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Fedora 18 Installer: Counterintuitive and Confusing?
An anonymous reader writes "Igor Ljubuncic, former physicist and current IT Systems Programmer and blogger, reviews Fedora 18 with its new installer. In his role as alter ego Dedoimedo, the self proclaimed 'king of everything', Igor's Linux distro and DE reviews are often wry and biting and this review is no exception: 'You enter a world of smartphone-like diarrhea that undermines everything and anything that is sane and safe. In all my life testing Linux and other operating systems, I have never ever seen an installer that is so counter-intuitive, dangerous and useless, all at the same time.'"
The non-linear installer interface does look like kind of confusing, at least from the screenshots posted.
True, but when you can submit patches and don't submit even one, it's kind of like complaining that you're own house is dirty. You could do something about it, but you choose to do nothing and expect other people to take care of your problems for you. That's okay, you can do that. It kind of weakens the complaint, though.
Compare to if you pay someone to make a product to fit your needs, and they prevent you from making changes or submitting patches. In that case, the complainant is on more solid ground - they paid for development, they aren't trying to freeload; and there is nothing they are allowed to do to help fix it.
When I author Linux software, I write it mainly to do what I need it to do, while also trying to make it useful to you. I then give it to you free. You have no standing to demand that I spend my time fulfilling your preferences. If you hire me, donate, or contribute code THEN you're part of the community where we all work together. If you neither donate, nor contribute code or documentation, nor hire me to do what you need done, you are NOT part of the team. You are the recipient of a gift we give you.
"But I'm not a programer!" Okay, so translate the documentation into your native language, or help out on the forums, or maybe even consider feeding the programmers lunch while they work with a $20 donation. Otherwise, you're bitching about a gift.
Congratulations. Linking to your little spam-nest on this site is pretty much a guarantee that your server will be a steaming puddle very shortly thereafter.
And logging in with your G+ account, so we can easily find out where you live. Oooh, smart.
Newsflash: Not every user of FOSS software knows how to program.
You missed an entire paragraph written just for you:
"But I'm not a programer!" Okay, so translate the documentation into your native language, or help out on the forums, or maybe even consider feeding the programmers lunch while they work with a $20 donation. Otherwise, you're bitching about a gift.
If you want your software to be widely accepted, listen.
We do NOT want our software to be widely used by people who contribute nothing. What good does that do us? You are not a customer. (Unless of course you are a paying customer). You are the recipient of a gift. Freeloaders using our work, while refusing to donate $10, or edit the wiki, or translate something, or run a proper test suite are NOT beneficial to OSS programmers. Quite the opposite. You're just another oddball configuration I have to support, and another piece of idiot-proofing I have to add to the GUI, with no benefit to me. We don't want it to be widely used, we want a wide base of CONTRIBUTORS.