Developer focus for Fedora workstation

[Chris Murphy]

On Aug 19, 2014, at 7:10 PM, Josh Boyer <jwboyer at fedoraproject.org> wrote:

> On Tue, Aug 19, 2014 at 7:27 PM, Chris Murphy <lists at colorremedies.com> wrote:
>> 
>> 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.

I'm trying to draw out a Fedora Workstation position that isn't ambivalent. It's win win for me no matter the decision. VirtualBox not supported at all no matter whether it's a Fedora or vbox specific bug means my Fedora testing workload drops 90%. And if a narrowly carved policy to semi-support certain aspects, then chances are VirtualBox gets a wee bit better.




>> 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.

Haven't we been doing the best we can all along? And if so, how is continuing to do the same best we can do going to reverse the losing users problem? 

We see the need to triage the patient. NO NO! Don't move them! That'll make it worse! And don't tell them the truth, my god they might go somewhere else!


>> 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.

It's three different Macbook Pro models spanning five years. All three have the same overheating and MCE messages; erratic trackpad; bluetooth not working; and abysmal battery life. Yes only one of them is a particular problem in that it's dead, but it happened under suspicious circumstances: package temperature above threshold, fans running faster than they ever do under OS X, mce hardware error messages, then kaput.

Free dead laptop, free shipping, if anyone wants to do an actual autopsy. The machine does power on but doesn't get past POST.

And why don't we suggest some USB-wireless products that can work around the 802.11n issue?

How to spend the absolute least amount of time getting Fedora installed and up and running is inherently valuable.


> 
>> 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.

The problems have been recreated by others. No one is certain what the problem is, or the scope of risk. And baring clarity I don't think it's improper for me to characterize running Fedora on Macbook Pros as risky because of the heat issue, but also the other problems are significant even if not life threatening.


>> 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.

Existing and potential users regularly ask what hardware is recommended, or at least is best supported by Fedora. Doing nothing at all to meet this request seems like it's asking to be replaced by a distribution that does do this.

Tacitly recommended hardware could be achieved by the community with a grade card for make/model. An overall pass/fail recommendation (somewhat subjective, which is good); and then a more objective grade for wireless, video, battery life, suspend, etc. And it could also have some post-install advice to work around some things, like wireless where even the work around get voted on to see which is more popular.


Chris Murphy