[CLOSED] What are your top requirements

[doktor5000]

That's one point. Another is, it involves more people (webteam). Another is that it uses additional space in the forum while my way of alerting the users does not. People with tablets and netbooks hate each additional line, especially in the vertical direction.

And the wiki pages are narrow for people with netbooks who can't easily scroll horizontally

I beg to differ, it's a waste of real screen estate. Nowaydays most monitor, either standalone or coming
with a laptop, are of 16:9/16:9 ratio, which would be the majority of users, and netbook users only a small
fraction compared to that. On such widescreen monitors 40% of useable screen width is wasted, and i don't like that.

To be honest, i don't know why we can't get dynamical width, which maxes out according to the available screen
resolution, and instead using a fixed width, which is evil, when i remember my HTML/CSS lessons.

[marja]

And the wiki pages are narrow for people with netbooks who can't easily scroll horizontally

To be honest, i don't know why we can't get dynamical width, which maxes out according to the available screen
resolution

obgr_seneca is going to play with the width in the test wiki, so it might change
Dynamical width would make both using the wiki while looking at a bug report, as editing a wiki page while comparing with the original Mdv page, a lot easier. Sometimes I use two laptops to do that, but then you can't copy + paste

[obgr_seneca]

I beg to differ, it's a waste of real screen estate. Nowaydays most monitor, either standalone or coming
with a laptop, are of 16:9/16:9 ratio, which would be the majority of users, and netbook users only a small
fraction compared to that. On such widescreen monitors 40% of useable screen width is wasted, and i don't like that.

To be honest, i don't know why we can't get dynamical width, which maxes out according to the available screen
resolution, and instead using a fixed width, which is evil, when i remember my HTML/CSS lessons.

Well,

If you read the older mails on doc-discuss you might notice, there was a discussion about that, in which I clearly stated one fact:
If anyone comes up with some way to use a dynamic width, that does not disrupt the design, go ahead, I will be happy to implement it!

In a wizard's lair, strolling sideways from a given path, very dangerous it is !

And while we are exchanging such sentences:
Do not meddle in the affairs of wizzards, 'cause they are subtle and quick to anger!

Oliver

[ghmitch]

I used to find that my top requirements would fluctuate a lot. When everything was running fine, cutting edge software was my number one priority. But when I installed that cutting edge software update and everything fell apart, suddenly system stability became the top priority. Now, after a few new gray hairs and many harrowing experiences, my top priority is ALWAYS system stability, something we never seemed able to achieve with Mandriva, at least not since Mandrake 7.2. That is why I have been utterly blown away by Mageia 1 and its awesome level of stability. I hope it never gets sacrificed for flash and cheap thrills. - George

[dyfi]

I agree - stability is No.1 for me as well!

Dyfi.

[claire]

I would have voted for a good thorough control centre if it was there as that is one thing which has always drawn me to mdv/mga

[wobo]

I would have voted for a good thorough control centre if it was there as that is one thing which has always drawn me to mdv/mga

I intentionally did not list single packages or applications. Of course I am aware of such things like "I like the MCC more than YaST" or "I like a deb based distro more than a rpm based one."
But here I wanted to see the general picture, features rather than applications.

[claire]

You could maybe advertise the poll on mageia-discuss wobo, it might bring a few more opinions

[wobo]

You could maybe advertise the poll on mageia-discuss wobo, it might bring a few more opinions

I did not think of that, may be the old prejudice: users who stick to mailing lists will not go to the forum just for a poll. Thx.

[DarkFoss]

Great list I would have voted all of the above if allowed :p
Went with Easy install,Good hardware recognition, seeing how it ties in with installation and multimedia out of the box.
Not necessarily for me but for people trying out Mageia for the first time.

[misc]

Reading the discussion about LTS make me think people do simplify too much.
As a advanced user and a server administrator, I do need recent software too ( because there is new features too in the server world, like newer version of puppet, new stuff in openldap, postgresql etc, or just newer hardware support ), and I also think that not everybody , newer users or not, want the latest version ( lots of people still run windows xp ).

What people want is something that work. If something doesn't fullfill their needs, they will say they want newer version, for real needs ( ie, stuff that do not work ), or perceived needs( ie, stuff they didn't know they needed until they heard of it somewhere ). But once everything work, then, that's the contrary, nothing should be changed.
So classifying people by their usage of distribution or skills is not gonna depict reality, at least not in a way that would permit to draw any conclusions ( except the conclusion that you cannot have one ).

[wobo]

So classifying people by their usage of distribution or skills is not gonna depict reality,

That's correct, this part of the thread here was just a side discussion, not planned to be part of the summary.

BTW: There are people who see too much in this poll, they do not understand that the poll and its summary is not more than an impression of the way users of this forum are thnking about the software system they want to use. No technical analysis, no side thoughts about how this looks from a technical point of view. I thought that was clear for everybody but I experienced that it was not clear for all, sorry for not elaborating on this in the initial posting.

[claire]

I would never have suggested using the ML if I'd known it would cause so much trouble

Sorry.

[wobo]

I would never have suggested using the ML if I'd known it would cause so much trouble

No problem, I should have known myself that the infos about the poll which were sufficient for the forum would not be sufficient for the mailing list.
But it's not really trouble. Different points of view = different opinions, nothing more.

[wobo]

But OTOH:

After publishing the report with the results it may only cause discussions about the poll itself rather than about the results. If you want to know more about this read the mailing list discussion here: https://www.mageia.org/pipermail/mageia ... 06344.html - this is exclusively about the poll and why they think it is useless/wrong/wrong target, etc.

After I've sent a message about the forum poll to the mailing list I think it's only fair to advertise the related mailing list discussion in the forum so users of the forum can read what mailing list participants think about it and the users who participated in the poll.

[jkerr82508]

Since mageia-discuss posts are archived one day at a time, some users may find it easier to use gmane to follow the entire thread.

http://news.gmane.org/gmane.linux.mageia.user

Jim

[wobo]

Thx Jim, I forgot this option because I never used gmane.

[smoreau]

Just to mention my opinion on this poll.
I think it is useful and need to be diffuse. Evidently all points can not be
reached immediately. I am not an expert at all, but i used Mandrake, Mandriva
and Mageia for at least the last 8 years. More importantly, i tried to
convince friends to have a look at linux systems, and for some of them i
succeeded and bought with them machines which may have the more chances to run
linux successfully.
The most difficult things, they have to admit is that the wifi, the sound, the
webcam of the laptop they bought wont work. They also want to enjoy most of
internet abilities, videos, and VOIP.
However they easily admit some advantages in term absence of virus risks, and
accept to move towards new softwares.

That's why I think we must focus on hardware recognition and the ability to
use some nonfree codecs. An easy installer is not in that case particularly
important, and the state reached by mageia actually is good.

my votes :
multimedia...
networking...
good hardware...

smoreau

[wobo]

As I announced to run the poll until January 31st I took the results as of 24:00 Paris time for the report. Unfortunately I did not count the number of days correctly (the poll function only takes numbers of days for duration of a poll), so it stays open until today 18:00 - which is no problem because the forum is closed anyway due to server maintenance.

I will post the report after the server maintenance ended.

Thx to all who voted, I appreciate your participation.