Re: Usability for touch typers: Keeping fingers on F and J
On Fri, Nov 21, 2014 at 08:24:07AM +0100, Thomas Güttler wrote: > [...] > I don't know the percentage of ubuntu users who have modified the CapsLock > mapping. What's your guess? No idea. Probably half of the Emacs users. -- Kind regards, Loong Jin signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: Usability for touch typers: Keeping fingers on F and J
On Thu, Nov 20, 2014 at 02:34:11PM +0100, Thomas Güttler wrote: > Am 19.11.2014 um 10:07 schrieb Chow Loong Jin: > > > > I'm happily touch-typing on a QWERTY keyboard (Thinkpad X230 user here) at > > 120WPM. I don't really have much of a problem hitting backspace or > > return/enter. > > I'm also an Emacs user, and the only thing that really bothered me was the > > location of the Ctrl key, which my CapsLock key has become. For backspace > > and > > return, I usually flick my wrist clockwise and back. Pinky goes on the Enter > > key, and fourth finger goes on the Backspace key. It doesn't seem to affect > > my > > wrist too much when I do that. > > > > I get RSI pains occasionally, but they stopped being much of a problem > > after I > > found this useful video[1] on stretching your muscles when they ache. I > > believe > > that in my case at least, the RSI pains are just muscle fatigue in the same > > way > > your calves burn after a strenuous run. > > > >> What could the current situation be improved? > > > > Nothing that wouldn't break the collective muscle memories of Ubuntu users > > unfortunately. Remapping the backspace and enter keys aren't really an > > option if > > you want to keep things usable for end-users. > > > > Usability is on my mind. That's why don't want to use alternative keyboard > layouts like neo or colemak. > > I want an extension, not a replacement. > > Creating a new layer with the CapsLock key could be an solution. Which would then break things for the CapsLock as Control people. > I hope I have time to create a table of my requirements before 2015. > > I will post a link here. > > Emacs was my favorite editor until I switched to pyCharm. Emacs works > good for touch typers. Copy+Paste with ctrl-k ctrl-y feels like flying. > I started to configure pyCharm but then I realised: Why modify this > single > program for ergonomic touch typing? I want ergonomic touch typing everywhere! Gtk+ has emacs keybindings if you wish set it somewhere in gsettings, but as we all know, emacs keybindings aren't really very standard, so we can't use that as default without confusing everyone. -- Kind regards, Loong Jin signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: Usability for touch typers: Keeping fingers on F and J
On Tue, Nov 18, 2014 at 04:27:51PM +0100, Thomas Güttler wrote:
> [...]
> I have seen such keyboards before, but I don't want to leave my concave
> lenovo trackpoint.
> This way the switch between keyboard is very small.
>
> I have not seen ergonomic keyboards with a trackpoint yet.
>
> But even with a ergonomic keyboards with a trackpoint there are a lot of
> small places where ergonmic work with ubuntu could be improved.
But Thinkpad keyboards *are* ergonomic. ;-) You just need to figure out how ton
keep your wrist straight and let your arm follow your hand while typing.
Trackpoints aren't ergonomic, though. Those things are terrible for the tendons
on the back of your hand because of how much pressure you need to put into them.
I still use mine heavily though, with an aggressive sensitivity setting.
/etc/udev/rules.d/66-trackpoint-config.rules:
ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="serio", WAIT_FOR="protocol",
ATTR{protocol}=="TPPS/2", WAIT_FOR="sensitivity", ATTR{sensitivity}="255"
ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="hid", DRIVER=="lenovo_tpkbd", ATTR{sensitivity}="255"
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-trackpoint-acceleration.conf:
Section "InputClass"
Identifier "trackpoint"
MatchProduct "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint"
Option "AccelerationProfile" "2"
Option "AccelerationNumerator" "25"
Option "AccelerationDenominator" "10"
EndSection
Section "InputClass"
Identifier "trackpoint-usb"
MatchProduct "Lite-On Technology Corp. ThinkPad USB Keyboard with
TrackPoint"
Option "AccelerationProfile" "2"
Option "AccelerationNumerator" "25"
Option "AccelerationDenominator" "10"
EndSection
--
Kind regards,
Loong Jin
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Re: Usability for touch typers: Keeping fingers on F and J
On Tue, Nov 18, 2014 at 09:23:36AM +0100, Thomas Güttler wrote: > > I think the usability of the keyboard/mouse input could be improved a lot. > > touch typing the letters A-Z blind is quite easy to learn. > > But still you need to do yoga with you fingers for keys like Backspace or Del. > Event Return is finger gym if you want to keep your pointing finger on F and > J. > > There exists completely different keyboard layouts like neo or colemark. > > But the switch is hard, too hard. > > Are there any touch typers out there? Don't you feel the pain when pressing > "Backspace"? > That's not ergonomic - and at least I - press this key very often. I'm happily touch-typing on a QWERTY keyboard (Thinkpad X230 user here) at 120WPM. I don't really have much of a problem hitting backspace or return/enter. I'm also an Emacs user, and the only thing that really bothered me was the location of the Ctrl key, which my CapsLock key has become. For backspace and return, I usually flick my wrist clockwise and back. Pinky goes on the Enter key, and fourth finger goes on the Backspace key. It doesn't seem to affect my wrist too much when I do that. I get RSI pains occasionally, but they stopped being much of a problem after I found this useful video[1] on stretching your muscles when they ache. I believe that in my case at least, the RSI pains are just muscle fatigue in the same way your calves burn after a strenuous run. > What could the current situation be improved? Nothing that wouldn't break the collective muscle memories of Ubuntu users unfortunately. Remapping the backspace and enter keys aren't really an option if you want to keep things usable for end-users. