Is openSUSE for users with a little computer knowledge

or Protective vs. overprotective

One post on opensuse@opensuse.org made me think about what makes openSUSE a bit hard to chew for new computer users.

In particular the post was about NTFS usage.
There is a short article how to fix default settings:
http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:NTFS

openSUSE default settings are a safe for users with very little computer knowledge. You have to be a root in order to write to partition that is formatted with NTFS. 

Background:

Windows protects its system files from deletion, but only when it is controlling the system. When user is accessing partition with installed windows from Linux, that protection does not exist, so one can overwrite or delete important files preventing Windows from starting.

Restrictive settings that allow only root to write there are some protection, not very sophisticated, but it prevents users without basic knowledge to damage their windows, at least to the moment they discover power of root :)

Problem is that any other NTFS file system is not writable too, which forces users to either learn workarounds, or leave Linux. Taking that people with a little computer knowledge already demonstrated lack of interest in computer internals, second option is probably the most used one, unless they find Linux that is not overprotective.

Problem is similar to UAC in Vista. It failed because it was producing too many times warnings to make computer use comfortable.

Wiki:Structure

Attempt to create structure in the wiki, or to classify all articles, is next logical step after years of, to be modest, disharmony in the current wiki, but how far we should go and what content can be structured with reasonable amount of work, and what should be left to self organization.

Article Ontology is Overrated: Categories, Links, and Tags talks among other things about application domain of ontology.

Now applied to our wiki, we have:

1. mix of both stable well defined categories and new topics that are in flux,
2. relatively restricted domain - Linux and openSUSE, but we go into a lot of details there,
3. mix of topics that cross boundaries of disciplines, 
4. participants are more or less not experienced,
5. there is a limited number of people interested in the work on the wiki, specially to spend time learning how it works 

To me it seems that we are a bit more on "let it organize itself", which will mean make basic structure and rules for maintenance crew, so that copy-editors can straighten out stray articles on important topics without author complains, and don't be to much upset when the rest lives its own life.

Wiki: Background

One particular article that is correlating to my experience working on openSUSE wiki is Ontology is Overrated: Categories, Links, and Tags or in short "how chaos is organizing itself".

In other words, we did not enough to organize our chaos and we have wiki that we made, and deserve. Are we, openSUSE users only to blame?

IMO, yes and no.

Users of openSUSE are not well aware of FOSS concepts, which include a lot of own involvement in creation and maintenance of distribution. There is no such thing as a free beer, you pay with currency or with own work.

Some 5 years after start of openSUSE, users reporting bugs is the major group that is contributing to SUSE. There is no many community members outside the SUSE GmbH that are software developers, packagers, document writers, translators, graphic artist, and many other specialists that can make complex product like software distribution.When I say not many I have in mind that as of today we have almost 12000 registered users, 4600 of them agree on Guiding Principles, but only 395 are members. The members are those that make significant contributions. For distro that offers thousands packages of software titles that is way to small.

The other party to blame is Novell and SUSE, that pursing own interest limited to have community as testers for new Linux related technologies did underestimated value of healthy community behind and all services that such community can provide. Until recent creation of Boosters, there was no organized effort to change nature of openSUSE community from consumers of free software to contributors in many more areas then bug reporting and packaging.

Ubuntu rise is not accidental. Mr. Shuttleworth based his project on relatively small company that complemented existing Debian distribution with final, user friendly, touch up. The other  services that one distribution provides to end users like packaging and security audits are, so far I know, done by Debian, and that is a lot more work as it multiplies with number of software titles that one wants to provide in a distribution.

Expanding use of portal page concept

The openSUSE wiki Portals have few sections that are included from subpages.

For instance introductory section of Portal:Wiki is actually on a subpage Portal:Wiki/Intro and it is used in article itself, but also in the Main page, just as  Project and Distribution portals intro pages.

Using subpages in the similar way are created other sections of any Portal page. Nice about this is that nothing prevents to use parts of portals anywhere we need them.

What if we can expand this concept to many more types of articles?

