[CoLoCo] A Serious Issue Not Taken Seriously.

[Neal McBurnett]

On Sun, Sep 28, 2008 at 10:05:35AM -0600, Scott Scriven wrote:
> * Michael TheZorch Haney <thezorch at gmail.com> wrote:
> > There is a problem with Ubuntu 8.04 that is locking users into 
> > a screen resolution of 640x480 because the install scripts are 
> > unable to identify what kind of monitor they are using, so the 
> > install falls back on a default setting.
> > 
> > In Ubuntu 7.10 fixing this would have been easy.  ...
> 
> Yeah, Xorg is changing, and it's breaking things along the way.  
> It's unfortunate, but difficult to avoid.  Support for a lot of 
> older hardware and settings have been breaking as the underlying 
> structure is changed to work better for new hardware and new user 
> requirements.  Rough edges which were never an issue before keep 
> getting exposed, and it takes a while for people to notice and 
> fix them.
> 
> Specifically, Xorg has been focusing on auto-detection, and 
> removal of manual config.  But sometimes the baby goes out with 
> the bathwater.  Developers make changes without knowing the full 
> consequences of what they're doing, and it's not feasible to test 
> every configuration.  So, it's the community's job to pick up the 
> pieces and either fix it or provide enough details for someone 
> else to fix it.
> 
> I don't have any real data here, but I suspect that for each case 
> like yours, there are at least ten cases where someone no longer 
> needs to edit the config files.  I know at least I need fewer and 
> fewer customizations every year.  X now "just works" on my 
> notebook, where before I had to install a special package, edit 
> two config files, install a custom init script, and tweak 
> suspend/resume behavior.
> 
> > Here in is where the problems begin.  Ubuntu is being touted as 
> > a User Friendly version of Linux ...
> 
> The definition of "user friendly" changes frequently, if it can 
> be defined at all.  It's a vague set of shared assumptions within 
> a population, and when the assumptions or the population changes, 
> life gets rough for a while.
> 
> In the past, a user-friendly X11 meant having a detailed, 
> self-documenting config file where users could just tweak a few 
> values to get things working.  And then later it meant having an 
> easy configurator to manually choose the settings you know are 
> right -- driver, refresh rate, resolutions, etc.  But users don't 
> know that stuff any more.  Nowadays user-friendly means no 
> configuration at all.  I just hope the robustness improves soon, 
> because zero-config is too magical and too hard to fix when 
> things go wrong.  The old ways have better failure modes.
> 
> As much as some recent usability changes bother me, it all makes 
> sense when I talk to "normal" users.  I've met too many people 
> who just have no idea at all how a computer works, and don't 
> care.  But then, why should they have to care?  Their computer is 
> a means, not an end.  If they can get their work done, it doesn't 
> really matter whether their tools are configured optimally.
> 
> It still makes me cringe, though, to see people running LCDs at 
> non-native resolutions instead of bumping up their font sizes...  
> or any number of other computing sins I often see "in the wild".
> 
> > the biggest response is for them to do a reconfiguration of 
> > X.org from the terminal.
> 
> Terminals may be a turn-off, but command lines and config files 
> are less volatile and easier to communicate than a sequence of 
> "click this, click that" instructions.  I find it helps to 
> introduce the command line as a "dialog mode" or a way to talk to 
> the computer, rather than a way to program it.  The command line 
> is not inherently unfriendly, though it may be different than 
> users expect if they're migrating from another OS.

Thank you, Scott, for giving me something on-topic and helpful to read
on this thread!  (And thanks to David and Collins for pointing out how
far it had drifted - I think there is a silent majority there :)

Hopefully if more people both post bug reports with their specifics
(monitor types, cards, drivers, versions, etc) and have compassion for
other volunteers trying to make things easier for all of us, we'll get
it all ironed out.

Neal McBurnett                 http://mcburnett.org/neal/