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUyMNyrOHJQ -- Kind regards, Loong Jin signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: Default Browser Follow-up
On Fri, Jun 28, 2013 at 07:11:30PM +0200, ab...@email.it wrote: > I don't understand. Why Firefox should use Ubuntu One and instead Chromium > can use its own sync service? > > > > You made me remember another point in favor of Firefox: its sync service is > much more privacy-friendly. Firefox Sync encrypts data not only on Mozilla's > servers, but also on the client side. So you and only you can access your > private data. > > > > Anyway, there used to be Firefox bookmarks synchronization in Ubuntu One > (see for example > http://www.webupd8.org/2010/04/ubuntuone-adds-firefox-bookmarks.html). I > guess it wouldn't be difficult to reintegrate it. > > > > And, ironically, the Ubuntu community has more control on Firefox Sync, > where Mozilla's servers are opensource and you can run your own server > (http://docs.services.mozilla.com/howtos/run-sync.html), than on Ubuntu One, > as Canonical's servers are closed source > (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntuone-servers/+bug/375272). Putting aside points regarding "evil company controlling your data" (implied or otherwise) and just focusing on user experience alone, consider these two scenarios: Scenario A (unified sync service) 1. User sets up Ubuntu system 2. User sets up $sync_service, where $sync_service could be U1, Dropbox, owncloud, sparkleshare, or whatever else you want. 3. All apps automatically get synced across. Scenario B (every app has its own sync service): 1. User sets up Ubuntu system 2. User sets up $sync_service for syncing files 3. User chooses a $browser. User has to set up syncing for the said browser. 4. User also needs to set up syncing for Tomboy, or Gnote, or whatever note-taking app they use. 5. Ditto for email, if they use a desktop email solution. 6. And what about contacts Speaking as an Ubuntu user, I think scenario A seems a lot simpler, and we should probably strive to achieve that. U1's server-side component not being open enough is something that would really be nice to have fixed, though. -- Kind regards, Loong Jin signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: Default Browser Follow-up
On Wed, Jun 12, 2013 at 11:51:19AM +0200, Oliver Grawert wrote: > [...] > in the light of our convergence plans which surely include a lot of ARM > based devices i would push for chromium despite the fact that it feels a > lot less integrated with the UI and desktop (file open dialogs, theming > etc) than firefox does. What's up with the file open dialogs? It looks like the native Gtk2 dialog to me. -- Kind regards, Loong Jin signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: Default Browser Follow-up
On Tue, Jun 11, 2013 at 03:16:01PM -0700, Jason Warner wrote: > [...] > What is important, and ultimately should be the deciding factor, is the > common end user experience. Which browser, in the common case, will be the > best for the general end user? Things I consider relevant to this > discussion are quality/stability/robustness, I haven't noticed much difference between the two browsers. Both of them crash very rarely on my machine, if ever. > familiarity, ease of use, and They're both pretty easy to use. I don't really have an opinion on this. > overall user experience. I've noticed that Firefox has a tendency to hang when any one tab has heavy Javascript which blocks the browser, whereas in Chromium, only the tab in question would hang. The hangs can get quite frustrating, really. So for overall user experience, -1 to Firefox. > The secondary case to consider is web developers. I firmly believe that web > developers would use both browsers on a regular basis, though do they > generally prefer one browser to another? I don't consider this case to be a > deciding factor, but rather could push one over the top if there isn't a > clear front runner. I think Chromium wins this one. I find the Developer Tools in Chromium to be much easier to use compared to the correspoding functionality in Firefox. In fact, I know of another web developer who uses Firefox as his main browser but switches back to Chromium for debugging. > [...] -- Kind regards, Loong Jin signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: Yet another long overdue bug
On 15/04/2013 11:58, Ma Xiaojun wrote: > On Mon, Apr 15, 2013 at 11:14 AM, Chow Loong Jin wrote: >> Hang on, I just noticed that crimsun's uploaded it already, and an FFe has >> been >> granted. ScottK mentioned that you'll need to find an archive-admin to ack >> it. > > What should I do? Lurk in #ubuntu-devel on irc.freenode.net and ping ~ubuntu-archive? -- Kind regards, Loong Jin signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: Yet another long overdue bug
