On Wed, 2009-05-06 at 12:42 -0500, Patrick Goetz wrote: > After an ongoing now 2-week long discussion with Canonical support > regarding some strange behavior involving the use of the proprietary > Broadcom STA driver documented here: > > http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1134631 > > it occurred to me that I have no idea what is actually going on when I > click on various menu options and GUI applets enabling this or turning > off that. This makes it nearly impossible to debug problems like the > one described above. > > Although such system administration applets are obviously needed to make > the system usable by ordinary users, it seems clear that by providing > only such an interface, Canonical is effectively taking experienced > users/administrators like myself out of the debugging loop by creating a > huge hurdle between the administrator and the actual kernel > modules/configuration files/etc. that are being > loaded/manipulated/changed; i.e. I don't have time to forensically > determine what is actually going on when I click on those buttons. > Perl/Python/shell scripts are self-documenting; GUI applets are not. > > Solution: Provide a text-based narrative documenting each systems' > administration applet which describes exactly what is being done and in > what order when the applet is used. I claim that the very requirement > for such a narrative will vastly improve the functionality of SA > applets, since it will require developers to "think through" the task > being addressed. The upfront cost of adding such a feature will be tiny > compared to the time saved in debugging/maintaining/upgrading it > subsequently, if only because more people will know what is going on and > can contribute to improving/fixing it. In the particular example > described above, if there were a file(s) which explained what is > happening when proprietary drivers are enabled/disabled some user who > can't stand this kind of entropy would have tracked down this bug a long > time ago and a fix would already be scheduled rather than having it > languishing around forever as an annoyance to the experienced and a deal > killer for those who are trying Ubuntu for the first time. >
I must say I concur. It would be great to have this info. It can be fairly short and simple, just a paragraph or two but would be a great help. George -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
