Why people are not switching to Fedora

Tue May 12 00:53:44 UTC 2015

On 05/11/2015 05:14 PM, Elad Alfassa wrote:
> On Tue, May 12, 2015 at 1:37 AM, Ankur Sinha <sanjay.ankur at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> It's not the job of an OS to educate people.
>>
>> But it is the job of a community, and the last time I checked, we were
>> more than just an OS. If the goal was just to create an operating
>> system that "just works" as you keep putting it, and providing it free
>> of charge, we'd just be Korora, not Fedora. The objective is to create
>> a system that "just works" while keeping it FOSS - please don't skip
>> out that very important clause.
>
> We are still FOSS. I'm not suggesting to just ship these things by
> default. I'm suggesting making it easier for users to make informed
> decisions on this subject, while making sure they remain safe and not
> compromise their computers in the process.
>>
>> "However, Fedora cannot and does not include MP3 decoders/encoders in
>> order to serve the goal of providing and supporting only free and open
>> source software that is not restricted by software patents by default."
>
> "by default" is a key phrase here. As well as "include". My suggestion
> is not to include these things by default, that's not viable both
> legally and philosophically.
>
>

>>> belSo you give people a choice here: "either throw away your brand new
>>> laptop and buy a different one, or don't use Fedora". That's not a
>>> good thing to do. It's safe to assume our target users already have
>>> computers, and that a very large percentage of them have broadcom
>>> wifi
>>> chips. If you're a developer with a laptop supplied to you by your
>>> company, you might not have a choice of the type of laptop at all.
>>
>> Well, it's like saying I'm travelling to the states and haven't the
>> right plug point - what should I do? Should I run around asking the
>> states to change their electrical system or should I try to figure out
>> what converter I need to get my system working?
>
> That's not the same at all, sorry. Getting a plug converter is very
> easy, you walk into a store, you pay money, you get a product - end of
> story. It's different with drivers. Installing them is not easy and
> requires following complicated instructions... and firmware files are
> even more of a mess.
>
>>
>>>
>>> Wireless chips are not usually listed in the specs. This means
>>> knowing
>>> what you buy requires a lot of research and prior knowledge of which
>>> chips are "good"... Sometimes the information is not available at
>>> all.
>>> Sometimes there are multiple editions of the same laptop with
>>> different wifi chips. Sometimes non-broadcom is not an option (if you
>>> buy a Mac, for example).
>>> If someone tries Fedora, and sees that wifi doesn't work, they won't
>>> blame their hardware (they probably don't even know what "broadcom"
>>> is), after all, it worked fine on Windows (or on OS X). They'll blame
>>> Fedora.
>>
>> And we come back to awareness.
>
> I'm sure you could explain this to people face to face in conferences,
> but this doesn't scale. We can't have a dialog saying "Sorry your wifi
> is not working, this is not our fault, blame that hardware vendor
> you've never heard of".
>
> And again, you could invest your time in convincing people a certain
> vendor is bad and that they need to do extensive research before
> buying a laptop, but this doesn't scale and doesn't work for various
> reasons that I've explained in my previous message. I'll sum them up:
> 1) People already have laptops. They are not going to throw them away
> just because of Fedora.
> 2) Some people have no choice of a laptop, they are provided to them
> by their IT department and there's only one or two models.
> 3) The information regarding wifi chips is not listed on formal vendor
> specs, it requires extensive research. Sometimes, the information
> available online is inaccurate due to model fragmentation, or not
> available at all.
> 4) You can't convey this information to each and every person in your
> target audience, so people will keep blaming Fedora.
>
>
>>> For example, including 3rd party repository definitions is still an
>>> option - if I recall correctly the only reason it was veto'd is
>>> philosophical, not legal.
>>
>> Yes, certainly - which is why the alternate suggestion of helping the
>> third party repository improve came up. Why has that been discounted?
>
> Again, just having the 3rd party repo out there, even if installing it
> is more secure, is not sufficient. People still need a way to find it.
> I still think that if people need to go to google to search this, we
> are not doing a very good job. Especially since if they try to play an
> MP3 file, gnome-software will show up, tell them they couldn't find
> anything, and send them to a very confusing page in the Fedora wiki
> with not much real useful information.
>
>>
>>>
>>> Or we could offer the users to purchase the Fluendo codec pack in an
>>> integrated and secure way. This is possible, and yes, most users
>>> probably won't pay, but at least it's something, and something is
>>> better than nothing.
>>
>> I'm totally on board with this - in fact, I was looking at Fluendo
>> myself earlier today. If people aren't willing to pay for a service
>> someone else is providing, they won't get the service..
>
> I wonder how complicated it would be (both from a policy perspective
> and a technical perspective) to get it integrated in gnome-software in
> such a way that users could purchase and install these codec packs
> with minimum manual steps. I also wonder if those codecs are getting
> security updates, and how.
>
>>
>>>
>>> We could also have an official-ish page with less vague instructions
>>> on how to safely get 3rd party repo to work, with a clear disclaimer
>>> that this is community generated content in such a way that would
>>> make
>>> legal happy.
>>
>> Like this?
>> https://ask.fedoraproject.org/en/question/9111/sticky-what-plugins-do-
>> i-need-to-install-to-watch-movies-and-listen-to-music/
>
> Something similar. Would be nice if the wiki page Software throws you
> at when there's a codec missing could link to a relevant tag in ask
> fedora.
> However, this post dives into terminal commands, which I'm not sure is
> such a good idea - it would be nice if this installation could be
> graphical. I had an idea last year that Software could offer you to
> install the codecs immidately after you install the repo
> configuration. I think it's still possible to implement, just need to
> have a proper way to do this. Maybe we can make this a reality...
>
>>
>>>
>>> As for wifi, we could implement a pre-install check screen on the
>>> live
>>> CD, that will warn you before you install if your hardware has known
>>> issues. If your only network adapter is not supported, you'd want to
>>> know about it *before* you overwrite your main OS. This kind of
>>> utility could even provide a shortlink (so you can write it down) for
>>> instructions on how to use your other OS to get the right drivers or
>>> firmware files and how to install them.
>>
>> Sounds like a great idea - RFE to anaconda?
> Not sure if anaconda is the right component for this, maybe the
> welcome dialog you get when you start the live session should perform
> this checks, or maybe something else entirely. This also needs design,
> and we need to understand if we even have a reliable way to detect
> problematic hardware.
>
>>
>> Here's another idea:
>> - a community contributed list of laptops/workstations in the market
>> that are open source friendly - maybe even a link on fp.o that says
>> "what system should I buy if I want to run Fedora?"
>>
> I don't think this scales... there are so many different laptops out
> there, and new ones come out faster than you could check them all.
> We'd end up with a list of mostly obsolete laptops.
>
>> If we can get a noticeable amount of users to stay away from non FOSS
>> vendors, the vendors *may* feel a bit of pressure?
> We are way too small right now to make a noticeable difference.
> The only pressure we can have is by emailing the vendor (would be a
> good idea to tell every user you hear that suffers from this issue to
> send a mail to the problematic hardware vendor, maybe enough of these
> might move something, but I'm not too optimistic about this)
>
>
>