We gain ability to use parts of articles in any area; not only to link, but to reuse text. For instance, when we create list of used software to solve some problem then transclusion of intro pages in the list will tell reader, not only what is used, but also short introduction to software.

A bit expanded concept would keep current Template:Infobox on a subpage. That will make possible to list it in the right column of another article. Reader that has to install some software in order to perform task described in the article will have all information at hand that will assist him in installation.

Often used descriptions for procedures like "switch to root", or "switch runlevel" can be collected as subpages to one page for related actions and then just reused everywhere in the wiki. This will end tens of similar descriptions for those two all over the wiki.

How to make authors and copy editors aware of that?

It is relatively simple. Make them aware of option to use templates offered by MultiBoilerplate MediaWiki extension, and give them templates with example articles.

PS.

The openSUSE wiki version of MultiBoilerplate extension is improved by C. Boltz with ability to have different templates for different namespaces, so we have ability to be selective, depends on type of content that is offered.

ATI for n-th time

ATI graphics and Linux on some computers is real problem. I tried fglrx driver , but it doesn't compile in openSUSE 11.2 .

The most recent development is that even radeon driver is no more good for Radeon Xpress 200 built in my laptop. Not that it doesn't work at all, but you have to use strange methods to boot the laptop to the GUI. To be honest, not strange to me, I used startx very often long time ago, but I can imagine what would happen if openSUSE was just installed to try it out. It would be removed from the box faster then it was installed. With so many options out there it would take time to see that visitor coming back.

Switching distros

Reading Planet SUSE I found link to article
Switching from Ubuntu to OpenSuse .

How many people annoyed with bugs in distro that they used for a while finally give up and go elsewhere ?

I know that is not many, as it involves some time to learn new one, but I know one that moved in opposite direction and few more that have some sort of plan B that include some other distro as an option.

Smolt

Smolt got changes that makes it more user friendly, ie. GUI is improved and it's on a way to be enhanced with more very useful features. Carlos, openSUSE member, rewrote the Smolt GUI in Qt, and removed serious usability bug - not reporting user password that allows user to access his report web page on http://www.smolts.org/. Password was available only trough command line client.

More in his blog .

openSUSE wiki as knowledge base: Initial

One of problems with wiki, as knowledge base, is that someone has to hang on it and categorize submissions, old and new, but it is not one man, nor a layman show.

What is wiki

The Mediawiki articles and file submissions are just linear list of titles.
It is up to the people that use wiki to sort their knowledge there.

The tools that Mediawiki provides are search, few listings found in special pages, name spaces, categories, and of course ability to create articles that will link other articles and serve as indexes.

Sorting openSUSE wiki

I tried few times to sort the knowledge on openSUSE wiki and failed, it is just much more work and skills than any single wiki editor can provide. Attempt to create framework for future expansions without defining properties of objects stored in a wiki database was waste of time.
So this time I'll start drafting a plan from prerequisites to define object properties.

I can see few basic objects:

1. articles (html documents)
2. uploaded files (images, pdf and some open document formats)
3. generated reports (special pages)

Let me take images as example. They can be sorted by:

1. function: Wallpaper, Icon, Splash, Emoticon, ...
2. application: Evolution Art, Thunderbird Art, Firefox Art, ...
3. desktop: KDE Art, GNOME Art, Xfce Art, ...
4. source by creator: openSUSE Art, User Art, Upstream Art, ...
5. creation tehnique: photography, scan of hand drawing, image creation program
   
6. quality: excellent, good, bad
7. completeness: mockup, draft, sketch, release candidate, final
8. color format: RGB, CMY, indexed, gray
9. color depth:32, 24, 16, 8, 2
10. color name: red, blue, green, ...
    
11. size: large, medium, small, ...
    

and of course in many more ways.

Each of ways to sort image is one of its properties and would require category, so that reader can browse trough categories to the particular image, or better to say description article. When you add other objects and their properties then list is huge.

The other problem is that list of image properties is not complete, there is many more that only professionals in the field know, and just the same is valid for any other wiki object. Without participation of people that are professionals in the field there will be no successful organization of openSUSE wiki as knowledge base.

