Re: Gnome2.2 backport and XFree86 4.3 on woody [was R:e XFree86 4.3 in Woody]
On 21 Aug 2003 15:51:54 -0400
James Strandboge <jstrand1@rochester.rr.com> wrote:
>
> When that was posted on debianplanet, xfree86 was not part of of my
> backport. After it was, I let people know via the list. I am not sure
> what you are trying to accomplish here, but I have submitted another
> article to debianplanet, and when it goes through, I will ask gnome.org
> to update their link for getting gnome on debian.
>
I think maybe we have a classic case of developer/technical writer miscommunication here. I think that your backport is cool. I'm glad it exists. I have it working now and I like it.
BUT...
This is my concern. I think that there are a great many people who could benefit from this backport. And what kind of people are going to be excited about a new version of Gnome for Woody? IMHO, the answer, in general, is: People who are Linux novices (and Debian novices, of course) in a major way. Other than developers who use stable as a backup or development environment, the main user base of both Gnome and Woody are people who really aren't very comfortable with the command line. After all, a primary benefit of having a stable flavor, and the the most common reason for running Gnome itself, is to allow people who don't know how to hack at all to use some great tools on a great system. For this backport, James, most of your users are not developers, they do not understand the difference between different versions of XFree86, if they even know what it is. They certainly don't understand lib dependencies. And they are definitely not subscribed to these mailing lists.
So, it's frustrating to me, when I find that even though the backport seems to work, that the installation, when done right, is easy, and that the use of the applications themselves is easy...it's frustrating when I find that there is not a set of simple, straightforward installation instructions posted anywhere that the people most likely to use this backport are likely to go. The average woody/gnome user may end up typing gnome + woody into the search engine at debian planet (and they may, then, after reading through a lot of posts, chance upon instructions that work for them), but they are unlikely to check the debian.user or the debian-gtk-gnome mailing lists to see if there have been revisions.
Of course, you are the maintainer of the backport, not the author of the great american guide to using linux the quick and easy way. You're not obligated to do anything. But I would think that you would want people to be able to have access to your work. And even though *technically* they can at present, it's not obvious or easy how to do so if you're a novice. I am not saying that you should go on a big publicity campaign. But my responses that you seem to find frustrating keep coming because you seem to be truly puzzled by my suggestion that maybe there ought to be a single, simple, current set of instructions that are available on a web site that people are likely to find and that site maintainers find it easy to point to. Otherwise, you are needlessly allowing debian novices all over the world to follow the wrong set of instructions, or to be confused by the instructions, and to end up more frustrated with Debian than they were before. And I admit openly that my own motiv
ation to be persistent about this stems mainly from the fact that to a certain extent I am one such user. I admit that your backport works, but I really had little evidence that it did, or how to make it work, until I contacted you directly. You chose to take our exchange to a public forum (two, actually), and now you don't understand why I won't just shut up and go away, since after all, the backport is working on my own system.
As for the Fifth Toe backport issue, it's more of the same. The Fifth Toe website proclaims that their product is both stable and constantly changing. For a relatively new user of Woody (stable), who is backporting Gnome2.2 (stable in the gnome world, testing/unstable in the Debian world), and learning from the Fifth Toe website that the Fifth Toe product is declaring itself stable (specifically within the Gnome2.2 world), but constantly changing (an idea that grates against the idea of stable in the Debian world), there is bound to be a lot of confusion, and a lot of questions. When I asked you for clarification on this, you responded with two paragraphs that I'll leave at the end of this email. I'll just go ahead and admit before god and everybody that I've read them over many times and I really don't know what you're talking about.
So I'll be very clear about this, and we can just end it here, if you like. I'm a contributor to documentation which, albeit indirectly, relates to your backport, and I have an interest in people being able to get it and use it. The fact that you are the one who actually did the work is very significant, but it doesn't mean that your evaluation of how accessible it is, and how clear your widely-read instructions are, is automatically correct. There should be a web page. There should be a readme. There should be one set of installation instructions that are easy to understand without any context. If you don't think these things are necessary, you don't have to provide them, but I'll just say straight out that I will. If you want to encourage such an effort, then that's fine, I'm glad to take it on. But if you don't want the jerk who sends you all the abrasive questions to be the catalyst for actually making your creation usable on a large scale, then you have to either find so
meone else to do it, or do it yourself.
Thanks for creating the port, thanks for helping me get it working, and thanks for the other incidental tech support that has come about as a result of this thread. I hope that you've found some restitution against my first angry missive in the knowledge that you added my private email address to two public forums without my permission.
Michael
>
> No, as I said, I don't follow sid (and by extension fifth toe) from
> release to release. With the backport you now have everything you need
> to compile bleeding edge gnome2 and gtk2 applications all you want. I
> try to keep the backport as stable as possible, and not introduce a
> whole lot of new stuff. I did not backport all of fifth toe, nor do I
> track for each new change-- it moves too quickly, as does sid.
>
> The general idea for gnome-core is to use the packages found from
> released gnome (gnome.org-- now at 2.2), and updating only the packages
> with significant bugfixes. For gnome-fifth-toe and the other apps, you
> get relatively new software that works. If you want more than that,
> there is sid.
>
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