(Resent from @ubuntu.com address; Got stuck in moderation queue.) On 15/04/2013 09:40, Chow Loong Jin wrote: > On 15/04/2013 02:54, Ma Xiaojun wrote: >> Ping? > > We're in Feature Freeze right now, so I don't believe any new packages will > enter the archive. You might want to revisit this when the next cycle begins. Hang on, I just noticed that crimsun's uploaded it already, and an FFe has been granted. ScottK mentioned that you'll need to find an archive-admin to ack it. -- Kind regards, Loong Jin signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: Yet another long overdue bug
On 15/04/2013 02:54, Ma Xiaojun wrote: > Ping? We're in Feature Freeze right now, so I don't believe any new packages will enter the archive. You might want to revisit this when the next cycle begins. -- Kind regards, Loong Jin signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: Why ubuntu-desktop depends on xdiagnose and xterm
On 03/04/2013 13:21, Ma Xiaojun wrote: > On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 11:14 AM, Jeremy Bicha wrote: >> Install alacarte and then just uncheck the apps you don't want to see >> in the menus. > > So I can expect end users do not know what a terminal is to know this > software? I don't understand. Are you saying that you expect end users who don't know what a terminal is to know a terminal? -- Kind regards, Loong Jin signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: [Desktop13.04-Topic] Integrate a Paper Cuts toolbelt into ubuntu-dev-tools
On 25/10/2012 21:00, Chris Wilson wrote: > > > Now that does sound like a good idea. Do you if there's anything in GTK that > can > extract meta data from a window simply by clicking on it, or anything along > those lines? I don't think there's anything specifically in Gtk, but there's xprop which can get the _NET_WM_PID attribute by clicking on a window, which can then further be used to derive the package from /proc/$pid/exe -- Kind regards, Loong Jin signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: auto enter
On 30/01/2012 16:33, Tobia Tesan wrote: > Il 30/01/2012 01:08, Pedro Bessa ha scritto: >> summary >> not every keyboard has Super - gotcha > > Wait, seriously? > Has *anybody* manufactured a Super-less (read: Windows-less) keyboard during > the > last 20 years? I'm pretty sure my old Logitech keyboard was Super-less in 1997. -- Kind regards, Loong Jin signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: It's time to jettison CCSM
On 27/01/2012 06:16, Jorge O. Castro wrote: > On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 4:47 PM, Chow Loong Jin wrote: >> I definitely will miss it, and I'm sure I won't be the only one. If CCSM was >> removed from Ubuntu, it'll most probably make it into a PPA. Then the >> situation >> won't change much, apart from more bad blood between Ubuntu and the said >> power >> users, and maybe a less well-maintained CCSM package. > > I think power users would appreciate a maintained tool that let them > configure unity (either myunity or ubuntu-tweak, whatever) than a tool > we know carries risk. > > If anything this is a great improvement for power users that want to > configure unity but don't want to risk using an unsupported tool. And a huge step back until MyUnity reaches feature parity with CCSM. -- Kind regards, Loong Jin signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: It's time to jettison CCSM
On 27/01/2012 04:19, Chris Coulson wrote: > On 26/01/12 18:24, Micah Gersten wrote: >> >> On 01/26/2012 11:55 AM, Jorge O. Castro wrote: >>> On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 12:24 PM, Micah Gersten wrote: Because novices are using a power user tool does not mean we should remove a power user tool. I think attention just needs to be called to the problems that can be caused and what better tools exist for novice users. Places like askubuntu.com and the Ubuntu forums would be good places to evangelize this as well as omgbuntu and maybe webupd8. >>> We have a power user tool, MyUnity. If it doesn't do exactly what >>> people want then people will file bugs and then people will either >>> write the config option or not. >>> >>> Then we'll have a power user tool that will work. And we do try to >>> warn people about the dangers of CCSM, but this is one of those cases >>> where we need to say "Sorry, you can't switch to the cube" instead of >>> "well you can switch to the cube, but if you fail the saving throw >>> your desktop turns into a wallpaper with no panels, no launcher, and >>> no file manager and removing these dot directories, but hey, linux is >>> about choice!" >> >> You're missing a key point here that Compiz and CCSM are not Unity. If >> you want to make it so CCSM doesn't work with Unity, that's fine, but >> don't hijack the Compiz configuration for non-Unity users. >> >> Micah >> > > Hi, > > Personally, I'm in favour of removing this. I was surprised at the number of > people I met in Orlando who had hosed their Unity session after running CCSM. > If > developers attending UDS are doing this and finding it difficult to recover > from, then I'd hate to think what sort of experience ordinary users are having > with it, and what this is doing for our reputation. Then patch it to add a warning notice on startup, or something. > As others have pointed out, there are some useful settings that would be good > to > have in other configuration panels. The zoom settings being a perfect example > - > in fact, I can't believe we are asking visually impaired users to use CCSM to > enable functionality like this. Aside from the fact that this tool is > dangerous, > the UI is terrible. Really? I think it's a step up from gconf-editor, personally. It's also my primary means of configuring my Compiz installation. > Gconf-editor exists for people who really want to mess around with advanced > settings in compiz. CCSM is pretty much just a dump of everything you can > tweak > in gconf already (but with some icons and sliders), which means that it isn't > really any better from a UI perspective. However, it's more difficult to hose > your compiz configuration in gconf-editor (enabling/disabling plugins requires > you to edit a list rather than clicking a checkbox, and there is no obvious > way > to do silly things like changing the configuration backend). > > AFAICT, we don't provide UI's that expose every hidden preference for any > other > piece of software (we expect that people will use gconf-editor/dconf-editor or > whatever for tweaking advanced settings), so I don't see why compiz should be > all that different really. Because Compiz has a really hard-to-get-right plugin ordering that CCSM handles automatically. And detection for keybinding conflicts. And if that's not enough, try setting window matching rules for say, the animation plugin in gconf without the help of CCSM. > And I don't think power users will really miss something like CCSM. Power > users > will just use the same tools that they have always used to tweak advanced > settings in other applications. CCSM isn't a power user tool, but a loaded gun > packaged in to a graphical UI that gives novice users a false sense of > security. I definitely will miss it, and I'm sure I won't be the only one. If CCSM was removed from Ubuntu, it'll most probably make it into a PPA. Then the situation won't change much, apart from more bad blood between Ubuntu and the said power users, and maybe a less well-maintained CCSM package. -- Kind regards, Loong Jin signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: Default music player
On 14/12/2011 21:13, Chris Wilson wrote: > Hey, > > Has a decision been reached yet on what app will be the default music > player in 12.04? I'd heard that after UDS had wrapped up the decision > was still under discussion, and I was wondering if a consensus had > finally been reached. -- $ apt-cache depends ubuntu-desktop | grep -e banshee -e rhythmbox Recommends: rhythmbox -- I guess so. -- Kind regards, Loong Jin signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: Default Music Player in Ubuntu 12.04
On 22/11/2011 05:23, Sebastien Bacher wrote: >> Most importantly, we need to be having more constant and constructive >> dialogs with upstreams throughout the whole cycle and not just at >> application selection time (actually in this case there has been very >> poor communcation with upstream even since the discussion). > Right, that requires somebody from the distribution is feeling "in charge of > the > software" and is representing the distribution view though. I don't want to > dismiss anyone from the desktop group but nobody looking at GNOME or Unity has > been watching on the media players this cycle, the work has been mainly done > by > you and some of the other Debian pkg-mono people, I'm not sure how the group > is > feeling like an active part of Ubuntu and representing the opinions and issues > there, or how much the group is focussing on Debian and considering their > derivates as well? > > I don't mean to offence anyone there, but the question is to know if somebody > is > feeling like in charge of banshee in Ubuntu and representing Ubuntu views, or > if > the people maintaining it are cross Debian,Ubuntu groups with a focus on > Debian > (in which case we might need somebody on the Ubuntu side as we do for i.e > GNOME)? I've been in charge of Banshee in both Debian and Ubuntu for the past few cycles. My focus is on both equally, but considering most of my bugs come from Launchpad, most of my time is spent on Banshee in Ubuntu instead. I just make sure that fixes go up to Debian as well. I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "representing Ubuntu views" though. If you mean representing Ubuntu when speaking to upstream, I handle that, except for the UbuntuOne Music Store, where the UbuntuOne team talks to Banshee upstream directly. >> Using the >> promise of being on or threat of being removed from the install to >> cudgel projects into the direction you want is not very satisfactory. > That's not really what happened, if that was the case we would have come with > a > list of "you should be looking at those if you want to stay on the CD". While > it > would make sense to tell upstream what we like or dislike about their > software, > I'm not sure we should try to "use" our position to demand things to be done > or > fixed for us. I would feel uncomfortable telling any upstream "you should fix > those bugs or your software will be out of the CD", while in practice it's > true > that some issues lead us to decide what to ship or not. It would be nice for those issues to be communicated to the downstream maintainers at least in some form or another. -- Kind regards, Loong Jin signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: [Keyboard improvements] Make better use of the Menu key.
