/home/nand

How adapted to average users the Ubuntu community infrastructure (set of websites) is? These last days I tried an interesting experiment. I compared its infrastructure with several others distros: OpenSuse, Fedora, Mint, Mandriva.

To make this survey, I placed myself as a newbie, an outsider which has some very basic Linux notions. I never used command line, and I don’t have any idea of the technical names of the Linux stack. No X11, GCC, and such. And I don’t care! I am the classic average user, whose goal is to get his job done with his computer. And I am the type of user 99% of the user base will be once Linux become the dominant OS.

Being this kind of user, my interaction with the Linux distribution infrastructure will be limited to a few use cases. Here are the use cases I tested:

1. My english is not so good, I’d like some pages in my language.
2. I need to download my Linux.
3. I got a question, I need help.
4. I’m looking for some information on this Linux website.
5. I think I found a bug, I want to report it.
6. I want to install a sound mixing application (or any other kind of application), what should I install?
7. I begin to like this Linux, I want to get some news of it!

Here are the raw results. I tried to behave as naively as a newbie would. I associated an arbitrary value to each result: the final score is giving a broad appreciation of the average user experience with the distro community infrastructure.

OpenSuse is the clear winner here. Clean websites, information easily accessible, regular news, its interfaces to the average user are the most polished. The Linux Mint websites are also quite polished, its software portal is unique and very interesting. On the opposite, the Fedora infrastructure seems to target more advanced users: technical terms, no non-technical source of news. The Ubuntu infrastructure does try to target average users, but its usability is not optimal. And no global inter-website navigation of his multitude of websites gives a feeling of a mess. Mandriva has a good multilingual support, but like the last two distribution, their infrastructure websites are not well integrated.

Now the detailed comparison:

1. Internationalization of the main website

• OpenSuse : Average to good. Main website translated in a dozen of languages, language switch a bit difficult to find. All external links point to english content.
• Fedora : Average to good. Main website translated in a dozen of languages, language switch a bit difficult to find. All external links point to english content.
• Ubuntu : Poor. No translation available.
• Mint: Poor. No translation available.
• Mandriva : Average to good. Main website translated in several language, language switch a bit difficult to find. All external links point to english content.

2. Download page : how noob-friendly is it? How easy is the selection of the right choice for the user? Explanation of the burning process?

• OpenSuse : Perfect and awesome. Noob-proof selection of architecture, medium, HTTP/bittorrent. Automatic mirror selection. Information on how to burn the disc, and link to the full installation guide.
• Fedora : Poor. Raw torrent links with “i386″, “x86_64″ labels. Very noob-unfriendly.
• Ubuntu : Average. Manual mirror selection. Torrent link not advertized on the page. Explanation of the 64 bit version not really noob-helpful. A link to a good ISO burning HowTo is not really visible. The only plus : the only one to provide the installation requirements.
• Mint: Average to good. Automatic mirror selection. Indirect link to torrent. Explanation of the “X64″ edition not really noob proof (link to wikipedia technical article).
• Mandriva : Good. The available editions are cleanly explained. Direct link to a bittorrent download. But no automatic mirror selection.

3. Getting support : How easily do I find these infos? how noob-friendly is it?

• OpenSuse : Average to good. The main “Learn Opensuse” link do not link to a documentation/support page. The real support page put the mailing lists and IRC before forums. No “Noob” section on the forums.
• Fedora : Average to Good. Prominent “Get help” link. IRC and mailing list before forums. No newbie section.
• Ubuntu : Very good. Prominent “get support” link, forums are put first, before IRC and mailing lists. All localized forums are linked. The main Ubuntu forum website has a “Absolute Beginner Talk” section.
• Mint: Good. No “get support” link but a direct link to the forum. It has a “Newbie questions” and “Non-technical Questions” sections.
• Mandriva :  Good. The “Help” section has a direct link to the forums. They have several languages. No noob section.

4. Inter-website navigation : how easy is it to navigate through all the community infrastructure websites? How is it organized? Is it visible?

• OpenSuse : Good. complete inter website menu always present and almost always coherent. Unfortunately not really visible from the front page.
• Fedora : average. inter website menu visible from all ressources, but not complete and coherent.
• Ubuntu : poor. No all-pages inter website navigation from frontpage, no inter webiste navigation from all ressources
• Mint: good. visible inter website menu present on the front page, but not all websites have it (planet, forums, wiki)
• Mandriva : poor. No all-pages inter website navigation from frontpage, no inter webiste navigation from all ressources

5. Reporting a bug. How easy is it for a newbie to figure this out? This has to be relativized since users can also reports bugs from the “report bug” menu item of the “Help” menu of applications.

