell, because I am a solid Christian `-and I am praying for you.” -- Mike -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/1279783292.8619.4.ca...@meh
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
Em 21-07-2010 18:38, Hans-J. Ullrich escreveu: Hi community, [...] Hi all, from my personal experience, at management level these kind of questions are usual: - how much will it cost? do i need a bigger workforce? - Will everything work??? - if anything goest wrong the 'guys who sell it' can reliably (and fast) fix it for me? - if i want to change anything the same guys will do it for me? - How reliable is this company? Can we really trust them? How come I never heard of this? - why should I change? How will my bussiness benefit? ...my 0,02€ coin. -- Melhores cumprimentos/Best regards, Miguel Figueiredo http://www.DebianPT.org -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4c480776.7020...@debianpt.org
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
Hi, Manoj: On Thursday 22 July 2010 07:17:15 Manoj Srivastava wrote: On Wed, Jul 21 2010, Will wrote: Also I imagine that it helps that they have some kind of commercial support behind their projects, whereas Debian has little/none of that. One of the issues I have faced in trying to get Debian introduced in big companies is the percieved lack of a coherent copyright; and company lawyers being uncomfortable with the concept that most licesnse pass the dfsg, but we can't guarantee that, please go read several thoudand individual license docs to figure out what you are getting. That's again about perception. Debian has exactly the same copyright coherence (or lack of it) than SUSE, Red Hat, Ubuntu or even proprietary Unices. Cheers. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/201007221044.11066.jesus.nava...@undominio.net
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
Hi, Russ: On Thursday 22 July 2010 07:55:52 Russ Allbery wrote: Will ay1...@gmail.com writes: 1, 2010 at 10:36 PM, Russ Allbery r...@debian.org wrote: This one always boggles me and makes me wonder if we should present Debian unstable or testing as the typical installation. Debian testing (and often Debian unstable) is more stable than the distributions with equivalent up-to-date libraries, and those distributions generally never offer anything remotely like Debian stable. (RHEL is considerably more unstable than Debian stable *and* has even older software, for example.) [...] That's the point. You have a distribution that works like all the rest with the latest and greatest software (often even faster than other distributions in some places) AND if you want you can get a wonderfully stable distribution that's unlike anything else. People who say they don't run Debian because the software it provides is too old have no idea what Debian is actually like, and we don't do a very good job of educating them. It's both a better fast-changing distribution like Fedora than Fedora and a better stable distribution like Red Hat Enterprise than Red Hat Enterprise. You can pick and still be running Debian. While I see your point, that's wishful thinking. Sid (or Testing) is *not* a better fast-changing distribution than Fedora (it can seem sometimes like this because you and me know what should be expectable for both Fedora and Sid and understanding this, certainly Sid is usually above that kind of expectancies and Fedora is sometimes a bit too broken for its own expectatives). But once you forget your expectancies and put yourself under the skin of a newcomer, Sid breaks and sometimes breaks hard (no other thing should be expected -in fact, I feel sometimes that Sid breaks too little because due to the fact that so many people use it for practical purposes package upgrades tend to be not as much aggressive as it could be otherwise). A bit to a lessen extent the same can be said about Testing. If anything Sid/Testing could be compared to a rolling release distribution ala Gentoo or Arch but not to any fast releasing like Fedora or Ubuntu. And even then their goals are different and as such the expectancies to be created: Ubuntu, Fedora or Arch are *products* by themselves while Sid/Testing are *tools* aimed to produce a product, which is Stable. Forget that and you'll fastly find yourself in nasty places (i.e.: start selling Sid as a Fedora/Ubuntu, only better and be ready to put on your asbestos suit because users will start to yell each time it breaks something -as it happens almost daily, and asking yourself well, since we can't risk Sid to be heavily broken sometimes, where do we develop integration for Stable?). Cheers. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/201007221059.22112.jesus.nava...@undominio.net
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 1:42 PM, Steffen Möller steffen_moel...@gmx.de wrote: This should probably then move to Debian-Project? On 07/21/2010 11:31 AM, Andreas Tille wrote: On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 05:34:27PM +0900, Charles Plessy wrote: I think that what we need is Debian Blends that include official backports. This, no other distribution proposes yet. IMHO this is worth another thread how to make Debian more attractive for users ... The computing world have become such complex, that we are all mere users somewhere. So yes, we should think more about our users. Support of debian is excellent but we are less user friendly than ubuntu. For isntance the bug sytem could be made simplier for joe simpler user, using an http interface than reportbug-ng (what should be installed by default for your desktop user) or even mail. I think having a simple bug report form and wizard will really help your user. Increasing your quality also, will improve your user base. Last but not least improving the unbuntu to debian package transfert and therefore the project http://wiki.debian.org/Utnubu (i plan to package google gears BTW) Thank you -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/aanlktinpa7yjqnfde4_lhvkvw8hhoxg2hhehon0gx...@mail.gmail.com
