Re: collecting negative reviews

[Santiago Roza <santiagoroza gmail com>]

It's done: I've read [almost] every single comment from the 2.12
release articles (including Slashdot and OSNews, which Travis was
going to cover... sorry Travis, I got carried away), and here's the
compiled list of complaints/suggestions/etc.

I guess someone (who has actual contact with them, unlike me) should
pass this to the development list as soon as possible, cause it's very
valuable information IMHO.



* GENERAL CRITICISMS/SUGGESTIONS: TOP 5
(common to most articles)

1) add full GNOME VFS support to all applications (especially GNOME apps)
2) optimize performance and memory footprint
3) Nautilus seems to be the most criticised GNOME app: many people say
it's slow (compared to Konqueror or Win Explorer), many complain about
not being able to type URLs in the File Selector/Manager (without
pressing Ctrl+L), many complain about not being able to (easily) turn
off the multi-window behaviour, and some others think it lacks
functionality (found in Konqueror or Win Explorer)
4) most people disliked the new menu editor; they suggest we bundle
SMEG (or something equally capable)
5) many many readers asked where to find updated packages for their
distribution; maybe we should work alongside with major distros to
have GNOME packages ready on release time (or make our own packages)



* OTHER GENERAL CRITICISMS/SUGGESTIONS:
(not so common and/or relevant)

- stability issues with xcompmgr (X Compositing Manager; it handles
transparency/shadows)
- doubts about the nature of the GNOME LiveCD ("what is it based on?"
- IMHO next time we should clearly state it's based on Ubuntu)
- complaints about certain lack of ACL functionality (some users
suggest that we should at least integrate Eiciel into Nautilus)



* CRITICISMS/SUGGESTIONS FROM SPECIFIC ARTICLES:
(and/or their comments)

http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=11800
- incomplete/confusing API documentation
- add full front-end to the Bluetooth stack
- "phone and PDA syncing that actually works"

http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=11788&limit=no&threshold=-1
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=11800&limit=no&threshold=-1
- easily open a terminal in the current directory (like the
nautilus-open-terminal add-on)
- "merge all settings into one single preferences application"

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/07/2329227&from=rss
- stability of multimedia software (especially Totem and the GStreamer
framework in general)
- some readers say their GNOME 2.12 "feels" faster due to 3D
acceleration; in the future we should think of some way to tell them
if it's turned on or not (to avoid these false impressions)

http://gnomedesktop.org/node/2391
- "spatial metaphor in GNOME broken and violated (eg: the file open
dialog is always navigational, never spatial)"



* ARTICLES WITH NO COMMENTS:
(or no interesting comments... or which comments I couldn't find
because I'm an idiot :P)

http://barrapunto.com/article.pl?sid=05/09/07/191200
http://lwn.net/Articles/150676/
http://channels.lockergnome.com/linux/archives/20050907_gnome_212_released.phtml
http://www.neowin.net/comments.php?id=30291&category=software
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS4356551088.html
http://digg.com/linux_unix/GNOME_2.12_Released
http://www.linuxparatodos.net/geeklog/article.php?story=20050908001403158
http://www.softwarelivre.org/news/4696
http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/ubb.x?a=dl&s=50009562&f=174096756&x_id=1126212290&x_subject=GNOME+2.12+is+afoot&x_link=http://arstechnica.com&x_ddp=Y
http://planet.gentoo.org/developers/flameeyes/2005/08/25/gnome_2_12
http://news.softpedia.com/news/GNOME-Launches-GNOME-2-12-Desktop-7909.shtml
http://cofradia.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=15041
http://www.techspot.com/news/18650-gnome-212-released.html
http://hardware.newsforge.com/newsvac/05/09/07/207230.shtml
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=danews.story&STORY=/www/story/09-07-2005/0004102090&EDATE=WED+Sep+07+2005,+01:13+PM
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/050907/sfw131.html
http://www.linuxelectrons.com/article.php/20050907120839978
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/GNOME_Project_unveils_latest_version_of_Linux_and_Unix_desktop
http://br-linux.org/linux/?q=node/1715
http://www.softwarelivre.org/news/4696
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/linuxunix/0,39020390,39217105,00.htm
http://www.techtree.com/techtree/jsp/article.jsp?article_id=67998&cat_id=580
http://www.newsforge.com/newsvac/05/09/07/1546239.shtml
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1856185,00.asp



* ARTICLES IN GERMAN/FRENCH:
(two languages I can't read, so unless we want to trust Google Translate...):

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/63253
http://derstandard.at/?url=/?id=2160606
http://linuxfr.org/2005/09/08/19543.html
http://www.pro-linux.de/news/2005/8610.html
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/63689
http://www.oszine.de/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=3941
http://www.linux-community.de/Neues/story?storyid=17628


-- 
Santiago Roza
santiagoroza gmail com
http://santiagoroza.blogspot.com/