Best comment of the day...
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| caitlyn Nov 16, 2009 1:15 PM EDT |
I wrote a less than complimentary review because the distro in question (openSUSE 11.2) is really problematic on my systems. I got the predictable attempts to shoot the messenger and circle the wagons. The best comment of the day is from Adam Williamson of Red Hat:Quoting:...here's a free PR tip for you: when a journalist on a rather influential site experiences problems with your distribution that they do not experience with other distributions on three identical systems, it's a really bad idea to tell them that "it looks like some part of your hardware configuration was causing problems" and then imply that they're incompetent at performing Linux installations. It's just not the best way to phrase the issue to make said journalist feel the warm fuzzies about you and your project. :) I like writing positive reviews a whole lot better. I just refuse to write something that is less than honest. |
| tuxchick Nov 16, 2009 1:31 PM EDT |
With a lot of distro reviews, I wonder how much testing the reviewer actually did. |
| caitlyn Nov 16, 2009 2:05 PM EDT |
Well, as I acknowledged in the comments my editor wanted a completed review just three days after release. That, by definition, limited my ability to test. Of course, the boss is always right. |
| tuxchick Nov 16, 2009 2:41 PM EDT |
I meant other reviewers, where they don't go into very much detail. "It's great! It has themese!" Makes me wonder if they even downloaded and made a disk, let alone actually use and test it. |
| caitlyn Nov 16, 2009 2:59 PM EDT |
Sorry, tuxchick. If you read the comments section of DWW today you'll probably understand why I'm a bit sensitive at the moment. Seriously, though, I hate doing a review just days after a release. Give me a couple of weeks to really get into the distro and I can do a much better job. |
| jdixon Nov 16, 2009 3:06 PM EDT |
> Give me a couple of weeks to really get into the distro and I can do a much better job. Good, fast, or cheap. Pick any two. :) |
| cabreh Nov 16, 2009 3:21 PM EDT |
@caitlyn I noticed you mention libdvdcss being available to play back DVDs. However did you actually try to play one? I don't see it mentioned. I tried out 11.2 and added the packman repos and also Videolan. But could not get DVD movies to play no matter how hard I tried. as a note: I'm using the 64 bit version. Still in all the praising reviews I've looked not once did anyone say they could play a movie. |
| number6x Nov 16, 2009 3:36 PM EDT |
jdixon, Linux is good, fast, and cheap! Different subject, I know, but w/Linux you get all three! |
| Steven_Rosenber Nov 16, 2009 3:41 PM EDT |
Caitlyn, I concur about how difficult it is to write a "bad" review. Commenters particularly enjoy telling me what I'm doing wrong and how to do it right. In a way I actually enjoy getting the "help" (and sometimes it is actually helpful) even when I haven't asked for it. The nature of the Linux and BSD release review is such that those of us who review can't install on a dozen systems, pick the "best" fitting and do the review on that. Part of what makes the review useful is how the software responds on specific piles of hardware (and for most of my hardware, "piles" is a very kind word of description). With some of my recent issues, I have been filing bug reports, but the standard answer that the review is worthless and weak for writing about a bug without becoming intimately involved in the bug-reporting process is another trope from the average fanboy commenter. A lot of this factors into why I'm just doing quick entries on Ubuntu Karmic. I keep finding new problems; and while those problems generally have easy fixes, having to solve them every couple of days doesn't exactly endear me to the upgrading process. For me, calling something a "distro review" is a sure way to quadruple traffic on a given entry, but I'm proceeding with extreme caution in regard to calling anything a "distro review" just because I don't need the headache. |
| tuxchick Nov 16, 2009 4:05 PM EDT |
I'm learning more towards "You must prove yourself worthy to comment" all the time, Caitlyn. LXer is always good, brand x is still decent, and then it's all downhill. |
| vainrveenr Nov 16, 2009 4:56 PM EDT |
Quoting:For me, calling something a "distro review" is a sure way to quadruple traffic on a given entry, but I'm proceeding with extreme caution in regard to calling anything a "distro review" just because I don't need the headache.One can also learn much about "distro reviews" (alternatively called "best" and "worst" distros) by comparing excellent reviews to poor reviews; even from LXer commentators. E.g. (a small selection) - 'A Death Threat From A Puppy Linux Supporter', http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/93804/index.html - '10-second distro review: Puppy Linux 4.1.2', http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/116105/index.html - '2009's 10 Worst Linux Distributions', http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/122929/index.html - 'The 10 Best Linux Distributions of 2009', http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/126556/index.html |
| Steven_Rosenber Nov 16, 2009 7:43 PM EDT |
Hey, thanks for including one of mine in there: '10-second distro review: Puppy Linux 4.1.2' ... (I think ...) My 10-second Puppy review was framed by many dozens of hours spent previously running various versions of Puppy from 2.13 to 3.00, then a longish layoff during which my "requirements" for an operating system changed ... and Puppy just couldn't do it out of the box. However, since that time I've been interested in the Google Chrome-ish idea of keeping all of my files on the network, and for that particular task Puppy is once again at the top of my list of distros to run from a USB key. (I still want/need Flash and Java to work, though.) |
| hkwint Nov 16, 2009 7:47 PM EDT |
That's why I was working on a task-based distro-review, but of course I didn't persevere (also after the two distro's I would have liked to compare didn't even boot). |
| caitlyn Nov 16, 2009 8:50 PM EDT |