• OpenSuse : Average to good. Link accessible from the frontpage. Intermediary wiki page is a little too technical (X11, GCC, and others technical terms).
• Fedora : Poor to average. I was not able to find the link to the bugtracker. But at least, there is one.
• Ubuntu : Average to good. Link accessible from the frontpage. Intermediary wiki page is a little messy and a little technical (”Attaching the output of “lspci -vv” and “lspci -vvn” will help. “)
• Mint: Poor. Page not easily found. Bugs are to be submitted on the forums. No bug section in the forums.
• Mandriva : Poor to average. Unable to find the bugtracker link. But at least, there is one.

6. Getting infos on available software: I’m a noob, I don’t know the names of the best programs to use : I want to get the names of the best programs. This has to be relativized since users can also get infos from their packaging tool.

• OpenSuse : Poor to average. I get a search tool, but I have to know program names. Programs are proposed as direct link RPMs (in various technical architecture version : i586,…), and the one-click install. No description! No rating.
• Fedora : Poor. No such thing.
• Ubuntu : Poor. No such thing. packages.ubuntu.com is advertized nowhere and unusable from a noob point of view.
• Mint: Very good. Software portal easily accessible. Application grouped by type. Description, rating. Direct download link.
• Mandriva : Poor. No such thing.

7. News sources for outsiders : How easily can we get some news, how complete is it, how accessible to a noob is it? Planets are no way a source of information for the average user: too much noise, too much technical, and very few distro-related infos.

• OpenSuse : Very good. http://news.opensuse.org/ Easily accessible from inter website menu, lots of OpenSuse-only various news: weekly news, interviews, software releases, various tips, and calls to community participation to testing days,… The technicity level is not always noob-proof.
• Fedora : Poor. No link to a source of news, except for a planet. Found after a while http://fedoranews.org/ which points to a wiki page of weekly newsletter. The technicity level is quite high.
• Ubuntu : Average. The front page “Press room” is exactly that, a Canonical press room. The fridge link, http://fridge.ubuntu.com/, the Ubuntu source of news, is nowhere to be found on ubuntu.com. Its content is quite various (weekly news, testing days, developer interview, various community news) and its level of technicity OK. The Fridge major drawback is its lack of visibility.
• Mint: Good. http://www.linuxmint.com/blog/ Easily accessible from inter website menu. Regular content, but less various than OpenSuse. Technicity level is low.
• Mandriva : Poor. No source of information except a monthly newsletter to receive in your mailbox.

Intrepid is out, a new cycle begins… Time for planning!

I wrote a small document about Ubuntu Brainstorm trying to summarize what’s going on there (with a few stats), what you can expect from it, a summary of the most wanted features from its users, and its impact. I wrote this hoping to give to contributors and developers (not limited to Ubuntu) some clues of the most asked features out there, and what worries our users the most.

You can grab it here!

What do we need to get innovative stuff implemented?

1. A great idea
2. The manpower
3. The infrastructure and toolset

(1) is now more or less successfully covered by Ubuntu Brainstorm. Concerning (3), some good infrastructures exists around here, such as Launchpad, and development toolsets are good but not yet optimal IMO (I’ll keep that for later). (2) is much more tricky.

Indeed, often a project start with a single person. But as the project goes on, some needs arise that you can’t alone handle, such as artwork. And we got no central place to ask for help.

Another usecase is a skilled person wanting to participate. At the moment, except some Ubuntu team wiki pages here and here proposing static jobs, there is no central place to look for something to do.

Introducing Ubuntu Wanted

The idea is simple : make a central place where these two categories of people can meet. One could post “jobs” and be contacted by others.

Why not in Launchpad?

That would be its natural place. But, as with Ubuntu Brainstorm, the closed source nature of Launchpad, for now, does not really help.

Why Ubuntu, and not distro-independant?

By experience, I know having the backing of one major distro really help

The project itself

The project is already started. Sense Hofstede(Qense) took the leadership, wrote a spec, a few wiki pages, created a bazaar branch, and started coding. A preview of its work can be seen here.

Now what?