On 20/11/2011 20:48, Jo-Erlend Schinstad wrote: > Considering last nights thread about keyboard use, I thought I'd start a topic > with ideas for keyboard improvements. > > This thread is about ideas for improving the utilization of the Menu key. > That's > the one on the keyboard between Alt Gr and right ctrl, in case you had > forgotten > the entire button. :) It currently has only one function; to open a context > menu > within an app. This is very wasteful. I suggest it be used like this: > > * Pressing and releasing menu: same as now. Open apps context menu. > * Shift+menu: replaces F10 and opens the first menu on the focused app's > menubar. > * Menu+F-x: Open the menu for the Nth indicator. > * Menu+num: Open the Nth launcher entry's quicklist. > * Menu+envelope (email)-button: open the envelope (message) menu. That makes > sense, huh? > * Menu+Esc: open the power cog menu. > * Menu+print screen: open the Take Screenshot dialog. > > I'm sure there might be other useful shortcuts, like having a shortcut to > system > preferences, which after, all can be considered a menu. > > What do you think? The Thinkpad E220S (and other laptops in the same range) have no menu key. In its place is the print screen key. If we're going to add functionality to this key, we're going to have to duplicate the shortcut to other keys as well, or break the experience on this range of laptops (and other keyboards which might not have a menu key). I think it's also fairly common to have the menu key used as the Compose key or Multi_Key, so if we're going to use the Menu key for these use cases, we're going to have to forgo that use-case. -- Kind regards, Loong Jin signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: Default Music Player in Ubuntu 12.04
On 21/11/2011 14:44, Jason Warner wrote: > Hi Everyone - > > Thank you all for sending feedback[1][2][3] on the default music player for > 12.04. It is clear the right decision for 12.04 is to make Rhythmbox the > default > music player. Thank you, above all else, for keeping the conversation cordial > and making the decision about what is best for Ubuntu. > > Cheers, > Jason > > [1] > - > http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/11/banshee-tomboy-and-mono-dropped-from-ubuntu-12-04-cd/ > [2] > - > http://news.softpedia.com/news/Do-You-Want-Rhythmbox-or-Banshee-in-Ubuntu-12-04-233449.shtml > [3] > - https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-desktop/2011-November/003393.html > (this > thread) Sorry, but I'm still not very clear on the basis of this decision. Could you clarify this please? -- Kind regards, Loong Jin signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: Inter-bugtracker Comment Forwarding [was: Re: Default Music Player in Ubuntu 12.04]
On 10/11/2011 14:51, Bryce Harrington wrote: > I used to do that as well, I just found that I was often slow at doing > this, and that resulted in actually delaying when the bug got fixed. I > still do the initial bug forwarding (which I think is the trickiest > part), and I monitor the discussion so if questions aren't getting > answered, or if the user gets asked to do something beyond their > technical ability I can step in to help. Thanks, I'll try doing that and see how it turns out. > But then, with X bugs, users have to face quite technical challenges > like gathering stacktraces in gdb, collect gpu dumps, patching and > rebuilding their kernel or mesa, git bisection searches, etc. So the > hassle of having to register on other bug trackers seems minor in > comparison. If someone's going to draw the line at registering in > bugzilla, do they have patience to do all the other stuff they're going > to get asked to do? That's pretty true. In contrast Banshee bug reporters are usually only requested for some gconf dumps, their sqlite database, or --debug log (usually a matter of running one or two straightforward commands in the terminal), so there isn't that much contrast between getting all that extra material and the hassle of registering on another bug tracker. I do think that every bit helps though, and we should make it as easy as possible for our users to file bugs and follow up with them. We are heavily dependent upon them in order to track-down and solve bugs after all, whereas the user always has the option of flight to an alternative application or distro (or even back to Windows for some of the Windows converts). -- Kind regards, Loong Jin signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Inter-bugtracker Comment Forwarding [was: Re: Default Music Player in Ubuntu 12.04]
[Sorry to those who receive this twice. I accidentally sent it out from the wrong e-mail.] On 09/11/2011 02:42, Bryce Harrington wrote: > The launchpad guys say that GNOME had been on the todo list but they > didn't get it completed, and offhand didn't remember what the specific > blocker was in getting it set up. If it is important let me know and I > can escalate it for the LP maintenance team to investigate further. This is just my personal opinion, but I think it's pretty important for users to be able to remain solely on our bug reports if they wish to do so. I imagine that a non-trivial number of casual users do not want to be registering for accounts over a non-trivial number of bug trackers apart from Launchpad especially if they experience bugs in multiple projects. In fact, I would imagine such a thought going through some of their minds: "I've already signed up on your bug tracker (launchpad) to report a bug on your crappy unstable software that I don't feel like using any further, and now you're telling me to go sign up on another