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
Le jeudi 22 juillet 2010 à 11:08 +0200, Bastien ROUCARIES a écrit : Support of debian is excellent but we are less user friendly than ubuntu. For isntance the bug sytem could be made simplier for joe simpler user, using an http interface than reportbug-ng (what should be installed by default for your desktop user) or even mail. I think having a simple bug report form and wizard will really help your user. We already have too many bug reports. What good would it do to have more? -- .''`. : :' : “Fuck you sir, don’t be suprised when you die if `. `' you burn in Hell, because I am a solid Christian `-and I am praying for you.” -- Mike -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/1279791300.8619.9.ca...@meh
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
On Thu, 22 Jul 2010, Josselin Mouette j...@debian.org wrote: Le jeudi 22 juillet 2010 à 11:08 +0200, Bastien ROUCARIES a écrit : Support of debian is excellent but we are less user friendly than ubuntu. For isntance the bug sytem could be made simplier for joe simpler user, using an http interface than reportbug-ng (what should be installed by default for your desktop user) or even mail. I think having a simple bug report form and wizard will really help your user. We already have too many bug reports. What good would it do to have more? You might argue that we have too many bug reports of the form this program broke and I don't know why. But we certainly don't have enough bug reports with patches attached or with a good analysis of where the problem occurs. I think that making bug reporting more friendly in the sense of allowing web based reporting (which means making it impossible to know the version of the package in question unless a bug is reported against the web browser) is only going to result in more bug reports with poor explanations. It would probably be better to think of ways of making it simpler for experts to report bugs. If I'm doing a relatively routine task like installing a new server there is a limit to the amount of time I can spend reporting bugs - sometimes that is less than the number of bugs that I encounter. The ability to have reportbug write it's output to a text file that can be copied elsewhere is a good thing. It would be nice if reportbug on a system with email access could then create an email based on that file instead of requiring copy/paste (which is time consuming and error prone). http://bugs.debian.org/cgi- bin/pkgreport.cgi?ordering=normal;archive=0;src=linux-2.6;repeatmerged=0 Also bugs.debian.org could do with some performance improvements (not sure if it's hardware or software). The above URL takes 55 seconds, getting a faster response would make it easier to report bugs. I'm sure that there are lots of other things that could be done, I'm just mentioning a couple of examples that impact what bugs I report. -- russ...@coker.com.au http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Main Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/201007222007.27527.russ...@coker.com.au
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
On Thu, 2010-07-22 at 10:44 +0200, Jesús M. Navarro wrote: Hi, Manoj: On Thursday 22 July 2010 07:17:15 Manoj Srivastava wrote: On Wed, Jul 21 2010, Will wrote: Also I imagine that it helps that they have some kind of commercial support behind their projects, whereas Debian has little/none of that. One of the issues I have faced in trying to get Debian introduced in big companies is the percieved lack of a coherent copyright; and company lawyers being uncomfortable with the concept that most licesnse pass the dfsg, but we can't guarantee that, please go read several thoudand individual license docs to figure out what you are getting. That's again about perception. Debian has exactly the same copyright coherence (or lack of it) than SUSE, Red Hat, Ubuntu or even proprietary Unices. I would say we are even more careful about licence issues than the commercial distributions. Ben. -- Ben Hutchings Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it makes it worse. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