FWIW, I have received e-mails from Will Stephenson of the KDE team and Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier of the openSUSE team. Both men are class acts and I will work with them to file useful bug reports and get the issues solved for the openSUSE community. Some of the fanboys may be obnoxious at best but the people who are really behind the distro are first class. |
| kenholmz Nov 16, 2009 11:53 PM EDT |
@caitlyn
I regret that you had difficulties on your systems. Still, I expect the developers are the ones who most want to know. I understand about being sensitive. Still, you will be critized everytime you write something. Fanboys come from every race, color, creed, etc. and spare noone from their tripe. Your review is an actual, bonifide, honest review rather than a marketing ploy. The same distro will likely behave differently at some point on different equipment (again, something the developers likely want to know). Abiword is working well on my desktop. If I had a laptop I would certainly want it to work there also. Interestingly, medit and bluefish do not show up in the repositories from within OpenSUSE, but both show up in some form at:
http://software.opensuse.org/search
ready for One-Clicking. I haven't tried them yet so I can't speak to the success of getting them from there. @cabreh libdvdcss is only one part of the issue. I write this hoping it may be of some value to you and at great peril to myself :) I watch movies on OpenSUSE 11.2. Whether 32 or 64 bit, don't install any video player included with the distribution. They are broken by design apparently to avoid possible legal intanglement. After installing the distribution pay a visit to: http://packman.links2linux.org I have installed Xine, Mplayer and VLC using the one-click and all work. I don't know why I have to have all three; part of my OCD I suppose :) |
| kenholmz Nov 17, 2009 12:24 AM EDT |
@caitlyn
It is probably obvious that the above link should be:
software.opensuse.org/search
I just have to see it written correctly before I can go to sleep.
Best to you. And now I see the edit feature attached to my posting. Mom told me I was like a goose, waking to a new world every morning :) Please forgive me, faking normal is just too taxing this evening. |
| cabreh Nov 17, 2009 4:47 AM EDT |
@kenholmes As I noted in my post I had added the packman repo as per instructions on the web. I always use xine for my DVDs and even though I installed that it complained about numerous missing libraries and codecs. So, I guess I could try over again. Maybe the missing packages are now available. |
| cabreh Nov 17, 2009 4:49 AM EDT |
@kenholmz Oops. Sorry for the misspell of you login. |
| kenholmz Nov 17, 2009 11:26 AM EDT |
@cabreh don't sweat the spelling. I once was kenholmes before AOL bought Netscape and told me I had to change my name because someone else had higher priority. So I stepped into a phone booth (I think there were still a few around) and ... Later their system was sending me mail asking me what to do about the names. I ignored them. They had aleady ripped the fabric of space/time. Yes, be careful to get any pieces that are not automatically included from packman. I like xine so I get most all of the libxine parts and also xine-ui. Getting Mplayer and VLC are similar. With this base I expect Totem and others will work well. Best to you. @ |
| Steven_Rosenber Nov 18, 2009 4:45 PM EDT |
Caitlyn, I just hopped over to Distrowatch and re-read the review. I'm curious about how big/active the Opensuse community is, and how usable Opensuse is overall ... |
| caitlyn Nov 18, 2009 5:39 PM EDT |
Stevem, I think KDE under openSUSE is pretty unusable at this point, at least on my system. At least a couple of comments experienced the same. I am working with Will Stephenson of their KDE team and answering his questions. He is going to try and sort things out. If you can live with GNOME or Xfce and keep KDE apps to a minimum then openSUSE is very usable and certainly performs well. I get the idea their community is quite large. A lot of my issues are hardware specific. For example, the installer chose the wrong driver for my wireless card on the netbook causing it to lock up. Blacklisting the offending driver got me around it. More generally, for a distro touting itself as netbook ready it really isn't. The layout of their screen and the size of the dialog boxes doesn't lend itself to small displays at all. Somebody really needed to test more on the target hardware. Another consideration is the relatively small repos. I enabled a number of the larger community repos in YaST and still found the repos lacking. The critics of my review point to an openSUSE website search tool for finding additional packages. That leads to a myriad of small community and developer repos, many of which overlap one another. Going that route opens you up to the real possibility of package conflicts and dependency hell. As I said in the review there is a lot to like about openSUSE, particularly their really comprehensive suite of admin tools. There's also a lot not to like. |
| Steven_Rosenber Nov 18, 2009 7:45 PM EDT |
In my current situation, I'm using GNOME but relying very heavily on digiKam for photo editing, which means I'm elbow-deep in KDE at the same time. I'm too comfortable with GNOME (everything from Synaptic to GEdit, NetworkManager and Nautilus, even the new Webkit-powered Epiphany browser) to make the switch to KDE proper. |
| cabreh Nov 20, 2009 6:11 PM EDT |
@kenholmz Well, I did get OpenSUSE working with multimedia and such. However a real annoyance for me was that I couldn't get JetPhoto server to work. I tried first using lighttpd with php5-cgi and also FastCGI. Though I could pull up a php test file (typical php info) it just wouldn't work with the jpserver php files. I even tried switching to Apache2 and still the same blank screen. Under Ubuntu it works no problem. I've seen a lot of people complain about how hard they found it to get all the codecs and such going in Ubuntu, but I find it simpler than OpenSUSE and miles above Fedora. Guess I'm just not a "free" enough user. I think I'll just stick with Ubuntu for now. Especially since I'm having no issues with it. Thanks for the pointers on the multimedia. |
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