bug tracker (bugzilla) because the upstream developers don't want to come over and communicate directly with me?" On the other hand, it would also be unfair to force upstream developers to chase down users on bug trackers of each distribution their software gets deployed on. Over the last month, distrowatch reports 8 distributions with above 1000 hits per day, 20 distributions with above 500 hits per day, and 98 distributions with above 100 hits per day. The statistic very roughly translates to the number of distributions in active use, but I don't think not many upstreams have the manpower to be chasing down users on this many bug trackers (assuming each distribution has its own). And so, with these thoughts in mind, I've been playing the part of the mindless copy-paste drone that cross-posts comments from both bug trackers so that upstream developers get the information they want. -- Kind regards, Loong Jin signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: Default Music Player in Ubuntu 12.04
On 08/11/2011 23:45, Sebastien Bacher wrote: > [...] > I've talked about several people in different Ubuntu teams and some users > about > banshee at UDS, things which came often about the oneiric version: > - it hangs often > - it claims to handle videos but the video supports is not working well and > that > reflects on the product, we should rather turn it off by default if we can > - it's buggy > > Reading some of the comments and replies on the lists some of the issues are > due > to external factors (i.e U1, gconf, etc), that's not really a justification > for > shipping a buggy product though. The complain there is not against upstream > but > as a distribution we should make sure that things we ship are working, saying > "banshee is not working but it's not a banshee issue, it's gconf buggy" isn't > satisfactory, we should have red flags raised before release and get such > issues > tracked. Yes, I agree wholeheartedly. > Those quality issues are not specific and different Ubuntu team are making > steps > this cycle to assure we address those quality problems for the LTS, I would be > interested if anyone from the banshee maintainers have plan or interest to > work > in that direction as well and to make sure that banshee doesn't get broken by > its own bugs, u1, gconf or whatever other things it might use? I'm interested. I guess there needs to be more communication between the maintainers of each stack, be it u1, gconf, or something else. And perhaps more willingness on my part to slap on short-term downstream workaround patches while the actual issue is being fixed. I think that an approach like that could have greatly helped with the gconf bug, especially. Some bugs may be hard to track down, and may take a bit more time, like the one with u1ms, but Rodney was working on that, and has gotten it fixed in 2.2.1 (which is incidentally now waiting in the -proposed queue). > Is there any way > we could measure start speed, resources usage, stability etc and aim at higher > quality for the media player? Banshee has an opt-in anonymous feedback thing going on upstream. I'm not sure exactly what information it captures, but I'm inclined to think it can be amended to capture start speed pretty trivially. Resource usage, probably not so trivial, I think. An upstream Banshee developer would probably be in a better position to answer this. Stability.. well how would you measure something like that? Uptime? The results could be pretty biased based on whether or not the user restarts his/her computer. The Banshee apport script could use some improvements as well. I believe it currently doesn't attach enough information to apport-generated bug reports. It's on my todo list, but I have not actually gotten around to fixing it. Much of this applies not just to Banshee, but to all graphical applications we're going to be supporting in the default install. Gwibber is a fine example of poor startup time, for instance. Perhaps we need a better testing infrastructure that does all of this. Maybe a separate opt-in package that sends appropriate data back? That way we would have solid statistics rather than vague subjective accounts like "takes a lifetime to start." Another thing that would be nice is to have people (especially developers) actually report bugs they were facing, rather than discovering a quick workaround and being satisfied with that outcome. This was seen in Martin's post earlier, but I'll admit to being guilty of this as well, and I'm sure the same applies to many of us. > [...] > will the new version still use gconf or gsettings? what is the state of > gsettings in mono? gconf, unfortunately. As far as I can tell, there aren't any gsettings bindings for mono just yet. P.S. One thing I've found particularly annoying when working on Banshee bugs is the lack of a comment-crossposting-bridge thing between GNOME Bugzilla and Launchpad. As a result, I have had to relay (manually) all the requests for information from upstream, and back. I recall seeing something of that sort for Freedesktop's Bugzilla sometime back, so why isn't it implemented for GNOME's? -- Kind regards, Loong Jin signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: Default Music Player in Ubuntu 12.04