Ironically, this project needs help Nothing particulary difficult, only basic PHP and SQL skills are necessary. To contact Sense, you can either look on #ubuntu-website on IRC, or mail the Ubuntu Website mailing list.

Hey, nice catchy title, isn’t it?

To be more precise, the LFV group, owner of the larger aiports in Sweden, is running in cooperation with two swedish universities, an airline ground handler and one IT consulting firm a project called “Airport Living Lab” (english on the second part). Quoting its mission:

By harnessing the concept of multi-organizational open innovation Stockholm-Arlanda Airport will multiply its pace of innovation by involving all airport stakeholders, such as passengers and personnel, into the innovation process.

And guess what they choose as a base for this open innovation project? As such, I am sponsored to work on the Ubuntu Brainstorm engine during this month before I start my new job, and two of their developers will join the project at least until October, date of the first public pilot. Concretely, that will mean some interesting new features, such as the rationale/solution separation, a reworked UI, idea filtering at submission, more powerful moderator tools,… that will reach Ubuntu Brainstorm *hopefully* in October or so. A developer snapshot is available here.

I also take this opportunity to introduce you IdeaTorrent, the name of the Ubuntu Brainstorm engine that was chosen after much cursing at TLD squatters! Thanks to this sponsoring, a release-neutral version is to be hopefully expected before the end of the year.

Well, some great stuff that boost your motivation on your open source project!

From time to time, one of these guys pass by… Always makes me smile
[21:37] tomjon (n=tomjon@xxx.xx) has joined #ubuntu-testing
[21:38] <tomjon> yo!
[21:38] <-- tomjon has quit (Client Quit)

What is amazing around Ubuntu (and probably about others distros and FOSS projects as well) is that you work with passionate people. People are here because they have a crunch on the project. Hell, I’ve never been so productive while having fun.

But when I’m seeing some people ranting over non-issues, starting flamewars and making a fuss about nothing, I’m always wondering : for some of us, where did the fun go? Are we beginning to be eaten alive by a too-consuming passion that leave no more place for fun?

That’s these occasions that reminds me the main job of the community team guys : defusing the flame bombs. Trying to cool things down, to instill good mood and motivation, to keep the project running. And considering the size of the community, that’s quite something. Big kudos to them!

Bored at work? You better check the lolcats

Oh hai!

Starting now, you can affect a project to an idea in Ubuntu Brainstorm. And since our evil plans to world domination includes to make next Brainstorm websites dedicated to projects (including non-ubuntu, upstream ones) that will share data with the global one, I’d like to make a small poll:

1. As an upstream developer/maintainer, would a Brainstorm-like website interests you? Why/Why not?
2. If there was to be a brainstorm website like the current Brainstorm website, but dedicated to your project, what would you like to see changed?
3. If you had the choice to use a Brainstorm-like website hosted on your project website, or hosted on brainstorm.ubuntu.com, which one would you choose? Ideally both, sharing the same data?
4. Would the fact that it is hosted on brainstorm.ubuntu.com (EDIT: was “ubuntu.com”) prevent you to use it?
5. Would you ask to close the Brainstorm website related to your project hosted on brainstorm.ubuntu.com if brainstorm websites were to be automatically created for all the major upstream softwares?
6. Purely cosmetic: If you were to use a brainstorm website hosted on brainstorm.ubuntu.com, would you rather prefer the [project_name].brainstorm.ubuntu.com URL, or brainstorm.ubuntu.com/[project_name] URL?
7. Finally, anything else?

Thanks for taking the time to answer. Please forward this to your upstream fellows!

EDIT:  To make things clear : when I’m speaking of “hosting” on brainstorm.ubuntu.com, it is in fact merely putting another entry point to the current Brainstorm website, with a filter on the project field : this would be exactly like the current Brainstorm, except that the URL will be different, and only ideas related to a given project would be shown.

On the opposite, when I’m speaking of setting a Brainstorm website on your project website, it would be installing another instance of the Brainstorm code, using a project-neutral release of Brainstorm.

Hey, look what I got from Dell for having asked for Ubuntu PC worldwide on Dell Ideastorm (besides having the idea implemented, and the joy of not paying an OS I won’t use) :

Nice pen! Thanks! That’s apparently a gift sent to the authors of the most popular implemented ideas.

Shall we launch a plushie brains campaign for the Brainstormers?

I just became Ubuntu member! Yay! I will finally be able to bug you all with some Ubuntu Brainstorm stuff