Jesús M. Navarro jesus.nava...@undominio.net writes: But once you forget your expectancies and put yourself under the skin of a newcomer, Sid breaks and sometimes breaks hard (no other thing should be expected -in fact, I feel sometimes that Sid breaks too little because due to the fact that so many people use it for practical purposes package upgrades tend to be not as much aggressive as it could be otherwise). A bit to a lessen extent the same can be said about Testing. I don't agree; I think it's very hard to say the same thing about testing. Yes, sid sometimes breaks hard, although I think if you've been running Linux for a few years the degree to which sid really breaks is somewhat exaggerated. I've never had something happen in sid that risked real data loss, for instance; I know we've had cases, but I think they've been really rare. I've had an unbootable system where I needed to boot from a rescue CD I think once, and a few cases where X didn't start until I rolled back some package upgrades. For breakage, that's not bad. But on testing, it's been rock-solid for me for years. It's not just somewhat less breakage. I think it's almost no breakage. Occasionally packages get stranded for a long time at back revs because of various migration problems, and once or twice I've had to pin something (usually because of non-free drivers like fglrx or nvidia that aren't really part of Debian), but it's an experience that I can comfortably recommend. I do think that it's hard to run Debian testing unless you have someone around who knows Linux enough to figure out what's going on with a package upgrade occasionally, but I think the same thing is true of running Ubuntu, Fedora, etc. That's more a problem with Linux on the desktop in general, and I don't think Debian is any worse off than others. (I'm also dubious it's really worse off than Windows either; it's just that more people know how to unwedge broken Windows systems enough to get them to limp along than know how to fix Linux systems.) If anything Sid/Testing could be compared to a rolling release distribution ala Gentoo or Arch but not to any fast releasing like Fedora or Ubuntu. No, having run both, I honestly think Debian testing is a superior experience to Ubuntu. It gets packages roughly as fast, with some advantages both directions, but it's more reliable. Packages in Ubuntu universe break all the time, and worse, they release broken, and it can be harder with Ubuntu to temporarily install just that package from a newer release than it usually is with testing to temporarily install something from sid. And even then their goals are different and as such the expectancies to be created: Ubuntu, Fedora or Arch are *products* by themselves while Sid/Testing are *tools* aimed to produce a product, which is Stable. Eh, sort of. I think you'll find that many package maintainers, such as myself, are pursuing both of those goals at the same time. Forget that and you'll fastly find yourself in nasty places (i.e.: start selling Sid as a Fedora/Ubuntu, only better and be ready to put on your asbestos suit because users will start to yell each time it breaks something -as it happens almost daily, and asking yourself well, since we can't risk Sid to be heavily broken sometimes, where do we develop integration for Stable?). *boggle*. Something breaking almost daily is *completely* alien to my experience even with running Debian unstable. -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87sk3byafe@windlord.stanford.edu
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
Bastien ROUCARIES roucaries.bast...@gmail.com writes: Support of debian is excellent but we are less user friendly than ubuntu. For isntance the bug sytem could be made simplier for joe simpler user, using an http interface than reportbug-ng (what should be installed by default for your desktop user) or even mail. I think having a simple bug report form and wizard will really help your user. Having followed the Ubuntu bugs for many of my packages for several years now, I think Debian's bug system is considerably more user-friendly than Launchpad. It may not be as *pretty*, and it's not as easy to submit a bug, but when you submit a bug to Debian, the chances are fairly good that someone will look at it and reply with a detailed understanding of both your bug and the package (at least unless you're reporting a bug to one of the packages that notoriously gets more bugs than anyone could ever deal with, usually about other software, like the kernel or the desktop metapackages). Debian's BTS is more friendly in that old-fashioned sense that involves interacting with people. :) In Launchpad, for anything in universe, the typical experience is that your bug goes into a black hole until a month or two later someone sends you some form letter about it. Increasing your quality also, will improve your user base. I don't think doing what Launchpad does would improve Debian's quality. I suspect it would actually make it worse by hiding issues under piles of semi-autogenerated bug reports with no information and consuming developer time with triage that isn't improving packages. -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87ocdzya5v@windlord.stanford.edu
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
On Thu, 22 Jul 2010, Russ Allbery r...@debian.org wrote: In Launchpad, for anything in universe, the typical experience is that your bug goes into a black hole until a month or two later someone sends you some form letter about it. That's why I stopped reporting bugs against Fedora years ago, they kept being automatically closed a couple of releases later. I would report a bug in RHEL and have it not deemed suitable for an update to the current release (which was fair), I would report it against Fedora and then it would be closed automatically. The Red Hat bug tracking system is less efficient for me than the Debian one. The ratio of bug reports that they receive to the number of bugs that they can fix is obviously worse than that of Debian. So the end result is that people like me are deterred from filing bug reports and people with less ability to correctly diagnose problems find it easier. It seems to me that the Debian bug tracking system is better than that of Red Hat. I don't recall anything about the Ubuntu bug tracker so I can't comment on that. In recent times I haven't bothered trying to report bugs against other distributions. When I find a bug in some other distribution I develop a work- around for it there and then try to reproduce it in Debian. If I can reproduce it in Debian then I file a Debian bug report. -- russ...@coker.com.au http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Main Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100739.25469.russ...@coker.com.au
