On Sat, 2009-05-02 at 01:55 +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote: > Put simply, any argument based on "Nobody's complained, so it's fine" is > fallacious. People expect Linux to be dreadful. If something works > they're happy - if it doesn't, it's because Linux isn't ready for the > desktop yet. And when we've still got a community that's more inclined > to tell people that they should read the documentation rather than ask > whether a specific UI is sufficiently understandable, it's hardly > unsurprisingly that people aren't going to spend a great deal of time > complaining about how unintuitive they found some aspect of UI. > > If people raise issues with a suggestion and the counterargument is > "Users haven't raised this problem" then we can't draw conclusions about > why they haven't. Maybe it's because the average user is smart enough to > figure out that the multitude of volume controls we ship are all > intended for subtly different purposes. Maybe it's because they can't be > bothered filing bugs. Maybe it's because they're scared of raising a > contentious subject. Who knows? In the end we still come down to making > decisions based on the opinions of people we deem to be experts in the > field. And if you don't trust the desktop team to make the appropriate > decision in this case then it would be helpful for you to say so > plainly. Let's see. I don't think you're really wrong. It's not a perfect basis for argument. However, let me see if I can summarize the desktop team's position: "We're in the best position to know what's right for the desktop, and we say that the best thing to do is just ship one mixer application. The one that can't handle anything except analog stereo output when there's no problem with ALSA. We consider surround output, digital output, input switching, input monitoring and all the known and as-yet unknown but undoubtedly existent cases where there *is* a problem with the ALSA mixer and hence g-v-c doesn't work properly to be, as a whole, not significant enough to make it worthwhile shipping a different mixer, either alongside g-v-c or instead of it. We're the best people to make the decision because we know what we're doing when it comes to building a desktop. Yes, we've actually been shipping two mixers by default for three releases now (and we didn't notice this until someone else pointed it out), but that's just, er, a mistake. We're still the *only* ones who can be trusted to know what we're doing here!" I'm really, honestly, not in a nasty way, not finding that to be 100% convincing. I'm not working on the basis of "do I trust the desktop team to make this decision and get it right". That's not really how I'm looking at it. I'm just evaluating this particular case, on its merits, and I don't think the call that the desktop team made was the right one. I don't really care about the reasons behind that or the politics or yadda yadda yadda. I certainly agree that the process could have been managed better - objections could have been raised much earlier - and that's something it's entirely worth dissecting...but I don't think it should take precedence over making sure Fedora 11 is the best product it can be. I just don't think shipping a mixer that doesn't handle analog surround output, digital output, input switching, input monitoring or the multiple cases of buggy volume supplied by ALSA (there's six of these bugs filed so far, btw, and counting) as our *only* graphical mixer is a good decision. I raised this concern through the proper channels, it was picked up by FESco - not at my instigation, btw, I was called into the meeting after the topic had already come up - and FESco came out in the same position I've been espousing. At that point I thought the whole thing was settled and I went on to actually work on the technical side of what needing doing, whereupon the whole argument got dragged out of its grave on this list and we had to go through everything again, three times over. I'm sorry if I don't handle the political side of things that greatly, and I'm sorry if I sometimes come off as too aggressive. That's my fault. I'm not trying to rub anyone up the wrong way. It's just a bit frustrating that no-one seems to want to engage in the actual blood and guts of this issue; all I'm hearing is vague theoretical arguments about why *this* group of people is better entitled to make the decision or why *that* line of argument is theoretically flawed or yadda yadda. I'm just not finding it very productive. Please credit me with a bit of experience and knowledge in this field too...yes, I've not been around Fedora very long, but I *have* been on the very sharp and pointy end of distribution releases at Another Place for three or four years, being The Guy for several tens of thousands of people to yell at when they don't like something in a new release, also being the guy who tracks release critical bugs and writes all the release documentation, including the Errata. I think I have a pretty decent track record of knowing a hot-button issue when I see one, and the idea that we should ship the new gnome-volume-control as our sole GUI volume control application on the desktop operating system images that most people think of as 'Fedora' (the default install you get off the DVD, and the GNOME live spin - the live spin you get if you don't explicitly select a different one, and the one we mostly hand out at events, covered in Fedora logos) just does not feel like a winning proposition to me. All I've been trying to do is back that position up with solid reasoning and logic. -- Adam Williamson Fedora QA Community Monkey IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org http://www.happyassassin.net -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
