How to complain (and still be respected in the morning.)

[Dan]

Several things have brought this thread into being. It might work, it might not. If it does, we've got something. If it doesn't ... well ... there's always the old [DELETE] button.

First a little about what it is, and what it isn't.

What it is:

A place to briing constructive and cogent discussion about how to approach the business of complaining so something good can actually come of it.

A place to do some serious thinking and therefore provide some guidance so we stand a chance of reversing that old song and dance about, "The developers don't monitor this forum." If we can get our ducks lined up straight enough, they might just start.


What it isn't:

This isn't the place to complain. That comes later. This is where we nail down the ground rules.

This isn't a spleen vent. That sort of junk will be deleted almost instantly.

This isn't the place to bash either developers, staff or other community members. That WILL be deleted immediately, and may have other consequences too.

So ... Those are the basic ground rules. There may be a need to add more later. We'll see how it goes.

Therefore, let the discussion begin!


Dan

[Dan]

Reserved if needed

[Dan]

The Good:

Okay, let me be the 'first'. Gdmsetup is missing from Fedora9, so you're stuck with workarounds for auto-login. Dangermouse has come up with a good tutorial on his methods, and Rahul has also chipped in some assistance, but it bothers me that we've been restricted from this. After all, you'd still need the root password to modify any critical settings, so I don't see a real security issue.

The Bad:

Why do linux sucks?
1)NONE will help others and they say a communiy and coexistence for linux wha.. stupids
2)thats why linux is always slave to xp and it will go on sucks for years
3)Never in future will it be as good as xp and vista
4)this forums sucks i posted for 20r 3days and have searched for my ansers for nearly weeks
entire linux forums and have suffered so much for it i lost my projects and this is what it pays for installing linux

sucjk u all you all will never be doing good.................^&*&*786

What can I say. This just doesn't get it!

Farewell Fedora, it's been real
I've been with Fedora since the say FC1 was released. but Fedora 9 is the last straw. My initial reaction to 9 was to download the latest Kubuntu image

The NVidia issue, KDE4 being an abomination, Firefox3.5b Beta stinking up the joint, this release just isn't ready for primetime.

I considered CentOS for a while, but it seems the Ubuntu users just have so much fun, I've gotta go try it.

Farewell Fedora...you & I have jumped through many hoops together. Good luck down the road.

Neither does this.

The Ugly:

The Drama Llama

(Art by 'hibbary from Deviant Art. )

That should be pretty well self explanatory.



EDIT: Still building this post. Please be patient.

[bbfuller]

Hello Dan

Not many takers for your fishing expedition so perhaps I'll offer a thought to at least bring this to the top of the pile again.

Surely, most of the heartache that is going around now revolves around exactly what the definition of a distribution is.

For most of the Linux world it seems to be a collection of Linux software where all the major parts, including any major contributions from third party players, work together with only a few minor problems.

If that definition is not to hold good for Fedora then maybe it's about time to coin a new description for what it is to avoid raising expectations and then dashing them.

As I see it, if someone had said that what had been attempted within Fedora 9 was not achievable within the time frame. That what we had now was a further preview release with a final release anticipated when, as a minimum, the xorg difficulties and the release of KDE4.1 were achieved. Almost everyone would have been prepared to wait with good humour.

After all, as a cutting edge "distribution or whatever", why should Fedora be tied to a rigid six monthly time frame. It's been pointed out many times that Fedora just is, it's not in competition with anything.

[JN4OldSchool]

Ha ha ha, yeah!

Well said!

People are still blaming nVidia for not releasing drivers for something that does not even oficially exist yet. Cutting edge is one thing, this is quite another. You just forgot to mention GDM, which is a major PITA too, and FF which seems to be doing alright all things considered.

Ahhh, Fedora...I love the old gal...but I just gotta ask, what were they thinking?....

