FESCo Meeting Summary for 20090424

[Kevin Fenzi]

On Thu, 30 Apr 2009 14:35:35 -0400
Bill Nottingham <notting at redhat.com> wrote:

> Adam Williamson (awilliam at redhat.com) said: 
> > "I want to select an input channel" is not remotely atypical.
> 
> But then, the solution (in a time-based release system) is to decide
> at the appropriate point that the new code does not hit the required
> feature matrix yet, and shelve the new code until the next release
> where it meets the required feature matrix. (See: Empathy).

Agreed. Unfortunately, sometimes it's hard to assess that, particularly
for desktop features that don't get more widespread testing until very
late in the cycle.  (See: we need more people using rawhide day to day
as their main machines). 

> Where the issue arises here is that we've passed that appropriate
> point in the schedule; since we can't push to the next release now,
> nor do we have time to do anything new sanely, I'm not convinced that
> anything we do/add now will be sufficiently better than doing nothing
> at all.

I think offering a gui mixer applet menu item for those folks that (for
various reasons) sound doesn't work out of the box for is still worth
while. (Although I agree time is running out...)

I agree that the Gnome folks should be able to setup their desktop
however they feel is best. It's their product. However, I also think
that because it's the desktop that people will see by default and is
very heavily associated with what people think of when they think
"fedora", the Fedora project should have input sometimes in how it's
integrated. 

I have 2 selfish reasons for wanting a gui mixer to be shipped with
F11: 

1. I like Fedora. I want it to be well spoken of and enjoyed by anyone
who tries it out. I think that doing this will reduce the amount of
people who are unhappy/mad/displeased with the Fedora I love. 
I think that for those people who the volume works for won't even
notice it's there. 

2. I help out on various fedora support channels. #fedora on irc,
fedora-list and I have even been poking around on fedoraforum. 
I think without this the support burden would be increased on all of
these channels. The way I see it: 
a Most people - everything works, sounds good. 
b Some people - sound does not work for, they give up and go to another
  distro or post angry messages and go somewhere else. 
c Some people - sound does not work, they look around the menus and
  find a mixer. Tweak it and get it working. 
d Some people - Go to support channels in various states of upset and
  get told to use 'alsamixer -c0' in a terminal, or xfce4-mixer or
  something else and get it to work. 

I think adding c there decreases the number of people who get to d. 
Hopefully in the next cycle those cases can be identified and we will
no longer need c in there. I don't see how adding step c really affects
anything but some users for whom sound isn't ideal. 

> 
> Bill
> 

kevin
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