Re: roadmap status update/update request

[Damon Chaplin <damon karuna uklinux net>]

On Tue, 2005-03-08 at 03:21, Federico Mena Quintero wrote:

> In general, field research would be more beneficial in the long run.
> Real users --- random people who go to Brazilian Telecentros, office
> clerks in European cities --- don't know where to report their
> annoyances with free software.  They don't have time to find out about
> it as they just want to get things done.  You have to go to them, ask
> them, and watch them use the software.

Thanks for that. Your wife's problems with Linux were exactly the sort
of thing I was thinking of. I also hear people at my local LUG moaning
about problems setting up wireless cards, or adding printers, or burning
CDs. This is basic stuff that we should be focusing on (and encouraging
distros/kernel people to fix where necessary).


Maybe a simple feedback questionnaire on gnome.org would be a start
(avoiding the issue of voting), e.g.

   1) Are you (a) a Home/Office User
              (b) an Advanced GNOME User
              (c) a Site Administrator

   2) Which version of GNOME are you using?
              (a) 2.0 (b) 2.2 (c) 2.4 (d) 2.6 (e) 2.8 (f) 2.10

   3) Which Operating System or Linux Distribution are you using?

   4) What are the main problems you have had with GNOME?

   5) What would you like to see in GNOME in the future?


The results could go to a public mailing list so we could all read them.

If anyone does manage to do some field research they could post the
results here as well.

Each release cycle we could pick out a few often-repeated requests and
aim to fix them.

Damon