statistics about marketing list users?
by Jonas Karlsson
Interested to know if there is any statistics about hwo you all are here
on the marketing list. If the majority are developers or if there is a
mix including people that do not write code.
historically speaking developers are good at creating new development
models, cool features, new and innovative stuff and be the cowboys on
the frontline. One thing that developers has been better and better at
over the years is human interaction, this is still an area that it is
good to have outsiders for (the grandma example) To not only drive the
technical frontline but also the usability.
This is still the Linux world so I'd guess the majority are developers
and the developers are the rulers, judges and executioners. They are the
ones to write and merge the code, to decide which idéas go where. So my
question about statistics is about that, to know if there are many
people not writing code that actually have any influence about what goes
where.
anyone more than me interested in this statistics?
//Jonas
15 years, 6 months
Developers vs Grandmas
by Doug Berry
>>Jonas wrote:
>historically speaking developers are good at creating new development
>models, cool features, new and innovative stuff and be the cowboys on
>the frontline. One thing that developers has been better and better at
>over the years is human interaction, this is still an area that it is
>good to have outsiders for (the grandma example) To not only drive the
>technical frontline but also the usability.
>>
>They are the ones to write and merge the code, to decide which idéas go >where. So my question about statistics is about that, to know if there >are many people not writing code that actually have any influence about >what goes where.
Hi, I'm new here, but a long-time Fedora user. I think Jonas raised a very valid point about the needs of the end-user (grandma's) and are they being adequately voiced within the Fedora community.
I'm an author and book designer, and I could not write a line of code, if it led to a nightly date with Keira Knightley. (Sorry)
Not that I am disparaging developers, far from it. They are the backbone of the Linux world, and FOSS! But it is the end-user that actually uses our software: or not. Input about their needs and habits is vital.
Let me give an example: Fedora 8-KDE, the GIMP spin-off Krita. Great little version except that it was almost un-usable for a real artist. Why, because the pop-up menu boxes, you needed to do the work, obstructed the image area. Sometimes, they got so big you couldn't even see the right scroll-bar. You were forever moving them around; the only other choice was to turn them all off. They would not slide behind the image window.
That one flaw, in an otherwise great piece of software, ruined my experience and led me to yum in the Gimp. I imagined, at the time, the developers simply did not realize how such a thing might effect the whole thing in totality. Probably because they were not artists and too busy writing code and not doing art. That particular problem was fixed in newer versions, but the point is still valid. If that one detail happened to a new Fedora user who was an artist, we might just have drove her back to Daddy Bill.
Please do not think that I am disparaging KDE. KDE rocks my world. Take Ktorrent for example. What can I say about that beauty, except eternal hugs and kisses to whoever created it.
Anyway. I realize the code-writers cannot be to theoretical; they are limited by what they can do and not always by what they would like to do. But marketing is not just about providing products to a fickle user-audience that knows it has choices and wants to be pampered. It is vital to create cutting-edge software that people can depend on and work with. And to do that the code-writers need input from their grandma.
-- w Douglas Berry --
slasherzee(a)fedoraproject.org
15 years, 6 months
Estimating the Total Development Cost of a Linux Distribution
by John Babich
To All Interested:
New whitepaper by the Linux Foundation based on an analysis of what it
would cost to develop Fedora 9:
http://www.linuxfoundation.org/publications/estimatinglinux.php
"In 2002, David A. Wheeler published a well-regarded study that
examined the Software Lines of Code present in a typical Linux
distribution. His findings? The total development cost represented in
a typical Linux distribution was $1.2 billion. We've used his tools
and method to update these findings. Using the same tools, we estimate
that it would take approximately $10.8 billion to build the Fedora 9
distribution in today's dollars, with today's software development
costs."
Enjoy,
John Babich
Volunteer, Fedora Project
PS - My son, Mike, brought this to my attention. Thanks, Mike!
15 years, 6 months
Hints & Tips suggestions
by Jonathan Roberts
Hey all,
I'm looking for suggestions of hints and tips that we could publish to
Fedora Magazine?
Jon
15 years, 6 months
Re: fedora updates and lts
by Arnav Kalra
we can have a version of the distro released every fortnight.it would be
just like a jigdo file which states the collection of packages and
documentation too. so the dvd u download is the installer + software +
documentation . u can upgrade both the docs and software which will actually
be rpm installed along with required dependency
15 years, 6 months
KPackageKit interview
by Rahul Sundaram
Hi,
http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20081020
"As we have seen from our current series on package management tools,
the wide variety of options for managing software in distributions can
be confusing at times. Isn't there a way of unifying the various
utilities under one one set of commands that would work on all the
different Linux systems? PackageKit, developed by Fedora, is trying to
do just that. Here is a nice interview with the developers of
KPackageKit, a graphical front-end to PackageKit. So what exactly is it
and how does it work? "PackageKit is an abstraction layer above several
package managers (YUM, APT, Conary...). It hence defines a standard
interface to interact with the package manager on any system, and allows
deeper integration with the desktop. PackageKit is a daemon started on
demand via dbus, all the commands to the daemon are also passed via
dbus, which makes it platform independent. The actions are controlled by
PolicyKit, which allows to define precisely the rights of each user.
Historically, PackageKit was shipped with a glib-based abstraction
library, and a GTK+ front-end."
Rahul
15 years, 6 months
Fedora upgrades and LTS
by Jonas Karlsson
What I never seen in the Fedora updates (within a release) are major
release upgrades of packages. Example: Openoffice.org is releasing v3,
but that will never make it into the updates of F9, (might be wrong
here!) to get upgrades like this, one has to manually install it or
switch to F10. This is the same for many packages and follows the Fedora
almost bleeding edge frontline philosophy. I like beeing near the front,
using new software, but I'm starting to get tired of upgrading every
6month to a new release. This is because it's never flawless and ultra
smoth to upgrade (not yet anyway) always some packages thats been
obsolete or replaced, some functionallity thats totally different and
needs a bit of working to upgrade. I've done it over the years, but a
clean install often feels .. cleaner!.. and frankly it's to tiresome to
do a clean install so you go with the upgrade (command line) ... solve
the problems that occur and then continue to work.. This is still not
anything for your grandma to attempt (and that is what it should be in
the end) easy and clean! (a notification that appears, F10 is now out!
upgrade system?) So this is something that an LTS version absolutely
must have, new versions of software within a release and a smoth upgrade
path. And smoth upgrades on a system that has additional software
installed, not only a basic system setup.
Even if this isn't any news, upgrading a system has never been a ride in
the park.. not with any os / platform other than maybe a basic install
without additional components.
Why even have releases... F8, F9 F10 etc.. I guess freezes are good for
making new install media. But shouldn't updates/upgrades be sufficient.
And sometimes on the time line functionallity changes will be part of
that updates/upgrades, called mailestones. Wouldn't this be the ultimate
LTS distro? (It would almost be as an neverending stable version of
rawhide)
//Jonas
15 years, 6 months
Re: wikipedia goodbye redhat and fedora
by Arnav Kalra
why don't we have a long release (even no.) released every year which has
support for 2 more long releases. scrap odd no. releases for fortnightly
test releases like opensolaris.
15 years, 6 months
