Denial is powerful thing...
Denial is powerful thing...
Posted Feb 23, 2012 16:08 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252)In reply to: Denial is powerful thing... by nim-nim
Parent article: Changes and complaints
I run rawhide at home. Sometimes versions are pushed to rawhide hours before they get pushed upstream (because the rawhide packager is also the upstream main developer, and the rawhide process is faster than the upstream process).
That changes zip in the way problem reports are treated.
Of course. Why should it change anything? Now you have unstable, constantly moving system which includes god knows what.
– “I don't run a devel stack myself, please use old stable versions for everything but my own code and reproduce” (if you can't be bothered to run the early code of others, why do you insist users should run yours before you deign read their reports)
– “your software version is too new, we'll wait to see if there is still a problem later in stabler versions”
IOW: developers sensibly expect to see how their work behaves in isolation. This is how alpha/beta software was (and is!) always tested everywhere except in Linux world. And you are most definitely are not forced to participate in beta testing, but then, when the product is released, you are stuck with decision fixable at beta stage.
Sure, integration testing is important, but this is separate issue. It's not a replacement for plain old testing.
– “please retest or I close this report” months later (by someone who clearly never bothered investigating the first report)
This, again, is separate issue. This is the question of what is better: CADT model of handling bugs or bugs open and forgotten for years. I myself prefer bugs which are open for as long as it's needed to fix them (just recently bug which I've opened on GCC tracker was fixed... five years after I've filled it), but different people have different preferences.
Please climb down from your ivory tower.
Funny that users of other OSes (and there are more of them then users of all Linux Desktop goodies combined) don't think we work in ivory tower, only Linux people expect that we need to jump through 10 times more hoops to deliver software to 10 times less people.
One example: check this instruction. See the supported versions? Right: five year old and two year old compiler. Brand-new half-year old one is not even mentioned (today it's over year old and is supported... in experimental mode). The same with Mac (half-year old Leon is not even mentioned) and the same with Linux (GCC 4.6 is not supported yet. You may run into some build errors (and patches are welcome to fix them). Please see http://crbug.com/80071 before you proceed.): an aforementioned bug is actually fixed but I suspect recommendation to use older GCC will only be officially lifted after release of Precise Pangolin.
Distribution are supposed to help users with installation of software from the repo - and this process works reasonably well - but the fact that each release has it's own repo actively hurt ISVs (because there are no process for installing anything NOT in the repo) and the fact that some pieces developed by said ISVs end up included in the distribution does not change the equation much.
In the end it hurts users as well because many of them just want one or two bleeding-edge pieces - but this is basically impossible to organize in the distributions-driven world. Some software is backported in various PPAs, but this is half-hearted effort at best: there are no way to even deliver software to Ubuntu users using PPAs unless you'll build 3-4 different packages and other distributions require still more work.
As I've initially: I'm not saying that distributions are all bad, they certainly solve some real-world problems. But they also introduce some scalability problems with their "all or nothing" approach - and this hurts everyone: ISVs, developers of upstream packages and users.
In fact this is why GNOME3-like upgrades are met with such hostility: in the distribution-driven world you only have two choices:
1. to accept new interface right away when it's not yet refined enough, or
2. to reject the change - and be stuck with obsolete versions of all other programs.
In Windows world half-backed Windows ME and Windows Vista were just skipped and people went straight to Windows XP (after suitable hardware upgrade) and/or fWindows 7 - but they had access to all "latest and greatest" goodies in the meantime. In Linux we have huge flamefests instead.
You said it best yourself: it is easier to shoot the messenger than to fix problems.
Posted Feb 23, 2012 19:11 UTC (Thu)
by patrick_g (subscriber, #44470)
[Link]
Posted Feb 23, 2012 20:05 UTC (Thu)
by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454)
[Link] (2 responses)
No, some developers want the luxury of dedicated tester drones, while rejecting for themselves the support constrains of traditional development houses. That's basically why the relationship sours now.
Everywhere except in the Linux world is where testers are paid to test instead of providing a free service.
Everywhere except in the Linux world is where desktop beta testing is opened to valued and respected customers – in the Linux world salespeople of paid-for distros will point customers to their community distro for beta testing, and then when they'll start reporting issues they'll get told by the developers of said distro “sorry, not good enough, go away”. In fact those developers seem to deliberately target a userbase that is nothing like the one that finances their employer, small wonder the whole thing seems to never go anywhere.
Everywhere else in the Linux or free software world, people try to do their best for their current users, no questions asked (and those users usually contribute bits back in some other part of the free software ecosystem, it's a a big family). But some projects that grew out of this ecosystem have decided things were better “everywhere except in Linux world”, with all the empathy a spoiled teen has for the rest of his family.
Posted Feb 23, 2012 20:46 UTC (Thu)
by khim (subscriber, #9252)
[Link] (1 responses)
Have you ever participated in said beta testing programmes? If you try to push changes of the magnitude people demand from Linux Desktop developers then you'll just be laughed out and perhaps excluded from future testing. If Microsoft decided to go with new interface then this is what you'll get and no amount of complains can change that. Sure, you can offer some ideas about how to make it better, but the big decision itself? Unchangeable. This is what the parent article is all about. Testers are usually paid when product is sold for $$. Free products don't always have dedicated testers even everywhere except in the Linux world. This happens elsewhere, too. When there are not enough existing users (or when their numbers is dropping fast) they often are abandoned and new, incompatible, offer is presented (usually to the loud choir of complains). Some of the changes are successful (think Netscape to Firefox transition, or MacOS to MacOS X transition), most are not (PalmOS to webOS transition or Sinclair ZX to Sinclair QL). Of course only Linux Desktop developers think it's good idea to do such major changes without offering coexistence period, but as I've pointed out before this problem is blown out of proportion because of "all or nothing" approach to software practiced by Linux distributors.
Posted Mar 2, 2012 17:34 UTC (Fri)
by wmf (guest, #33791)
[Link]
>>> In Linux we have huge flamefests insteadDenial is powerful thing...
It's easy to access brand new software, even when you use an old distro. I installed Debian Squeeze on my laptop but I use Firefox 10.02 and LibreOffice 3.5.
It's a one clic install.
Denial is powerful thing...
> This is how alpha/beta software was (and is!) always tested everywhere
> except in Linux world.
Denial is powerful thing...
Everywhere except in the Linux world is where desktop beta testing is opened to valued and respected customers – in the Linux world salespeople of paid-for distros will point customers to their community distro for beta testing, and then when they'll start reporting issues they'll get told by the developers of said distro “sorry, not good enough, go away”.
Everywhere except in the Linux world is where testers are paid to test instead of providing a free service.
But some projects that grew out of this ecosystem have decided things were better “everywhere except in Linux world”, with all the empathy a spoiled teen has for the rest of his family.
Denial is powerful thing...