by asymmetros on Mon Jan 02, 2012 5:20 pm
What things bothered/bothering me with UP's story and this thread?
First thing, disappointment. I am one of the first LMDE users and when update packs announced i saw them as something similar with Debian' s cut. My belief was that UP's had the potential to attract more and more users, targeting to people seeking for the best combination between relatively frequent upgrades and stability. I am not so optimistic any more: LMDE with UPs is more like the main editon, a distro with fixed releases (respins?), and many users, attracted by UP's, had left, disappointed too. The users seeking for fixed releases, will stick with main edition.
Second, yes, they are whiners, but it is not black or white. If someone disagrees with something or makes a “negative” comment, he must tell it -it's a feedback to the developers. Feedback does not mean “man, you are a god”. Unfortunately, some users around here, does not understand this and, acting as fanboys, keep calling every worried guy “whiner”. I am really annoyed with that kind of behavior.
Third, i am not very happy with Clem's reaction either. Agreed, he does a tremendous job and i do share the opinion that he 's trying to achieve so many things at once. The sad thing is that he behaves as like everything is perfect, even when he fails to deliver something. For example, he was kind enough to answer to this thread and to clarify a few things, but he did not say a word for the communication problem mentioned here from so many users (unknown upgrading scheme, wrong information regarding UP's frequency). But more important, since then, he did not mention anything in the blog explaining the situation with UP's or his general thoughts for LMDE's future (eg, KDE will not be based in LMDE finally -is he thinking to drop LMDE?).
How intuitive is for a user, regardless of his experience, to find out that he has to change his sources from latest to testing, in a freshly installed LMDE, in order to get regular upgrades? Let me offer a suggestion: i am dual-booting with archbang and after the installation, there was a simple, text file in the home folder, offering some additional advices and post-installation recommendations -they do not expect you to dig for this stuff in the forum. It will be nice if LMDE adopts ideas like that, cause as a result, the newcomer will feel more respected.
PS: Let's say that a Mint user has to use MGSE and Cinnamon instead of pure gnome shell, regardless his opinion of those. But what about a Xfce user? Why does he have to wait for gnome 3.2 to enter testing? That 's makes no sense. Except Clem has not much time -if he tells so, i ll support him. (The popular argument “gnome users are more” is rather funny, especially in a linux forum. With the same logic, why bother with Linux if windows have so many users?)
PS2: for the last two months, i keep suggesting to other people to change their repos to testing. Personally, i am not worried any more for this. As lmdeman said, i am back to the ground and i ll keep rolling regardless LMDE 's direction -and future. There is a distro for everyone, but a distro cannot please everyone.
Sid Mint Xfce -32, Openbox, KDE, Enlightenment, Liquorix Kernel
HP Compaq Presario cq71, Intel Core 2 Duo T4400 @ 2.2 GHz, 3 GB DDR2 RAM, Nvidia Geforce G 103M
Problems? Who knows?
Gnome 3.2 was not far behind (we all thought). That has not been the case. gnome 3.2 has been hung up in SID and there still only 95% all there.