On 08/11/2011 21:45, Owas Lone wrote: > On Tue, Nov 8, 2011 at 6:51 PM, Chow Loong Jin wrote: >> On 08/11/2011 21:19, Owas Lone wrote: >>> I really like banshee UI more than Rhytmbox but the lining stops >>> there. It crashes after every 3 songs, takes a lifetime to load and >>> eats up resources. Having rhythmbox as default would be nice. >> >> http://banshee.fm/contribute/file-bugs/ >> > > https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/banshee/+bug/767030 > https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/banshee/+bug/396268 > https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/banshee/+bug/582743 > https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/banshee/+bug/591150 > https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/banshee/+bug/591150 > https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/banshee/+bug/747625 > > There, I don't need to file them again. Don't feel offended, I'm just > citing my preference for an app as a user. I'd love Banshee to become > more stable and consume less resources but unfortunately right now it > does not do that. So Rhythmbox is clearly a better choice for me. > I'm taking this off-list before it goes further off-topic. -- Kind regards, Loong Jin signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: Default Music Player in Ubuntu 12.04
On 08/11/2011 21:19, Owas Lone wrote: > I really like banshee UI more than Rhytmbox but the lining stops > there. It crashes after every 3 songs, takes a lifetime to load and > eats up resources. Having rhythmbox as default would be nice. http://banshee.fm/contribute/file-bugs/ -- Kind regards, Loong Jin signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: Default Music Player in Ubuntu 12.04
On 08/11/2011 19:00, Sebastien Bacher wrote: > One other discussion points during the session was to have to support the mono > bindings in a LTS version which will be supported for 5 years, the cost > benefit > seems high seeing the small number of applications keeping mono on the CD. So we're booting mono from main as well now? -- Kind regards, Loong Jin signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: Tomboy Notes and Ubuntu One note integration in Precise Pangolin
On 08/11/2011 17:08, Robert Nordan wrote: > Since the news came out of UDS that Tomboy Notes was probably being > dropped from the default install, I'd like to ask what this means for > the U1 integration? U1 Notes has been designed around using Tomboy Notes > a the local editor, and it seems a bit silly to offer a U1 service that > can't be used from a default install. (Short of going to the website to > edit, which negates the whole advantage of the U1 system.) I actually seem to recall there being some work done on an Ubuntu One auto-installer of some sort by default, meaning that you can't actually use Ubuntu One until you run the installer anyway. But this does bring up another question: Are Ubuntu users expected not to need to take notes, or is GNote going to be installed by default instead if Tomboy is dropped? I believe both Windows and Mac OS come with a sticky notes application/widget of sorts by default, and it would be a shame to have Ubuntu lose out on this. -- Kind regards, Loong Jin signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: Default Music Player in Ubuntu 12.04
On 08/11/2011 15:30, Martin Pitt wrote: > No, it doesn't, you'd need to reimport your library if you want to > switch (you aren't forced to, as the upgrade wouldn't remove Banshee). I think this should be an area of concern for switching back to Rhythmbox. I recall the Pidgin → Empathy, F-Spot → Shotwell and Rhythmbox → Banshee switch requiring this as well. There's also the issue of ratings and scores of songs, which are definitely non-trivial to copy over manually. -- Kind regards, Loong Jin signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: Default Music Player in Ubuntu 12.04
On 08/11/2011 14:21, Martin Pitt wrote: > [...] > The problem that was raised is that the package doesn't get well > maintained in Ubuntu (but is maintained well upstream). It did get > quite a lot of uploads in oneiric, though. I'd like to hear more about this, actually. It would be nice to know where I've been slacking off so I can at least figure out areas to improve on. > I tried banshee when we introduced it and during oneiric again, and > both times it was very unstable and rather slow, and did not get my > collection imported without crashing. Henceforth I noticed that wiping > my configuration improved the stability quite a bit, that might > explain why it's working better for others. It would be nice if you backed up your configuration before wiping it, and filed a bug with logs each time it crashed. In my previous email I mentioned that majority of the bugs were caused by a broken gconfd (which may explain why wiping your configuration helped matters), broken Mono.Zeroconf, and issues with the UbuntuOne Music Store in the absence of an internet connection, most of which should have been fixed in my 2.2.1-1ubuntu1 upload I did earlier today. > My main reasons why I like to switch back to TB are: > > * Spending ~ 30 MB of CD space for a music player seems rather >excessive (if you count in the Mono stack) > > * There is no sign of GTK3 support yet, which keeps the old GTK2 and >much more importantly webkit-gtk2 on the CD (which alone is 8 MB). You might like to see http://git.gnome.org/browse/banshee/log/?h=gtk3. With only one remaining outstanding bug in Gtk# standing in the way of that branch being merged into master, I don't see precise not having Banshee with full Gtk3 support. > * Our ARM team says that the current versions still work rather >poorly on ARM. I saw one bug about that, also mentioned in my previous post, which is being worked on, but that's about it. What other issues are there? > * We have shipped Rhythmbox in many previous releases, so while >constantly switching back and forth is certainly bad, LTS->LTS >upgraders will at least have consistency, and other upgraders won't >lose Banshee either. Doesn't sound like a plus point to me, although it does lessen the impact of switching back and forth. Does Rhythmbox have a migration path back from Banshee, though? > * With the recent layoffs, Mono's future remains a bit fuzzy. I heard >the developers founded a new company, so it's certainly not going >away soon. Xamarin's handling Mono development now, and it looks pretty active[1]. It was fuzzy, but I don't think it is any more. [1] https://github.com/mono/mono/commits/master -- Kind regards, Loong Jin signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: Default Music Player in Ubuntu 12.04
