Re: Thoughts on GNOME Release Notes

[Allan Day <allanpday gmail com>]

Hey Alex!

alex diavatis <alexis diavatis gmail com> wrote:
...
> I think that GNOME Release Notes should get some improvements.
>
> 1. GNOME Regressions
> I haven't experience issues my self, but I read comments about tearing and
> flickering in GNOME Shell, and those are known bugs in X that affect Shell
> as well.
> I also remember the ATi & GNOME incompatibilities. Shouldn't GNOME refer
> those issues on release notes?

In general I agree that it's good to flag up known issues with a
release (if it is something that has changed from the previous
version). I think that Disks will be losing support for (software)
RAID in 3.12, for example - and that's something we should mention.
I'm not too sure about these video issues that you mention though...
are they driver problems or do they belong to the shell? Are they new
for 3.12?

> Additionally release notes maybe should refer some of the things that are
> you going to work on the next version of GNOME.
> This is different than 3.14 feature list, and it could include optimizations
> and improvements on the things that you didn't manage to include in 3.12
> cycle.

As you mention, we've traditionally had a "things to look forward to"
section. In general I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this,
partly because it is difficult to predict what will be in the next
release, and partly because users already have to wait to actually get
their hands on the new release that is described in the notes - this
release + 1 is such a long way away for many people...

Do you have any examples of things we should be mentioning?

> 2. GNOME Minimum and Recommended Systems
> What are GNOME minimum hardware requirements and what is a recommended
> system to run GNOME 3.12? Where GNOME runs? Screen sizes? Touch Screens?
> This can be different than what distros propose as minimum and recommended
> hardware.

In the past we have often struggled to get definite answers for things
like CPU or memory requirements. There are a lot of variables, and in
general we try to make GNOME compatible with the vast majority of
modern "desktop" hardware. Maybe we could mention specific classes of
device, like netbooks, laptops, desktops, convertibles, etc.

That said, maybe this is something for gnome.org rather than the
release notes? The notes are mostly about what has changed, rather
than standard guidelines...

> 3. Get GNOME Page
> http://www.gnome.org/getting-gnome/
>
> This page is poor and outdated. Furthermore advertising GNOME 3.12 in the
> gnome.org and pointing users to distros that are using older versions of
> GNOME,
> without referring anything is awkward.

I totally agree! Thanks for flagging this up; let's try and have a
look at it before the release.

> 4. Where Release Notes are?
> http://www.gnome.org/gnome-3/
>
> I can't find any release notes about 3.10. Google  gives me that:
> https://help.gnome.org/misc/release-notes/3.10/

Yes good point. It would be really good to link to the latest release
notes from the GNOME 3 page.

> Which says that Wayland is a new feature on GNOME 3.10?!

Not quite... it says "3.10 introduces experimental Wayland support,
which allows GNOME as well as GNOME applications to be run using
Wayland. This is an important milestone on the road to full Wayland
adoption, and will let developers test their software with Wayland."

> Maybe you should revisit the whole process of release notes starting from
> 3.12 cycle ;)

I'm not sure that the whole process is a problem as such, but
certainly things can always be improved and there are some good
suggestions here. Please keep your ideas coming; it really is
valuable!

Thanks,

Allan