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
Hi all, and there is another point, I would like to mention. The naming of the repository is not well chosen, as it let new and unexperienced people to debian feel a wrong way. The names stable testing and unstable let the poeople think, debian is using crippled software, which is unstable, not well tested. In fact, even software from unstable is often running better, than other (including closed source) software. I suggest for this, to thinlk about other names, for example - stable = server - testing = desktop - unstable = super_modern Just an example. Have fun! Hans-J. Ullrich Just an example -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/201007221446.23461.hans.ullr...@loop.de
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
I would have thought that would be really confusing. It sounds like what is the purpose of this machine question you get during installation. Better would be stable = solid, testing = edgy, unstable = bleeding_edge That said I think there is noting wrong with the current terms. Hans-J. Ullrich wrote: Hi all, and there is another point, I would like to mention. The naming of the repository is not well chosen, as it let new and unexperienced people to debian feel a wrong way. The names stable testing and unstable let the poeople think, debian is using crippled software, which is unstable, not well tested. In fact, even software from unstable is often running better, than other (including closed source) software. I suggest for this, to thinlk about other names, for example - stable = server - testing = desktop - unstable = super_modern Just an example. Have fun! Hans-J. Ullrich Just an example -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4c4840b2.1060...@periapt.co.uk
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
Hi! Am 22.07.2010 09:21, schrieb Josselin Mouette: I think with our next release, we will have got less users. Why? We stripped out all binary only firmware images from Linux and put them mostly into the non-free linux-firmware image. If you think this is a problem, you could help with providing non-free enabled installation images instead of whining. I might remember incorrectly, but isn't that already implemented? Best regards, Alexander -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4c4854de.5090...@debian.org
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 04:25:34PM +0200, Alexander Reichle-Schmehl wrote: Hi! Am 22.07.2010 09:21, schrieb Josselin Mouette: I think with our next release, we will have got less users. Why? We stripped out all binary only firmware images from Linux and put them mostly into the non-free linux-firmware image. If you think this is a problem, you could help with providing non-free enabled installation images instead of whining. I might remember incorrectly, but isn't that already implemented? But the default (installer, live) blessed images aren't. -- Tzafrir Cohen | tzaf...@jabber.org | VIM is http://tzafrir.org.il || a Mutt's tzaf...@cohens.org.il || best tzaf...@debian.org|| friend -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100722143652.gi17...@pear.tzafrir.org.il
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 04:25:34PM +0200, Alexander Reichle-Schmehl wrote: Hi! Am 22.07.2010 09:21, schrieb Josselin Mouette: I think with our next release, we will have got less users. Why? We stripped out all binary only firmware images from Linux and put them mostly into the non-free linux-firmware image. If you think this is a problem, you could help with providing non-free enabled installation images instead of whining. I might remember incorrectly, but isn't that already implemented? Yes. We have parallel versions of the netinst images that include firmware packages. -- Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK.st...@einval.com Google-bait: http://www.debian.org/CD/free-linux-cd Debian does NOT ship free CDs. Please do NOT contact the mailing lists asking us to send them to you. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100722143036.gc6...@einval.com
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 11:35 AM, Josselin Mouette j...@debian.org wrote: Le jeudi 22 juillet 2010 à 11:08 +0200, Bastien ROUCARIES a écrit : Support of debian is excellent but we are less user friendly than ubuntu. For isntance the bug sytem could be made simplier for joe simpler user, using an http interface than reportbug-ng (what should be installed by default for your desktop user) or even mail. I think having a simple bug report form and wizard will really help your user. We already have too many bug reports. What good would it do to have more? The problem is joe simple user find one package that does not work, it seatrch on the web how to report bug, does not find, does not report it, and switch to unbuntu. BTW I check unbuntu bug number and even if the quality is lower they are often really helpful. Particularly, the core dump automatic generated bug report, with backtrace automacally created from debug repositionnery that really help maintener even is joe simple user is clueless (and for medium level user it improve the bug reporting and allow to trace hard to reproduce bug) Bastien -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/aanlktik1esoxaauzpk-etsyadnyymkyycdqxl0j2y...@mail.gmail.com
