Dedoimedo: the end of a long, beautiful run?

[nathan2423]

As noted above most of the criticisms in the review are of XFCE or issues that are design decisions by the developers here.

That having been said, whenever I steer a friend toward MX, I give them a live USB that I have respun to provide what they are expecting before they see it for the first time:

1) I Move the taskbar to the bottom;
2) I Make sure that all file managers are double-click (I install nemo and make it the primary file manager)
3) I Install dockbar-x with the "Colors" or other suitable theme to give the Windows7 style in-place start icons that the reviewer (and most people) will look for.
4) I click each of the selection boxes in the "Menu" section of the Behavior tab of the Whisker properties box.

SInce I no longer use windows at all I was unaware of the samba incompatibility issue, but in the future I will make that change to my personal respins too.

I definitely believe that XFCE has a lot of life left in it and it is not desirable to move to plasma/kde, but these are steps that are easily addressable, without any criticism of the existing design choices being necessary.

[BitJam]

I believe Continuum was better put together, by ever so slight margin. Let's hope this ain't the end of a long, beautiful run. To be continued.

Some Perspective
MX-18 (Continuum) did not involve a change in the Debian release. MX-17 and MX-19 did. These Debian changes suck up a lot of our developer resources so a slight dip in usability from MX-18 to MX-19 is no surprise. In addition, we made great strides in improving the installer for most people. Problems with booting the installed system are not dominating the forums like they did for MX-18. With all the big changes we made, some usability regressions are not surprising.

Given the size of our team, the size of our job, and the size of our greatly increased user-base, I think we did a fantastic job. Sure, we have plenty of room for improvement and this review will help us improve (thank you Dedoimedo!) but despite outward appearances, we are moving forward at a rapid clip.

One area where I think we could improve a lot is having more formalized testing procedures. This boils down to better communication between the devs and the testers. ISTM our base of testers has not kept pace with our base of users. I hope that with more formalized procedures (like checklists) we will be able to make the best use of our testers and also make it easier for users to become testers. More generally, we should take a close look at how to make the most efficient use of our limited resources.

[Stevo]

MX already has an unofficial KDE respin by Adrian--maybe we can do a little more work on it and do an official version, at least for 64-bit?

[asqwerth]

I think that since he has been using the same machines to test various iterations of MX, the fact that he now has some issues with, say, the installer when that was not the case before, should be considered seriously.

The artifacts in some panel notification icons: justified complaint since that problem isn't satisfactorily dealt with yet.

On the other hand, you also have to factor in that he is very OCD about aesthetics, so will definitely complain about those, even if it's not MX's fault (e.g. his complaints about Plank, what XFCE panel cannot do, the icon of Google Chrome not looking clear on Plank, etc).

Samba being less user-friendly now: this appears to be a general issue with Samba's current development, because Dedo has complained about it in reviews about other distros.
On the other hand, if MX could come up with the iDeviceMounter, it might be worth looking into making some tool (or just a tweak) to make Samba easier to configure and connect.

So, like all reviews, let's examine it objectively and learn from valid criticisms and just shrug our shoulders at the not-so-valid ones.

[asqwerth]

For testing protocols, perhaps Chrispop can let us know his SOP, since he is an experienced tester of MX.

[jeffreyC]

A number of his complaints/problems have also been posted on this forum by others since MX-19 was released.
He is not the only one to complain about the Debian* Thunar single click default being retained in MX, it was also a very common complaint on Distrowatch when it was reviewed there.

*it may be the Xfce4 default, I have only used Debian and derivatives of it, my distro hopping is more about finding one I like than sampling all of them.

[SwampRabbit]

A number of his complaints/problems have also been posted on this forum by others since MX-19 was released.
He is not the only one to complain about the Debian* Thunar single click default being retained in MX, it was also a very common complaint on Distrowatch when it was reviewed there.

*it may be the Xfce4 default, I have only used Debian and derivatives of it, my distro hopping is more about finding one I like than sampling all of them.

Maybe we should do some polls, not ones that end super quick either.

Honestly, the single click thing might cause a stir by changing it to double click. Its not like its super hard to change it to whatever someone wants though so its a 50/50.

[komer]

MX-18 (Continuum) did not involve a change in the Debian release. MX-17 and MX-19 did. These Debian changes suck up a lot of our developer resources so a slight dip in usability from MX-18 to MX-19 is no surprise.

I wonder - why did you decide to upgrade xfce version together with Debian version, since Debian changes alone suck up so many developer resources? This could have been an incremental process. For example, keeping xfce4.14 in MX test repo till the next point release of MX. (??)

One area where I think we could improve a lot is having more formalized testing procedures.

From my limited perspective, I agree.

[asqwerth]

I would in fairness add that people seem more forgiving of dolphin file manager in KDE/Plasma being single click, than of any other file manager in other DEs doing the same thing.

Because from what I can recall, dolphin has been by default single click since forever - or at least since I first used Mepis (KDE4) around 2006/2007. And I'm currently still using Plasma (and thus dolphin) in Neon and Sabayon, where Plasma is kept pretty vanilla.

[handy]

@asqwerth, jeez, when I saw the topic of this thread "Dedoimedo: the end of a long, beautiful run?".

I thought he had died, or, at the least he had shut down his web site!

It was only notsheet about a distro! lol (censorship sucks)

I'm much happier now. :)

Now, I'll be quiet...