5 ms·

These sorts of complaints seem so absurdly dramatic. I don't understand the reasoning behind them. They somehow bring up an eerie image in my head of someone

by enobrev 15y ago

These sorts of complaints seem so absurdly dramatic. I don't understand the reasoning behind them. They somehow bring up an eerie image in my head of someone holding their spouse hostage in the basement for lightly mentioning that they wanted to take a photography class. "No, dear, you're not allowed to be anything besides what you were the day I met you. Change is not in the cards for you, unless I make those changes". Creepy. That overbearing spouse deserves to be left in the dust immediately, and maybe some of these old users do as well. Not that they would be truly left behind, considering the vast landscape of other equally expensive options available requiring just as much effort to install - or MORE, if that's your thing. We've been talking about bringing Linux to the desktop for more than a decade. And it's not even close. So a company comes along and says: Listenting to you guys isn't working, so we're going to try something else. And now they're somehow considered the antithesis to Linux. What is "Bringing Linux to the masses" supposed to mean? Making all computer users around the world cantakerous curmudgeons who can change every pixel any graphical interface can ever hope to offer? I'm pretty sure I wouldn't like that world. I like Linux geeks, and consider myself one, but I also like all the people in my life who will never even care what Linux is. And maybe there is a way to the masses via the old ways. I implore you to invest your time and money to find out. I would honestly love to watch that unfold, and I'd probably install that version as well to see if it fits me. In the meantime, I'm going to be happily using Ubuntu everywhere, as I am now - on my 2 year old DIY desktop with 2 giant 27" monitors (worked upon first install, with no proprietary drivers - 3 screens: not so easy), on my television (DIY home theater running xbmc - hdmi audio and video - also worked upon first install - no proprietary), and on my laptop at work (thinkpad, also worked immediately), and of course, on a couple servers at various stages of deploy. As unpopular as the opinion may be around here, I really enjoy using Unity. It's new and obviously imperfect, but it's one of the better user experiences I've found on Linux. I felt the old gnome 2 desktop was a step back from Windows 7 when I switched my media center to it last year. It looked as though I was installing software from 15 years in the past, trying to fit into a world that had an inch of dust on top of it. I like the windows-7-like dock bar in Unity. I like that searching for apps via keyboard is king (although the sorting sucks, sorting by usage is essential). Not a huge fan of the omni-preset menu bar, but it's not really THAT big of a deal (admittedly having 2 giant screens makes that possible). I don't give a damn about screensavers, as I haven't used one since flying toasters were the in thing. Truth be told, I spend far too much making things ON Linux to care much about Linux itself. And that's the way it should be. At least that's the only way I can stand to use Linux on every single computer I own.

probably 15y ago
But isn't there some tacit agreement, or expectation that long-time users and active members will not have to abandon years of investment in a platform -- on a whim of the provider? Of course, the designers are entitled to make their changes... but at the expense of the (supportive) user community? I'm just playing devil's advocate here, but providers would not exist were it not for the demand created by the community. It's true that displeased community members can abandon ship, but they have a right to be angry (in the understanding that they entered a provider-user arrangement upon a "gentleman's agreement" as stated above).
madrox 15y ago
This. Very much this. I remember Rob Pardo reflecting on criticism World of Warcraft received before initial launch. A lot of the Everquest players thought getting to max level was too easy and didn't require enough of a time sink. Rob pointed out that there was little value in focusing on players who had that much time to spend on a game, and they had to let those players go. It's tough, from a commercial and critical perspective, to say he was incorrect. WoW brought MMOs to the masses in a way nothing else has. Letting go of users can be hard. Being the user that's getting let go of is harder.
einhverfr 15y ago
The issue here is a lack of communication. For example in LedgerSMB, we get occasional users asking for MySQL support. We send them a (lengthy) canned response detailing why MySQL support is not on our priority list and in fact why we wouldn't accept patches if they were written. We politely advise people to look for other accounting programs if this doesn't seem desirable to them. Pretty soon we got fewer and fewer. People could see what our position was, why it wasn't open to debate, and so forth. But reading a lot of this what I see is "won't fix. Sorry, against our design" with no attempt to either leave the door open for future changes or figure out what the user wants. Better approaches include a long-term feature requests queue or some other way of preserving feedback for later review during design sessions, or a canned response which details why a category of feature requests is unwelcome and inviting further discussion of what could be done instead. If it is not applicable, the user ideally should be challenged and asked to justify why they need what they say they need before the bug is marked wont-fix with no discussion.

by enobrev 15y ago

probably 15y ago

But isn't there some tacit agreement, or expectation that long-time users and active members will not have to abandon years of investment in a platform -- on a whim of the provider? Of course, the designers are entitled to make their changes... but at the expense of the (supportive) user community? I'm just playing devil's advocate here, but providers would not exist were it not for the demand created by the community. It's true that displeased community members can abandon ship, but they have a right to be angry (in the understanding that they entered a provider-user arrangement upon a "gentleman's agreement" as stated above).

madrox 15y ago

This. Very much this. I remember Rob Pardo reflecting on criticism World of Warcraft received before initial launch. A lot of the Everquest players thought getting to max level was too easy and didn't require enough of a time sink. Rob pointed out that there was little value in focusing on players who had that much time to spend on a game, and they had to let those players go. It's tough, from a commercial and critical perspective, to say he was incorrect. WoW brought MMOs to the masses in a way nothing else has. Letting go of users can be hard. Being the user that's getting let go of is harder.

einhverfr 15y ago

The issue here is a lack of communication. For example in LedgerSMB, we get occasional users asking for MySQL support. We send them a (lengthy) canned response detailing why MySQL support is not on our priority list and in fact why we wouldn't accept patches if they were written. We politely advise people to look for other accounting programs if this doesn't seem desirable to them. Pretty soon we got fewer and fewer. People could see what our position was, why it wasn't open to debate, and so forth. But reading a lot of this what I see is "won't fix. Sorry, against our design" with no attempt to either leave the door open for future changes or figure out what the user wants. Better approaches include a long-term feature requests queue or some other way of preserving feedback for later review during design sessions, or a canned response which details why a category of feature requests is unwelcome and inviting further discussion of what could be done instead. If it is not applicable, the user ideally should be challenged and asked to justify why they need what they say they need before the bug is marked wont-fix with no discussion.