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 2:26 PM, Russ Allbery r...@debian.org wrote: Bastien ROUCARIES roucaries.bast...@gmail.com writes: Support of debian is excellent but we are less user friendly than ubuntu. For isntance the bug sytem could be made simplier for joe simpler user, using an http interface than reportbug-ng (what should be installed by default for your desktop user) or even mail. I think having a simple bug report form and wizard will really help your user. Having followed the Ubuntu bugs for many of my packages for several years now, I think Debian's bug system is considerably more user-friendly than Launchpad. It may not be as *pretty*, and it's not as easy to submit a bug, but when you submit a bug to Debian, the chances are fairly good that someone will look at it and reply with a detailed understanding of both your bug and the package (at least unless you're reporting a bug to one of the packages that notoriously gets more bugs than anyone could ever deal with, usually about other software, like the kernel or the desktop metapackages). Debian's BTS is more friendly in that old-fashioned sense that involves interacting with people. :) Yes for expert not for joe simple user. I do not argue to change your bug report system by mail that is wonderfull but add an http klayer will be really nice (think also to entreprise user behind proxy with only webmail available) In Launchpad, for anything in universe, the typical experience is that your bug goes into a black hole until a month or two later someone sends you some form letter about it. Not for my package imagemagick autogerated coredump with backtrace are really really help full and allow to see for instance that bugs in not in my package but in libtiff or in srvg Increasing your quality also, will improve your user base. I don't think doing what Launchpad does would improve Debian's quality. I suspect it would actually make it worse by hiding issues under piles of semi-autogenerated bug reports with no information and consuming developer time with triage that isn't improving packages. Mark bug report gerated by web user using a special tag and allow only maintener like me that optin to get automated bug report. In my case it will increase the quality. Bastien -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/aanlktikbljayj0eu2sobtcyc-mb8hhj1lrfdufqtb...@mail.gmail.com
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 2:39 PM, Russell Coker russ...@coker.com.au wrote: On Thu, 22 Jul 2010, Russ Allbery r...@debian.org wrote: In Launchpad, for anything in universe, the typical experience is that your bug goes into a black hole until a month or two later someone sends you some form letter about it. That's why I stopped reporting bugs against Fedora years ago, they kept being automatically closed a couple of releases later. I would report a bug in RHEL and have it not deemed suitable for an update to the current release (which was fair), I would report it against Fedora and then it would be closed automatically. The Red Hat bug tracking system is less efficient for me than the Debian one. The ratio of bug reports that they receive to the number of bugs that they can fix is obviously worse than that of Debian. So the end result is that people like me are deterred from filing bug reports and people with less ability to correctly diagnose problems find it easier. It seems to me that the Debian bug tracking system is better than that of Red Hat. I don't recall anything about the Ubuntu bug tracker so I can't comment on that. In recent times I haven't bothered trying to report bugs against other distributions. When I find a bug in some other distribution I develop a work- around for it there and then try to reproduce it in Debian. If I can reproduce it in Debian then I file a Debian bug report. -- I agree it will be nice also like forwarded to cross reference bug in other distro bugzilla and automatically detect whan other distro have cooked a patch instead to found it manually. Bastien -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/aanlktimvse0ajli1cn7awjslsz2wymq-gdzrui2h-...@mail.gmail.com
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
Bastien ROUCARIES writes (Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling): For isntance the bug sytem could be made simplier for joe simpler user, using an http interface than reportbug-ng [...] I think what's really underlying many of the complaints about the difficulty of reporting bugs in Debian is this: People think it is unfair that naive users find it difficult to report bugs in Debian and that they're not encouraged to do so. People feel that those users are being disenfranchised, or ignored. I want to tackle this head-on, because while it has some emotional appeal if you don't think about it too hard, it's criticial to understand the fallacies it's based on if you're going to try to understand how a software development effort like Debian has to work. Firstly, we need to understand the context, and why it is that socioeconomics of software development so magically