[Hlingler]

What more can be said? It's splattered in large print all over every official and unofficial Fedora web site: this is a "cutting edge" distro with a short and fixed release cycle, that will always "push the envelope" of newest available software. Period. All of the suggestions, opinions, and arguments to the contrary, that fact seems extremely unlikely to change. It would not be such an issue if new (and veteran) users read, realized, and accepted that at face value. But that is not what happens, at least as far as I can tell: new users (and also veteran users) slap a Fedora install disk into their CD/DVD tray and hit "Enter", without ever having read a single word nor researched anything about it, then are shocked when s**t doesn't work perfectly "out-of-the-box". Surprise! I think not.... Interestingly, this seems to indicate a trust and confidence in Fedora and FOSS in general, but also expectations that are unfounded and unreasonable.

The real issue, as I see it, is that many people simply don't subscribe to the principle that, if you get this stuff for free, you have no right to complain if it doesn't work 100% as you would like - or sometimes doesn't work at all. Says so in the disclaimer. Not that I too have never felt frustrated with things that don't work (or don't work the way I think that they should). In any case, human nature being what it is, I don't think that the "complaint department" is in jeopardy of losing work. As has already been pointed out: the best way to "complain" is to identify a single specific item, what's wrong, and present a well-though-out solution for it. At least then, the proposed solution can be picked apart, rather than the whole issue being ignored as just another rant.

One more thing strikes me, maybe someone else has noticed this too: I'd like to think that this past week's record activity here is a reflection of the growing trend for PC users to seek FOSS alternatives to the "other" OSs that have dominated the market until now. If so, all of the above is perhaps a "Good Thing" because it indicates a growing user base.

V

[dubb]

...One more thing strikes me, maybe someone else has noticed this too: I'd like to think that this past week's record activity here is a reflection of the growing trend for PC users to seek FOSS alternatives to the "other" OSs that have dominated the market until now. If so, all of the above is perhaps a "Good Thing" because it indicates a growing user base.

V

i would like to say that i agree with this paragraph and i hope that most of the potential linux adopters had an idea of just how we view it. most adopters of linux come from a similar environment (ms ways) and they should know about a thing or 2 about support and what they are dealing with. they gotta make good decisions. i think the folks that handling the situation here are great. there is such a broad group of folks that don't read the fine print. anyways you all are doing great at support no matter if you are a CM or not. f8 works perfect and f9 isn't ready for me, but hey somebody's gotta install it too.

[shess01]

Tell, me, can't we attribute all of the perceived _extra_ pain and anguish to the beta xorg scenario ? - especially one that craps up the "annointed" linux videocard/driver?

Of all the problems I have encountered/solved/read in the forums (sometimes thinking,"Thank God that wasn't me..." or " Whew! Good thing I checked in the forum first!!), my fondest (NOT) memories are of the xorg update back in FC4. Not that it was that difficult to work around, but oh that sinking feeling when X failed to load.... Ran on the nv driver until all of the finger pointing was done and X pushed out the fixed update.

All of the rest of the complaining i see now is about the normal stuff -- wireless, sound, etc... which usually gets solved fairly quickly. Having just read LOTTC's "how to" to get nvidia 3D working on F9 by rolling back to the xorg release for F8, I would say things are coming along nicely...

So, to the "Windows is better that Linux / I see why Linux sucks not" folks I say, "Good-bye, have a fun time with the rest of the bots.."
To the "_fill in the blank_ Quitters" (type not specified because I am positive they quit more than Fedora on a daily basis), i say "Good-bye, when you quit quitting come back and try Fedora 19"

But for all of the others that stick it out, have read my posts and given me insight to fix that what needs fixing, as well as to the Community Managers for bringing order to chaos -- Thank You!

[Wayne]

Send a case of beer to each of the CM's at this address:

Men's room
Third cubicle to the left
Victoria Station
London

Xorg was my biggest gripe too, but rolling back to F8 solved that little niggle and was so easy to do! Now I'm bored because there's nothing else to fix

Wayne

[bbfuller]

I appreciate the point about the ease of rolling back xorg to that included within F8 - if only KDE was possible like that. But don't you think it's rather missing the point?

