ubuntu-tweak in new

[Aron Xu]

于 2010年08月06日 02:40, Stephan Hermann 写道:
> Moins,
> 
> 
> On Thu, 2010-08-05 at 11:37 -0400, Andrew SB wrote:
>> On Thu, Aug 5, 2010 at 11:02 AM, Stephan Hermann <sh at sourcecode.de> wrote:
>>> We had that in the past, and this will happen with unreflected usage of
>>> tools like this. (Please read the threads about Automatix and Friends in
>>> the past...google have references)
>>
>> For reference, here's Matthew Garrett's technical review of Automatix:
>>
>> http://mjg59.livejournal.com/77440.html
>>
>> Re-reading that now, I note that the issue of adding untrusted third
>> party sources doesn't seem to be the argument against Automatix.
> 
> Matthew wrote in his last paragraph:
> 
> "In its current form Automatix is unsupportable, and a mechanism for
> flagging bugs from machines with Automatix installed may provide a
> valuable aid for determining whether issues are due to supported
> distribution packages or third party software installers."
> 
> This may not be read as "argument against automatix", but the past told
> us, what will happen to the Ubuntu Bug tracker when third party
> repositories (and even PPAs from LP are third party) are enabled and
> non-distro packages are installed.
> 

Yes, installing a third party software source will put users in a more
dangerous situation than they are just using Ubuntu archive. But why
Launchpad PPA service exists? Why does many users actually using
software from PPA rather than requesting backports or something
"recommended" in various mailing list or wiki pages?

When the users are get warned properly, it is acceptable to let users to
have more friendly way to add a PPA which satisfy her/his requirement is
improving the user experience so they don't blaming the backports are
too slow or they cannot find what they want.

> We had all this discussions in the past, and we came to the conclusion
> that we want to "support backports" but in an "official" means Ubuntu
> blessed way.
> 
> That's why we created ubuntu backports repository...
> 
> But there are also other things I don't like. An easy way to "tweak"
> gconf settings could also be dangerous for Ubuntu users.
> 
> But that's eventually only me.
> 

We have read that someone were talking about something like "backports
is too difficult in Ubuntu", before we solve the problems in our
backporting process, perhaps it is useless to emphasize *backporting* to
a non-technical end-user. For a user, it is easy to choose a PPA to
solve their problem on their own risks than requesting for a backport
and wait for a quite long time to wait for it's available. And, they are
warned, they are knowing what's other users' choice, they know what they
are doing and possible results.

I've already talked with the author about warnings, he will add more
warnings in next release, and will remove some descriptions like
mentioned before that some people feel them could be misleading.

> One thing I would like to raise: Someone who wants to "tweak" his/her
> setup, is not the "normal" Ubuntu user. Mostly they are "power users",
> and I do think that really knowledged "power users" can tweak their
> systems without such a tool.
> 
> Making it an easy task to "tweak" and "break" peoples Ubuntu
> installation shouldn't be a goal for us in general.
> 

Not only so-called power users can change there preference on how to
user their desktop, for example whether displaying a Computer link on
desktop is just something like users who want to have their own
wallpaper. If a non-technical user won't change their choice of whether
displaying a link like "Computer" on desktop, they won't change
wallpaper either. That's obviously not, so I don't think only "power
users" can change Ubuntu defaults.

Every desktop user has their own desktop, with their own preferences and
settings. We provide a good default choice, but we shouldn't assume it
fits everyone's need and shouldn't be changed by a non-technical user.

If there are any unsuitable gconf settings that shouldn't be displayed
because they are still testing features or not stable enough, we can ask
the author to remove it, that is the way we help a potential great
software's development.

> Users of mostly all operating systems are doing things, when someone
> tells them to do so, but those people don't know anything about the
> dangers. If something breaks, Ubuntu will be flooded with bug reports
> and complaints, and this is really something we should avoid.
> 

So ubuntu-tweak gives a lot of warnings, and it will add more warnings
in next release when users are about to do something may harm the
system. It is better than we are shipping some core packages without a
throughout testing - it is known that some users cannot boot after
upgrading some key programs through update-manager.

> A better solution will be to push more backports. And backporting is not
> that difficult, it just takes time and caution, to not break working
> systems.
> 

Yes, this is a good idea, but I am afraid many users won't like to
enable -backports -> install a software -> disable -backports, but
totally enabling -backports is not recommended in deed. PPA has its
benefits, for example we can only maintain a single package in one PPA,
so users can add it and don't need to care about the enabling/disabling
software sources.

> Regards,
> 
> \sh
> 

-- 
Regards,
Aron Xu

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 900 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-motu/attachments/20100806/806e1a44/attachment.pgp