allow everyone to share, for free, in hugely sophisticated high-quality systems. This works because reproducing the software has negligible cost to the people who develop it. Free software works because one person's afternoon's hacking can improve the lives of many millions of people, by a very small amount each, without the programmer having to think about each of those users. But you knew that. The corrolary is that anything which _does_ involves a per-user interaction with the developers is extremely difficult to deal with. If my afternoon's hacking session is going to be sent to ten million people, one in a thousand of whom send me a message which takes me ten seconds to deal with, that's a further 27 hours of of my time. It doesn't scale. So, what's wrong with the feeling that it's unfair not to want bug reports from certain users ? 1st fallacy: The point of bug reports is to listen to users or solve their problems. This is not the case. The point of bug reports is to help developers improve software. If a particular user's bug report is unlikely to help developers improve the software then to encourage the user to report bugs is useless, and is therefore a waste of both the developers' and the user's time. It's dishonest to the user, even. 2nd, related, fallacy: Everyone has a useful contribution to make to Debian. This is not the case. We have limited resources for communicating with, educating, and reviewing the contributions from our users. Very limited, compared to the number of users. Some users are already able or nearly able to directly improve the software or documentation, or already have the skills necessary for diagnosing and investigating problems. But for other users the small positive effect of their contribution will be far outweighed by the need to nursemaid them, undo their mistakes, etc. Once again, to encourage such users to try to help is a waste both of their time and ours. I'm reminded of my sister's 3-year-old child helping with the cooking: good for the kid's development, but not necessarily for the dish and certainly not less effort for the parent. We don't have the time to play parent to all our users and we shouldn't try. Incidentally, Ubuntu have written the contrary statement into their Code of Conduct. It may be doctrinally very encouraging to have a policy saying that everyone can make a valuable contribution, but that doesn't make it true. 3rd fallacy: Free Software is free and good because users can join and contribute to the projects that produce it. No. Free Software is Free because it allows users to modify the software _for themselves_, _downstream_, and to share their changes. It is no less free if it is produced by an opaque cabal. There is no inherent need for users to be able to participate in its production; indeed, for the reasons I've explained such participation can be counterproductive. Of course the quality of the software benefits from open and public development, and the quality of our own interactions benefit from doing things in public. I'm not suggesting that we should close down our public BTS or move everything from -devel to -private. But, users do not need to be enfranchised or empowered by us inviting them to become involved. The way we empower our users is by providing them with high quality and sophisticated software which does what they want, and by making sure that they have the freedom to share and modify it. Often empowering our users means _avoiding_ encouraging them to communicate with us, because we can't do our work if they all do. Ian. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/19528.25396.93270.278...@chiark.greenend.org.uk
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
Bastien ROUCARIES writes (Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling): The problem is joe simple user find one package that does not work, it seatrch on the web how to report bug, does not find, does not report it, and switch to unbuntu. [...] Why is this a problem ? Very likely their bug isn't a bug at all, and even if it is it will be a lot of work to try find out that it is and identify the bug. It seems to me that Debian will be better served if we spend our effort working on other bugs that are more likely to be real. In the end the user in question, and people like them, will be better off, too, because Ubuntu is a Debian derivative, so when we are working to improve Debian we are often working to improve Ubuntu as well. Or is it just a problem because you don't like a downward graph in distrowatch or google trends ? Are we managing by targets here ? Ian. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/19528.25630.729687.903...@chiark.greenend.org.uk
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