GNOME Software is awesome.   I started a fresh F22 installation on my
laptop and thought I had installed.. $package. Whatever it was.  I typed
out the application name, a matching thing popped up, I pressed enter,
and found out "Oh, this isn't installed, I need to press this one button
first".  Then I was *done*.  It was really easy; no messing around with
a terminal, no visiting sketchy blogs, no third party sites visited.  I
have a sense that this is exactly the kind of experience you'd like when
a user wants to use flash, or Virtualbox, or listen to MP3s - everything
they want to do Just Works on Fedora.

There's a problem with this.  The user that's completely dissuaded by
four lines of cut and paste instructions to make all that happen is
going to gleefully appreciate that "Fedora Just Works with my flash
videos, mp3s, and videos! I didn't have to do anything".  We can sit
down and discuss the technical, by the books compliance with stated
policy by not shipping the bits, or metadata that provides the bits -
hey, it's just a URL to the metadata, it doesn't load anything until the
user initiates something.  It's a tired discussion, and one that IMO
continually misses the point. First, I hope nobody actually thinks that
obfuscating this is different - to the end user - compared to actually
shipping it.  Why do people with nvidia cards appreciate Ubuntu? It
offers them the nvidia driver.  Not installs for them, detects and
*offers* it.  The user is making the choice there. We don't do that; the
user has to open a browser, type "Fedora Nvidia", click several times,
then perhaps cut and paste a line into a terminal.  I have a lawnmower
with more complicated instructions - and I can disassemble it and
replace broken bits with spec parts if I need to.

More importantly, there's a compromise of the project's values.  Not
company policy, not bureaucratic red tape, not a few difficult community
members that need to be convinced that the easy way is better. Core.
Values.  The compromise isn't decreased by making the user click "OK" or
offering them a brief "this comes from a third party" to ignore.  The
licensing and patent issues that come under discussion are symptoms of a
disease that, by consensus shown via participation, we all want to
cure.  The Fedora Project's highest goal is *not* to produce a
competitive, easy to use operating system.

When someone asks me what makes Fedora different, especially a
prospective contributor, I don't talk about how easy it is in GNOME to
switch to an already-running application, or how nice it is that the
gedit UI matches the UI of the system settings application.  These are
all good things, and they're all upstream and available in other distros
too.   I point them at Fedora's values, the project's commitment to
furthering the Open Source Way, transparency, advocacy, staying close to
open upstreams - all of the *philosophy* that results in a somewhat
difficult transition from more tolerant platforms.  The Fedora Project's
Mission Statement, Foundations, and Objectives are required reading for
contributors.

I'm shocked that these principles are continually treated as negotiable
obstacles.   Maybe some end up contributing to the project without
thinking about these issues, or because their dayjob requires it, but
many, myself included, chose a distribution to play in because of the
community and it's principles.  Kendell's situation is a great example;
he's passionate about the ideology behind the project, and beginning to
contribute because the project's values align with his own.   He's
written about the formats used for audiobooks made for the blind - DRM
crippled, vendor lock-in at every level, really as inaccessible as an
accessibility effort can be.  You can understand his frustration when,
after finding a project that's *committed* to advocating permissively
licensed solutions to these problems, he finds that the developers
responsible for the project's flagship product advocating abandoning
those values for convenience and marketshare gain.

There are a lot of us out there contributing our free time in support of
these values.  I encourage everyone to do the same - if you strongly
feel that patent and license restricted bits should be effortlessly
available to end users, spend some free time improving a project like
RPMFusion or Kokora.  If you want to create a world where free culture
is welcoming and widespread, collaboration is commonplace, and people
control their content and devices, well, it isn't going to be that easy.

--Pete

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/desktop/attachments/20150511/ac621fe2/attachment.html>