Re: My first impression and goodbye

["James M. Cape" <jcape jcinteractive com>]

Markus Stumpf wrote:
> 
> On Wed, Mar 10, 1999 at 11:07:33AM +0000, James M. Cape wrote:
> > I answered "rudely" (tersely, perhaps) because his message wasn't
> > helpful. It wasn't:
> >
> > "I'm having some trouble in these areas, what should I do to fix them?"
> >
> > or:
> >
> > "I'm getting a crash with Gmc on Linux 2.0.36 w/ Glibc 2.0.7 & Gcc 2.7.2
> > when I try to double click an icon, gdb says..."
> >
> > it was:
> >
> > "Great. It doesn't work. The file manager core dumps. There aren't any
> > icons. I'm not going to even try Gnome again until 2.0."
> 
> I think the problem is the point of view.
> 
> Linux and *BSD gave Joe User the opportunity to run a Unix system on
> his/her computer at home.
> With most installations they don't have to know much. Just choose
> a "default" installation from the CD ROM, wait for a while and bingo
> it's up and running.
> The next thing is they manage to get their email program and netscape
> to run and they're happy. They "surf" the internet, subscribe to a few
> mailing lists (which they never manage to get off again) but overall
> they have a usable system about which they know NOTHING.
> 
> Then they read the announcement that there is a REALLY COOL new desktop
> called GNOME which makes it even more easier to work with their unix
> system. GNOME has a COOL lookalike and has some COOL applications
> (like gnumeric, ...) they've missed so far.
> 
> Then they go ahead and download and install the RPMs. Still no big
> deal. They do as much RTFM as to find out the address of this list
> and they know how to handle their mail program so they subscribe.
> 
> Then they try to start GNOME and it doesn't work. They try again
> and it still doesn't work. They don't have the slightest idea what's
> going on. They have no icons. GMC pops up and on the first click
> it's gone again. All they see are some strange files named anything.core.
> 
> They remember the list, they are frustrated, they post.
> Expecting more than "I can't see any icons" or "GNOME doesn't work"
> is expecting too much, IMHO.
> 
> I predict that this list will be hit with much higher percentage of this
> type of problem reports the next few weeks. The wider GNOME gets known
> the more we'll see.
> 
> Just my 2 Pfennige.
> 
>         \Maex
> 
> --
> SpaceNet GmbH             |   http://www.Space.Net/   | In a world without

That may be the case, but the user should be at least somewhat
accomodating to the developers. I believe that if the Gnome culture
evolves to such a point that every user knows (because they have to
know) how to get and copy a backtrace from gdb to Netscape Mail, we'll
all be better off. The best solution I can think of off hand would be to
have the session manager run a program under gdb when it crashes and
give the backtrace to the user along with instructions on reporting it.
Or at least pop up an Xterm with gdb running the app in it along with a
dialog explaining how to get a backtrace and where to send it. And, like
just about everything else, I would like an option to disable this
("Don't debug programs when they crash").

    Jim Cape
    http://www.jcinteractive.com

    "All animals are equal, some animals
     are more equal than others."
         -- George Orwell, Animal Farm