Russ Allbery r...@debian.org writes: Having followed the Ubuntu bugs for many of my packages for several years now, I think Debian's bug system is considerably more user-friendly than Launchpad. It may not be as *pretty*, and it's not as easy to submit a bug, but when you submit a bug to Debian, the chances are fairly good that someone will look at it and reply with a detailed understanding of both your bug and the package (at least unless you're reporting a bug to one of the packages that notoriously gets more bugs than anyone could ever deal with, usually about other software, like the kernel or the desktop metapackages). Debian's BTS is more friendly in that old-fashioned sense that involves interacting with people. :) Yes. Absolutely. When googling for some problem, I usually avoid any link into Launchpad because my experience is that it consists of a vague problem description, a number of me 2's, some unrelated problems, and maybe a suggested horrendous workaround. I don't think I've ever seen a real solution there. The Debian BTS is the opposite. There you can expect bug reports to be followed up with an intelligent discussion, and often a patch or other good solution to the problem. If not, you will at least find enough information to know that you are not alone with your problem. BTW, I must also add that the kernel is no exception in Debian, even though it of course fits the description gets more bugs than anyone could ever deal with. The kernel team does an extremely good job dealing with them. IMHO, the Debian BTS and the users and developers making it what it is, is one of the main advantages Debian has over other distributions. Bjørn -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/8739vb3465.fsf...@nemi.mork.no
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
On Thu, 22 Jul 2010, Ian Jackson wrote: 2nd, related, fallacy: Everyone has a useful contribution to make to Debian. This is not the case. Even though not everyone may have a useful contribution, we need the contributions of people who actually can contribute usefully. Discouraging useless contributions is fine to a point, but done improperly, it can also alienate those who contribute usefully (or want to contribute usefully.) Often empowering our users means _avoiding_ encouraging them to communicate with us, because we can't do our work if they all do. The best thing we can do is to try to empower our users to provide useful contributions in a manner that scales without requiring linear increases in developer time. Don Armstrong -- If god is always watching over us who's driving? -- a softer world #487 http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=487 http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100722174146.gh29...@teltox.donarmstrong.com
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
On Thu, 22 Jul 2010, Russell Coker wrote: The ability to have reportbug write it's output to a text file that can be copied elsewhere is a good thing. It would be nice if reportbug on a system with email access could then create an email based on that file instead of requiring copy/paste (which is time consuming and error prone). If a machine has network access, you don't even need e-mail configured. http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?ordering=normal;archive=0;src=linux-2.6;repeatmerged=0 Also bugs.debian.org could do with some performance improvements (not sure if it's hardware or software). The above URL takes 55 seconds, getting a faster response would make it easier to report bugs. That's something which is on my todo list, and I'm about halfway through fixing the load times of packages like this. Probably will be finished some time in the middle of debcamp. Don Armstrong -- A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won't cross the street to vote in a national election. -- Bill Vaughan http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100722174622.gi29...@teltox.donarmstrong.com
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
OoO En ce début d'après-midi nuageux du jeudi 22 juillet 2010, vers 14:26, Russ Allbery r...@debian.org disait : In Launchpad, for anything in universe, the typical experience is that your bug goes into a black hole until a month or two later someone sends you some form letter about it. By form letter, you mean automatic closing of the bug on the base that a new Ubuntu has been released? This is why I think that Ubuntu bug reports are usually not helpful at all when you try to solve a problem: nobody takes care of the bug and it is automatically closed. However, the automatic backtrace with the help of debug repository would be useful to have in Debian. We need the debug repository first. -- Avoid temporary variables. - The Elements of Programming Style (Kernighan Plauger) pgpjdVpNytueF.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users, was: Re: The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling
On 22/07/10 09:44, Jesús M. Navarro wrote: Hi, Manoj: On Thursday 22 July 2010 07:17:15 Manoj Srivastava wrote: On Wed, Jul 21 2010, Will wrote: Also I imagine that it helps that they have some kind of commercial support behind their projects, whereas Debian has little/none of that. One of the issues I have faced in trying to get Debian introduced in big companies is the percieved lack of a coherent copyright; and company lawyers being uncomfortable with the concept that most licesnse pass the dfsg, but we can't guarantee that, please go read several thoudand individual license docs to figure out what you are getting. That's again about perception. Debian has exactly the same copyright coherence (or lack of it) than SUSE, Red Hat, Ubuntu or even proprietary Unices. It might be just my cynical viewpoint - but I've always suspected that part of the attraction of a commercial distro to a big company is the perception that there's always someone to sue if you feel you've been left open to liability. If your supplier has millions in the bank for potential settlements, maybe you're more comfortable accepting all those licenses without quite as much scrutiny? Cheers, David. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/i2a15u$n5...@dough.gmane.org