Hi All, I know this is going to sound defensive, but I would like to clear up some issues with the areas of concern in Banshee. Please raise any issues you have with the points I am making below, or anything I've missed out. On -9/01/-28163 03:29, Jason Warner wrote: > Hi All - > > During the recent Ubuntu Developer Summit we discussed moving from Banshee > back to Rhythmbox as the default music player for Ubuntu 12.04. No definitive > decision has been taken yet (major default apps tend to have many integration > points and broader discussions are needed before we can make that decision, > such as the Thunderbird decision in Oneiric) as we need to kick off the > further discussion. > > It was an interesting discussion overall and I wanted to reach out to the > broader Ubuntu community to get further feedback. So, feel free to reply with > your thoughts in this thread. > > For context, here are some of the discussion points. > > Areas of concern in Banshee were stability, start-up time, the overall > resource intensive nature of the application and how responsive an upstream > they were to Ubuntu specific needs. It was noted that Banshee is by far the > better UI, but many people experienced significant issues in stability thus > making it feel less usable. == Stability Issues == Most of the stability issues I've seen recently come from a bug in gconf[0,1] concerning SIGHUP during upgrades, which broke a number of applications including hamster-applet[2], Banshee[3,4], Tomboy, and Evolution[1]. I believe hamster crashed, Banshee hung hogging the CPU, and Tomboy and Evolution kept spewing error dialogs. This was fixed recently in oneiric-updates, but the fix took quite some time to land, unfortunately, and as a result, there were quite a number of people affected by the bug. Banshee has a workaround committed upstream[4] (and released in 2.3.1) to avoid hanging/crashing, but will not save configuration options until it is restarted as it's not very easy to reboot GConf#/libgconf when the database vanishes from DBus. Another major issue was a bug in Mono.Zeroconf[5], which I just completed a fix for yesterday. I plan to backport the patch to oneiric-proposed soon, but would like for upstream Mono.Zeroconf to look at the patch[6] first. The other issue comes from the UbuntuOne Music Store extension when the Internet connection is broken[7], which I believe Rodney is working on a fix for. There was an upload to -proposed that was supposed to fix it, but had regressions instead, so it's not quite fixed yet. There's one other tricky bug to do with canvas sizes[8], but it looks like it's being worked on, and the issue will hopefully be fixed soon. I can't think of any other stability bugs at this point in time, so maybe someone might want to point them out to me. == Startup Time == Start-up time came from a bug in the UbuntuOne Music Store[9], afaik (which is fixed in 2.2.1, which I will be uploading shortly). But on my system, where I can't reproduce that bug, let's have some benchmarks: Cold, Banshee: 22s Warm, Banshee: 3s Cold, Rhythmbox: 19s Warm, Rhythmbox: 3s Benchmarks were done with a 7827 song library. Let's compare this with another default application, Gwibber: Cold, Gwibber, with gwibber-service already running: 31s Warm Gwibber, with gwibber-service already running: 31s Cold, Gwibber, with gwibber-service not running: 40s Warm, Gwibber, with gwibber-service not running: 40s == Resource Usage == CPU usage according to top: Rhythmbox, playing: 8% Rhythmbox, idle: 0% Banshee, playing: 9-10% Banshee, idle: 0% Memory usage (ps -C $app -o rsz): Banshee: 96M Rhythmbox: 74M Let's compare this with some other applications (especially since I've been complaining about memory leaks all the time since two releases back): compiz (with Unity): 87M compiz (without Unity, from my memory): ~20-30M indicator-messages-service: 126M I'm quite interested to know why indicator-messages-service needs more memory than Banshee and Compiz, but let's put that aside for the time being.. == Upstream responsiveness == Now, this is something I really don't get. If there were patches that Canonical/Ubuntu wanted in, why haven't I heard about them? I get a lot of bug mail, so sometimes patches slip past my notice on the launchpad, but I'm almost always present and pingable on IRC, and check my e-mail regularly. My patches that I have submitted to Banshee upstream thus far have more or less all been committed in. I'm interested in hearing about any outstanding patches Canonical/Ubuntu has that Banshee upstream hasn't paid attention to. I hear that some people think that there's some resentment from upstream Banshee due to the whole Amazon referral ID fiasco, but personally speaking, I have never noticed any one of the upstream developers or major contributors express any dissatisfaction about this. Most of the negative views were from the users. I also hear that Banshee doesn't work on the arm hardware that Can
