Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2000 20:54:44 -0600 (CST) From: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> To: Roop Nanuwa <roop@gw.carpoolbc.com>, "Artem Koutchine" <matrix@ipform.ru> Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Information, new, propaganda:) Message-ID: <14858.4596.51294.316021@guru.mired.org> In-Reply-To: <12310649@toto.iv>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Roop Nanuwa <roop@gw.carpoolbc.com> types:
> On Wed, 8 Nov 2000, Artem Koutchine wrote:
> > That way about the new people. Now about what i don't like: The site never
> > contains technical information what's planned or what's changed. For
> > example, i HAVE NOT IDEA what's new in 5.0-CURRENT or even what's
> > new in 4.2 comparing to 4.1.1.
> I was just trying to track this stuff down too! If real users of FreeBSD
> can't track this info down easily, how can we expect newbs to even have a
> chance of it?
It's two links from the front page to a repository that has the exact
text of (almost) every change that's been made to FreeBSD in
months. What's missing are files that are no longer part of the
distribution. I guess my finding it means that I'm not a real user of
FreeBSD, huh?
Ok, the CVS repository is information overload. But it's a bit
premature to ask "what's new in 4.2", as it isn't out yet.. However, I
expect that will be two clicks from the frontpage ("Announcements"
then "Release Information") when 4.2 is available, just like 4.1.1,
4.1, etc. are now.
On Wed, 8 Nov 2000, Artem Koutchine wrote:
> If i were a person considering freebsd and i was peridically watching
> freebsd.org for the update all I would notice is a bunch of new comiters and
> periodic releases of new version. That's all. No other news, no periodic
> updates, no news about what's going on around it.
Let's see, here's a list of links to articles in the press to other
sites. That's "going on around" FreeBSD. The announcements page does
seem to be full of new committers which isn't of interest to the new
user - it probably ought to be pulled into a separate list. On the
other hand, the committers are the people who create FreeBSD, so they
deserve some stroking. On that same page we also find information
about the core team election - which goes to the very heart of the
politics around BSD. BSDCon information. The announcement of IA64
support. An announcement about FreeBSD servering 2 terabytes in a
single day. An announcement about FreshPorts. Travel plans for some
core team members. Pointers to articles on sysetm setup. The
announcement of new mail list summary pages, and another for some new
mail lists. The BSDI/WC merger.
Um - I think that just hit every important event I know about from
following the various mail lists. Can you provide examples of the kind
of news you'd want?
Oh yeah, let's not forget the links to Daemon New on the front page.
> The site does not give any
> idea in what ways freebsd is different from windows and, of course, linux.
> It does not have any screenshots (AND YES, they are important for the
> newbees).
Um - screenshots? What good would image captures of a CRT screen do?
Or are you talking about X - which isn't part of FreeBSD, but is
provided with it? Which X desktop are you going to chose? Mine, which
today was two xterms on half the screen & xemacs on the other while I
was hacking FORTRAN? Gnome? KDE? Running which window managers? One
that looks just like Win9x, down to the start button? And how far out
of your way are you going to go to differentiate that from Linux? In
particular, what are you going to do that you *couldn't* do on a Linux
system?
> For example, look at the kde site. What do they have on the first
> page? NEWS!!!
Other than the announcement of 2.0 (which is big news, but probably
below the fold for most people - bad design on their part), I don't
see anything at <URL: http://www.kde.org/ >. In fact, the first line
of real text on the two pages is almost identical: "<Foo> is a
<positive adjectives> <noun> for <platform>." Following that on both
pages is a collection of paragraphs with a link or two in
each. FreeBSD likes putting headings on their paragraphs, though.
> Most sites have NEWS on the first page, because NEWS give people an
> idea that the project is alive. The only way to know, that freebsd
> project is alive (and i know for sure, that IT IS MORE ALIVE THEN
> ANYTHING on the planet) is to do cvsup daily and read the
> mailists. This is no right way to attract new people.
Actually, you don't need to cvsup. You need to read cvs-all. Then
cvsup when something interesting hits the branch you're running (or
just do it on a regular basis).
But think about this - we really, really don't want people running out
and installing -CURRENT (which is suffering from random lockups due to
mutex problems in the SMPNG code) because they saw an
announcement. Nuts - we don't want newbies trying to track -stable,
which has problems of it's own. We want the first install to be from a
RELEASE, which is at least a fixed point so we can identify problems
and deal with them reasonably. So the things you're talking about
don't belong on the web site.
> That way about the new people. Now about what i don't like: The site never
> contains technical information what's planned or what's changed. For
> example, i HAVE NOT IDEA what's new in 5.0-CURRENT or even what's
> new in 4.2 comparing to 4.1.1.
You're in either one of two states - if you're running -STABLE or
-CURRENT, you should be following those lists, which is where that
information is sent. If you're running -RELEASE, then the information
you want will be on the web site as soon as it's available.
Information about new features in -CURRENT should *not* be generally
available, because, quoting the handbook, FreeBSD is NOT:
A fast-track to getting pre-release bits because you heard there is
some cool new feature in there and you want to be the first on your
block to have it.
> I think we need more news!
It might be nice if each news item was on the top (not the bottom they
way KDE did it) of the page for a bit. Of course, the most common
thing would be new committers, which seems pointless.
I'll agree - the FreeBSD web site is a lousy propoganda site. Of
course, it's designed to be an *information* site. I think it does a
great job of that.
That said, I'll encourage you to take the words of Scoop (Nisgar? Can
someone in the SF Bay Area provide the correct last name?) to heart
"If you don't like the news, go out and make some of your own." Build
a mockup of what you think the FreeBSD front page should look
like. Then tell us about it so we can look at it. But be warned - any
site that claims to be informative but can't be used from a pocket
computer or web phone has failed.
<mike
To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?14858.4596.51294.316021>