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Ext4 to be standard for Fedora 11, Btrfs also included (heise online)Ext4 to be standard for Fedora 11, Btrfs also included (heise online)Posted Jan 23, 2009 9:44 UTC (Fri) by Janne (guest, #40891)In reply to: Ext4 to be standard for Fedora 11, Btrfs also included (heise online) by BillyCrook Parent article: Ext4 to be standard for Fedora 11, Btrfs also included (heise online)
Which is more important: To take cutting-edge features and shipping it, or making sure that the not-so-cutting-edge features work and that the entire system is smooth and easy to use? Different people might have different answers to that.
Why do we only consider technical features as proper features, whereas polish and ease of use are not?
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Features vs. non-functionals... Posted Jan 23, 2009 10:08 UTC (Fri) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link]
Unfortunately this 'features matter most' attitude is endemic to the whole computer industry. Almost everyone ignores the 'non-functional requirements' such as reliability, security, usability, etc. A couple of examples:
- Microsoft Office beat the competition largely by adding features more quickly - since software reviews focus on what they can easily measure in a few days usage, which means features and ease of learning the new features (not long term usability), it tended to always win the reviews and gain market share until it was dominant.
- in the Ubuntu world, many people jump on the latest release even if they don't really need the new features - good thing for testing, but not so good if they simply need a reliable desktop system, for which the Ubuntu stable releases would be more appropriate.
- traditionally Windows had more features than Linux, but Linux was much more reliable and secure - however, most people chose Windows based on features. Linux is approaching feature parity for desktops so this is no longer so valid.
If it was common practice to quantitatively measure and review software based on these non-functionals, the world would be a different place, but it would also take a lot longer to review software...
Features vs. non-functionals... Posted Jan 24, 2009 5:15 UTC (Sat) by dkite (guest, #4577) [Link]
>traditionally Windows had more features than Linux, but Linux was much
more reliable and secure - however, most people chose Windows based on features
Quite regularly someone shows me something that they did with windows that
I would be interested in a survey of users showing how the capabilities of
Derek
Features vs. non-functionals... Posted Jan 29, 2009 10:45 UTC (Thu) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link]
I can't think of many things you can do with Windows that you can't do with Linux - really I was making the point that out of the box, Windows has some additional features including hardware support, good usability, consistent UI, sound that always works, etc.
Generally I can load up a Linux box with far more apps and it's still stable. For example, my main Linux desktop can do email, browsing, video, VoIP, VMware, web serving and OpenNMS all at the same time, but I wouldn't dare do all that on Windows. Hardware support can be more problematic if you don't choose the kit carefully, but generally most things work "out of the box".
Linux also scales down much better of course - I've recently been hugely impressed by SliTaz, which needs only a tiny amount of RAM yet still supports Firefox and other modern apps, and has a very light Debian-like package system, and by Crunchbang, which is a very light Ubuntu (much less than Xubuntu) while also coming with Java and Flash pre-installed. Either of these is great for older PCs with 100MB or 200MB of RAM respectively, on which XP would really struggle and Vista would not even install.
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