4:06 p.m.
I'm trying to find out what's going on with Java in Fedora. Fedora 31 was released
with a broken Eclipse. I subscribe to the java-devel mailing list but there is no traffic
there. If I go to "Join a Group" and click on "J" there is simply
nothing there...
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/accounts/group/list/J*?_csrf_token=d8baf5...
Please take an example from the recent Boeing failures where management pushed the
engineers to cut corners to meet release dates instead of taking the time to test and fix
problems. Anyone who has worked in an office can see that is what happened. I don't
know if it's management that is the problem with Fedora since open source works a bit
differently than your typical corporation. But there is a problem and it's resulting
in a low quality product. You need automated tests. You need a suit of manual tests. For
every package. And you need to take the time to fix problems when they're discovered.
Software Engineering isn't just about writing code. It's about creating a product
that works for your end user. Your end-user has to be your priority and that means quality
has to be a priority.
The poor quality of Fedora in general and the poor support for Java is basically forcing
me to use Ubuntu just so that I can get a system that actually works. I've been using
Fedora for a long time and I hate to switch away from it. But, I do actually have to get
work done. Between gnome shell crashes, long periods of the whole system being
unresponsive, core Java programs that I can't even install, mysterious network
failures in nfs, avahi, sshd and submitting bug reports that almost always end up failing
to submit after spending 15 minutes collecting data...I can't get any work done.
I think the main problem is that you are not spending enough time on testing and fixing
problems before you release. Maybe 6 months is too short of a cycle for the number of
people you have. You can't cut a buggy release and depend on your users to find the
bugs for you. If you do, you are going to lose all your users. As much as I love Linux and
Fedora, I have to admit that the quality of Fedora is about equal to that of Windows 95.
There were a few releases where quality was pretty good but 31 is in the gutter. The
reason I use Linux is to get a better quality system than Windows. But, that just
isn't happening with Fedora.
I really apologize for being an a-hole here but I'm saying these things because I
REALLY care about Fedora and they really need to be said. Things need to change...quality
needs to be the highest priority. And I'm willing to help but I have tried to join
projects several times with no responses. The Java project doesn't even seem to
exist.
Being that Java is the most popular programming language in the industry by multiple
metrics, most corporations use it, a large part of Red Hat's business is Java, Hadoop
is written in Java, I'd expect to see much better support for it in Fedora. But,
it's like a second-class citizen. Python, the slowest language ever created (except
for Ruby), is about the only thing people care about. Python is part of the problem with
Fedora as it is a big part of what makes Fedora slow. Anyone who has compared the
performance of dnf versus apt can see that dnf sucks...bad. Apt is extremely fast and dnf
is extremely slow. There is no room for argument there. It's just the truth. I'm
not saying that to be mean. I'm trying to point out a serious problem that needs to be
addressed. It does not matter now nice a language is to program in. What matters is the
user experience. Programs that are integral to the operating system should not be written
in Python or Java. They need to be written in an memory
and CPU efficient language like C/C++ or Ada. If you could get better performance out of
Python, that could be an option too, like maybe running Python programs in pypy instead of
regular python. The important thing is getting the right user experience. By that I mean
that the program has to run fast and not take up large amounts of memory on the user's
machine so that other programs don't have enough room to run.
These issues apply to Gnome, Python and Java. As a Java programmer I understand that Java
uses massive amounts of memory. It's not an appropriate implementation language for
operating system level components because of that. If you have 15 Java programs running on
an end-user machine, the machine is going to run out of memory. It is fine to run 1 or 2
application-level programs on an end-user machine. And Java is great on the server where
you can have a large amount of memory.
Python has the same problem but in addition it is also slow. If you think Java is slow you
need to re-educate yourself, because it is not. You can test this yourself by writing some
equivalent Java and Python programs and timing them. I'm not saying anything here you
can't verify on your own.
Gnome uses way too much of memory for an end-user's machine. It has an embedded
JavaScript interpreter with JavaScript plugins that are slow. Most people don't have
32 GB of RAM on their machine so the memory consumption and the slowness has a real effect
on your end users. Remember it's your end-user that matters, not how it runs on your
32 GB i9 development machine.
I have an 8GB machine which I think is pretty standard these days. Again, I'm talking
about end-user machines, not developer machines. You have to have a mind set of what your
end user is going to experience. But if I run Gnome, a Java IDE and a web browser, I'm
pretty much out of memory. I don't want my operating system consuming all my memory. I
don't use a computer just to run an operating system. I use it to run applications. I
want my operating system to use a minimum amount of memory so that I have memory for my
applications to run. Because the point of using a computer is to run applications, not
just an operating system.
My apologies if I offended anyone. I am just trying to communicate to you how your
end-users, like me, are experiencing the system. My experience is no different from anyone
else that I've talked to who has tried Fedora. In fact, everyone I know has already
given up on it. I don't know anyone besides myself that continues to believe that
Fedora is worth using. Everyone else that I know who uses Linux, uses Ubuntu. I can't
even get my kids to use Linux. One of my boys told me that the default Gnome desktop that
I provided to him to use was the worst computer experience he's ever had. He'll
never bother to try Linux again because he thinks it's stupid. Because of Gnome.
In another case I tried to set up a Fedora system to run games, as that is what kids want
to do. That was an utter failure because Fedora can't run any game that kids want to
run today. The ability to run games cannot be underestimated because that is how you get
the younger generation interested. That isn't really the fault of Fedora, I'm just
mentioning that as an example of how, in general, the experience of the end-user is not
being taken into account. And Fedora is failing to capture and retain users.
I've also set up a Fedora Server to serve my Dropbox files over nfs to other machines
I have that can't access Dropbox directly. It also runs dnsmasq. But, half the time
this machine is unresponsive on the network. It doesn't respond to avahi requests
until I restart the avahi daemon. nfs becomes unresponsive and ssh sessions become
unresponsive for long periods of time. This machine worked fine under Windows. I have a 20
year old UltraSparc 5 running Solaris 8 that works better. It always responds on the
network. Nfs, ssh, etc work flawlessly on it.
This all leads me to believe that Fedora is not being tested properly. Gnome should also
be required to go through user-acceptance testing. Software should be required to meet the
needs of end users, not the other way around. When Microsoft created the start menu and
the task bar, they did it in response to proper end user testing where they observed how
end users used and reacted to the system and then created solutions to the problems they
experienced. THAT is how user interfaces should be developed. (Probably the only thing
that Microsoft ever did right.) Certainly not by allowing one person to guess about how it
should work and then trying to force everyone else to accept that theoretical idea until
it seems like the right way to do it.