Developer focus for Fedora workstation

[Josh Boyer]

On Tue, Aug 19, 2014 at 7:27 PM, Chris Murphy <lists at colorremedies.com> wrote:
>
> On Aug 19, 2014, at 2:06 PM, Josh Boyer <jwboyer at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Aug 19, 2014 at 3:59 PM, Chris Murphy <lists at colorremedies.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> On Aug 19, 2014, at 12:56 PM, Josh Boyer <jwboyer at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Tue, Aug 19, 2014 at 2:48 PM, Chris Murphy <lists at colorremedies.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> On Aug 19, 2014, at 10:19 AM, Josh Boyer <jwboyer at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> On Tue, Aug 19, 2014 at 12:16 PM, Chris Murphy <lists at colorremedies.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> At least, Virtual Box should be an explicitly targeted and supported platform to run Fedora on (as a guest). Despite its drawbacks, it must be easier to target than hundreds of models, let alone highly closed and quirky hardware like Macs.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> If that is ever going to happen, it needs people interested in it to
>>>>>> actually just make it happen.  So if anyone would like to see it work
>>>>>> well in VirtualBox, then by all means go make it work well in
>>>>>> VirtualBox.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> We need people to show up and do the work, not tell other people what
>>>>>> should be important.  We have no lack of the latter.
>>>>>
>>>>> Convincing people who tell others what is or should be important, are effective recruiters and an incentive for other people to show up and do the necessary work. The inverse is not true.
>>>>
>>>> Really?  People have been telling Fedora that virtualbox is very
>>>> important since it first came out.  Apparently the "recruiting" of
>>>> people that actually want to see it work well is failing.
>>>
>>> No it's either because it's a bad idea to begin with, or there's no one trusted with the cachet to sell the idea, or that person hasn't himself been convinced.
>>>
>>> Convincing people = people who are convincing, could be one person, they're typically in leadership roles.
>>> Convincing people ≠ a volume of opinions.
>>>
>>> The volume of opinions is noise, the doers aren't listening, or don't have a reason to care. Too many cats, too few cat herders.
>>
>> How is any of that not considered failing to promote
>> Fedora+VirtualBox?  I honestly have no idea what your point is here.
>
> I am refusing the premise that some vocal users asking for a better experience constitutes promoting this combination.
>
> There has been no Fedora leadership at any level acknowledging this is a good, valid, promotable idea. Nor that it's a an inherently flawed one, fraught with peril, and should be abandoned once and for all. The current status is one of ambivalence. It's oozes "we don't care, if you care then go do that," with maybe a good luck cherry on top.

It oozes that because that's exactly what it is.  Let's stop agreeing
on this point and get to something relevant.  I honestly have no idea
if you're trying to advocate it shouldn't be, but if you are you're
doing it in a very confusing manner.

> In contrast, I see Server and Cloud products having more clearly benefited from their self-imposed constraints. Yet they still have a "build it and they will come" attitude.
>
> More and more often I'm seeing emails pointing fingers at OS X, making comparisons. I'm not the only one observing [1] the prevalence of Macs at FOSS conferences that are not running a FOSS OS but rather OS X. And I'm wondering what Workstation wants to be when it grows up and if it needs additional self-imposed constraints to help it along.
>
> Anything built in the past 8 years is recommended hardware, but none of it's explicitly supported as far as I can tell.

Welcome to community driven, volunteer supported Linux
distributions...  We can't tell people with new hardware "sorry, we
don't support you because you didn't buy a thinkpad or the $vendor of
the week."  We're losing enough users already.  We also can't say
"this is explicitly supported" because the distro and the hardware is
constantly changing, and they aren't changing in lock-step or with any
coordination between the distro and the HW vendors.  So we do as best
we can.

> Can Fedora Workstation be viable as predominately a VM guest on some other OS?  Can this be a good experience? What resources are required to make that happen?

If someone works on it.  If they do, they can figure out what they need.

> What's the alternative?

Uh, I kind of view Fedora working on some _other_ OS as the
alternative.  Which is probably the case for a lot of people, which is
probably why nobody is really driving it.

> What's the autopsy report on the various Mac hardware problems?

You have a Mac with problems.  I know at least 7 other people that
have Macs that work fine, with the exception of the 802.11n issue
which we can't really fix.

> I can only describe symptoms, the bugs are all essentially unanswered as if no one has any concrete idea what the underlying problem actually is, therefore I don't know if it's worth throwing resources at it?

Yep.  That's also par for the course.  People basically have to guess
at a lot of the problems you've described if they can't recreate on
their own hardware.  I'm beginning to wonder if you're confusing
Fedora with some kind of paid-support model distribution.

> What's the alternative to that? Should we put together a list of actually recommended hardware, specific makes and models? And if so what are the (largely) objective criteria by which to figure out what is recommended?

We can't do that without some kind of relationship with vendors for
that hardware.  Otherwise we're playing catch up at best trying to
make things work _after_ the hardware has shipped and it really
doesn't change the user experience or support story from how things
are today.  Christian has mentioned trying to build such
relationships, which would be good.  It won't be with Apple.

>>>> I don't see
>>>> that being effective at all.  At the end of the day you need people
>>>> that actually DO, not people that just talk.
>>>
>>> I'd characterize the project's attitude toward Virtual Box as somewhere in the realm of anemic, not quite openly hostile. So it doesn't surprise me it's not attracting Fedora+VirtualBox specific developers to make the combination a better overall experience.
>>
>> Great.  I'd agree with all of that.  So I'm not sure why you think
>> talking about it more is going to make it more important, or why all
>> of a sudden now people would start digging in.
>
> New project focus, new product name, seems like a good time for a change in tone. The project's attitude toward Virtual Box would have to change before anything else possibly could.

Again, not sure if you're advocating for it to change.  If you are,
you're doing it in a confusing manner.

josh