If the developers had wanted people to use the previous xorg it would have been just as simple for them to roll it back in the "distribution" release and then push the new xorg when it could be integrated with the proprietary drivers.

Presumably new software is included in the newly released F9 because the developers wanted feedback on how it worked in a Fedora 9 environment.

My contention would be that rolling back defeats that object just as my contention would be that you can't really test it in a working environment before most of the important parts it interacts with are available.

I fully accept, and enjoy if that's the right word, that parts of Fedora are bleeding edge and are going to have problems. It's just where you draw the line before calling something a "new distribution" and suitable for prime time that surely is the point of this thread.

From my point of view you can't really test something if you have it on a spare machine and look at it now and then. Although it's dangerous the only way you can road test something like Fedora is to have it as your main desktop machine, find the problems and live with them until they are fixed.

At present I don't feel able to do that for the first time since F3, F4, F5, F7 and F8 so I shall continue to use F8 which in my opinion defeats the object of releasing F9 as a finished Fedora.

Always happy to be out of step with a majority though.

[JN4OldSchool]

I disagree Vince. Bugs are one thing, we expect that, heck, most of us look forward to it. But what we see here is unprecedented in Fedora history, probably any distro's history. These problems are not bugs, they are caused by incomplete beta components. The developers knew full well the situation when they released. Why should I upgrade to Fedora 9 when I have to revert to half the components from F8? The developers should have reverted this stuff back themselves, had less fanfare over the release, it would have been a mediocre release that just worked, then slipped this stuff in as updates when it was ready. Or they could have just slipped the release a couple months early on. All that stuff you said about cutting edge? It's bull in this case. You know me Vince, you know I agree with what you said under normal circumstances. I agree people dont read the fine print and jump into Fedora not understanding that they are going to deal with cutting edge and bugs and quick fixes. But Fedora has the responsibility to release a working distro, free or not. Can we sue them? No, but this will be a black mark on their record, this will be remembered. And if you read the release notes and other propaganda surrounding this release you will realize they just shot themselves in the foot. If I were not a long term and extremely active Fedora user I would find this obscenely funny. As it is I have a great F9 install, using many F8 parts that I am playing around with, but for the first time since I started with FC4 I would not even consider upgrading my other computers at this point.

The plus side? It seems F9 is very stable and bug free for a new release. It will prove to be one of the most solid releases yet in the long run, after these beta problems are worked out.

edit: Oh, almost forgot:

One more thing strikes me, maybe someone else has noticed this too: I'd like to think that this past week's record activity here is a reflection of the growing trend for PC users to seek FOSS alternatives to the "other" OSs that have dominated the market until now. If so, all of the above is perhaps a "Good Thing" because it indicates a growing user base.

The last time we had these numbers was for the FC6 release and the kernel i586/i686 problem. What does that tell you?

[Hlingler]

Well, I certainly have to agree that - right or wrong, good or bad, for whatever the reason - there's a lot of unhappy campers out there who expected something more than what they got. And yes, the Fedora Project should release a polished, stable, working OS - free or not, isn't that the purpose of the project? As the saying goes though: it's a little late to close the barn doors after the horses have already run away.

As to the point of this thread, and what I think Dan was aiming at: about the only thing we can do is encourage constructive criticism and propose helpful solutions to problems.

V

[Wayne]

Not only have the horses bolted, but looking around, I see a few users eating 馬刺し (horsemeat sashimi)



Wayne

[JN4OldSchool]

And yes, the Fedora Project should release a polished, stable, working OS - free or not, isn't that the purpose of the project?

I think that is the whole point of what we are saying. Polished? No. Stable? Not necessarily. Working? That is always nice!

[Wayne]

I'm no worse off than I was with F8, because even there the drivers for my card didn't work and I had to use an F7 driver, so going back to the F8 xorg made no difference. On the other hand, I really like some of the new stuff in Gnome 2.22 so I come out just ahead

Wayne