Busy week!

good news

I’m excited to test the new OpenSuSE 11 Alpha3 when will be released!

“Zypper/YaST in Factory now display download-rate” YAY!!! what a success! I always wanted that. Will yast show this in frontend?
Is there somewhere where I should file Wishes? I have quite a few…
opensuse-updater:
1)rather than complain about no update repo, just let it offer to add update repo For you. (if user didn’t do it during install (which i never do, its a waste)).
zypper:
1)maybe do deltafiles on all refreshing of repos? (and maybe all packages too, since downloading 28MB every time someone changes the kde4 wallpaper package is annoying!
yast:
1)make backup a little better (maybe add log viewing to the frontend…)
2)ntp should be able to sync automaticly every few hours, rather than just at boot… would be a lot better…
3)yast software management should offer to cleanup or rebuild zypp database if its getting to be really slow.
4)allow yast to remotely connect to a remote yast (maybe you can make a “yastd”) service
5)maybe add a module to configure hardisks via hdparm or something???
6)a “system status” module, for things like making sure no hardware errors are occuring and checking hard disk space (or smart errors) and so on..
7)add a “ndiswrapper” config module to yast network config
general:
1)offer some kind of system to allow user (or at least let them know about) beagle and its not so good habits maybe even have it disabled if the system detects a old computer, but offer to do it or something..
…
ok I will stop for now

SUGGESTION(s) For OpenSUSE 11:

1. update the installer to use layers instead of shell glob or similar order for package install.

2. clearly identify the “installer package” so that folks-like-me might try our hand at #1 or
any other changes we think are interesting or useful

EXPLANATION:

What do I mean by “use layers”? Think about an onion.

[NOTE -- I don't intend this to be a complete and exhaustive specification. I want to
get this idea out there for consideration. We can write a detailed spec once we decide
that this is a "good idea".]

Install Phase-1
At the core is the hardware. Hardware
demands firmware and drivers. Drivers require a kernel. Kernel requires loadable modules.
Somewhere in all of this is “the network”.
…
At some point you have enough so that one can boot to a running kernel that will use all of
the hardware.
…

Reboot away from install media and use the target system HDD and other resources.

Install Phase-2
A minimum-bootable system requires administrative and utility components to enable configuration.
Some configuration details depend on the installed hardware. Some depend on user preference.

On reboot, launch an end-user interview application that (1) asks about how this
system will get used, and (2) uses the interview and installed hardware to create
a set of install work orders for Phase-2. Again, avoid glob or similar installs.
Instead install all of whatever is needed to deliver a complete feature — not package,
“feature”. We will likely need to find a suitable definition of “feature” but
I offer this: an office productivity suite is a package; it isn’t useful without
the ability to print documents; printing is another package; these two packages likely
have dependencies; when you have a complete whatever that delivers value to the
end-user, you have a “feature”. Either the entire feature installs successfully,
or the entire feature fails.

[Note - One common complaint about linux from my clients revolves around the situation
where they want to do XXX, download components to do XXX, and then must walk
a mine field probing for whatever else they need.]

** There are some components that everyone will want regardless of intended use
such as print.

** A server system requires some list of server-specific components.
Anything desktop might be optional in a server configuration.

** A desktop system requires some list of desktop-specific components.
Anything server might be optional in a desktop configuration.

Run the list of work orders.

OpenSUSE 11 Alpha 3
Will be
A GREAT SUCCESS

Overall, a Good BUSY WEEK

What I really wish for…
Being in China makes updates really difficult – thanks to the great firewall.
YaST only opens one stream and that means I takes me 40 hours to update 100MB.
Becuase the great firewall drops all internationl transfers to 5-20KB/s

If I use DownThemAll with splitted streams in Firefox I easily reach 300KB/s, means fullspeed.

Don’t say Chinese mirrors. The Chinese mirror are within the educational network that has a somehow modem connection-speed, or isn’t even reachable from outside .edu.cn

If I use Ubuntu, which has a good server in china speed is fantastic. And further more, ubuntu starts multiple downloads at the same time.

I would like to see a more intelligent download function, like aria2c or DownThemAll integrated.
Or simply open more parallell download.

Waiting 8 hours for 199kB update really sucks……