People of openSUSE

First interview is published.
It was with a bit of squeaking, but for the apprentice editor it was good. I can't be strict to myself, it wouldn't be fair, who's going to defend me. There is still missing 'a' in some places, missed 'an' that should be 'a', but in general it was good.

There are more in preparation, so following weeks wont be boring.

The thin point is preparation that needs more work on organization, but from the first one I learned few things that are useful to have before start, like HTML editor that has ability to show page layout, but it is not smarter then human in front of the screen, ie. doesn't change HTML code to bring it in "compliance". I have to check again Quanta+ and Bluefish, or something else if some kind soul has advice for an apprentice.

People of openSUSE

I said only Portal and then the other day Carlos asked again for volunteer. Now I have People of openSUSE too.

It shouldn't be much work, except for initial setup and permanent search for candidates. Considering involved work, Carlos kept good tempo of one interview a week. On the other hand, weekly one would need few years to interview only people that are recognized as openSUSE members right now.

Hopefully there will be more people interested for this part of community life.

KDE4 and graphics drivers problems

There is a lot of bugs reported about KDE4, which is natural for system in heavy development. The problem is that many of them are graphic adapter related.

The previous version of KDE was designed few years ago and it used graphic capabilities that were available at that time. That means large part of KDE3 stability on wide variety of hardware platforms can be attributed to well tested hardware drivers.

The desktop, like KDE, GNOME or any other lesser known, is third layer of software, sitting at the top of X server, which is at the top of kernel. The hardware drivers are kernel business, so if they fail all other layers will fail as well. The effects can range from failure to display some element on the screen, that is using missing or buggy feature, to system lockup where only power button can help, with all kinds of weird behavior in between those two.

KDE4 is attempting to use newer features, which has as a consequence that now we can see bugs that are mix of genuine Qt, KDE and X server bugs, and hardware driver bugs that before went unnoticed. That is the worst possible mix for debugging, specially for guys that are not familiar with heavy duty debugging tools and procedures, like me, but there is some help.

People that can use distribution configuration tools, and tell Xorg (X server) what driver to use can use open source driver and eliminate at least that from equation.

I'm using Nvidia legacy graphics, FX 5200 and even older MX 4000.
Consequence is that I have to wait until Nvidia developers find time to fix, or backport fixes, to those drivers, or use the opensource nv driver. The legacy drivers are not top priority at Nvidia, as they want to fix current (recently sold) drivers first.

The other option, nv driver, is halfway help.
It will help to see is it proprietary (commercial) driver at fault, or some other component above in the stack, but you and KDE will miss 3D capabilities of your graphic card.

Smolt

Smolt caught my interest on the spot, although still in development and with rough edges, it looks promising.

It is project aimed to collect anonymously and completely voluntarily hardware data from computers running Linux. There is many advantages of such collection. It is originally a Fedora project, but they posted open invitation to everyone on LWN.net . Smolt is now included in openSUSE distribution, and if it is not installed then:

# zypper install smolt
or
$ sudo zypper install smolt

will do the job.
Note that # is prompt for superuser, and $ is for ordinary user.
OpenSUSE is using > as a normal user prompt.

For now there is usability bug in GUI.
GUI version doesn't give option to give comment how hardware device works, instead user has to go to Smolt web page enter password and edit profile there. but GUI doesn't give that password.

Workaround is to use command line version.

$ smoltSendProfile
or
$ smoltSendProfile -d

Second one should be more verbose.

Getting tired

After 3 years being very active with openSUSE, my activity went down. Comparing with previous time, activity is almost zero.

After few attempts to sort wiki articles, to make it accessible for new users, I'm tired and not willing for another undertake. It is just too much for a single person even with 8 hours a day just for that. Maybe one day when some of programs that should handle indexing will work better, but manually, no thanks.

I'll take only Portal page and see how it will develop.
That would be reasonable amount of work. A bit of graphic, links with digest, one special article given with larger excerpt as a article of the month, some that look like a portal, as portal of the month.

It would be manually selected articles that is worth reading.