Interview with Nick? [Question Research]

phrac · 2011-06-09 01:54:42

Hi
It's more than obvious that Nick works tirelessly on this forum helping people out. As one of the masterminds of xfce and someone who is always there to help I'd like to conduct a simple text based interview with Nick.

The best approach I think would be people submitting their own questions they would like to have Nick answer and if he's cool with it we could make a new thread with say 20 or so picked questions we agree that we would like to hear his answers to.

So what are your most demanding questions? Let's discuss them please!

As a note I don't have any personal contact with Nick if he is unhappy with this concept I'll shut it down but I think he'll hopefully like the idea!

ComputerBob · 2011-06-09 11:27:26

Nick, if you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?

P.S. Generally, it's best to ask the potential interviewee if they would like to be interviewed before you ask everyone else to think of questions to ask them.

Last edited by ComputerBob (2011-06-09 11:31:50)

phrac · 2011-06-09 13:48:33

Your right ComputerBob!

I think I was just excited about the concept and should have got permission from Nick first as I don't want to appear rude.

Mmm perhaps if there is a mod out there who can close the thread?

Nick · 2011-06-09 16:14:46

Yeah sure, as long as the questions are relevant.

phrac · 2011-06-09 16:23:09

Nick wrote:

Yeah sure, as long as the questions are relevant.

Wow! That's great news and very generous of you. Thanks Nick.

Like ComputerBob said I should have asked your permission first. Sorry I didn't mean any disrespect I just was a bit caught up in the idea. It's really cool of you to give it your blessing and I'm looking forward to hearing what questions other people have before I add my own.

Thanks again.

olivierd · 2011-06-09 17:59:19

And about others Xfce core developers (I think in particular Jannis Pohlmann) ?

jannis · 2011-06-09 21:45:46

Nick just pointed me to this thread. I'd be fine with answering your questions (despite not being active in this forum).

phrac · 2011-06-10 06:27:20

jannis wrote:

Nick just pointed me to this thread. I'd be fine with answering your questions (despite not being active in this forum).

Thats great news and very generous of you, thanks Jannis! I'd certainly hope one of the questions would be about Xfce Foundation so it's great to have the President available to comment.

Originally I thought people would have so many questions there might have to be some kind of debate over which made it to the top 20. Although it seems a bit slower than I thought. I hope you guys are OK to wait for say maximum of a week (from OP) to see if it picks up and more people get involved?

If there is still only ComputerBob's submission after this time I'll list the questions myself as I think it would be a shame to lose the opportunity. Also I don't want to keep you guys hanging around waiting when your already working on so many things.

stqn · 2011-06-11 10:18:39

Here are some questions:

Are any of the Xfce devs paid to work on Xfce?

Do you envision donations to the foundation to pay maybe one developer full-time?

What do you think of the basic income?

What do you think about bitcoins?

Is the bright blue fade colour of xfce4-session something that won't ever change?
(I'm running a patched version that fades to black instead, to spare my eyes when I shut my computer down at night.)

Is any of the Xfce devs running a dark theme (bright text on dark background)?

Is any of the Xfce devs using the option to *not* raise windows when they receive focus?

Do you have automated tests in place to check for regressions in RAM and CPU usage?

When 4.8 was released (on Arch Linux), some panel plugins weren't working anymore. I'm thinking about the mail plugin and the sensors plugin. Currently the sensors plugin is crashing at startup. If you were aware of these problems, what motivated you to release 4.8 anyway? If you weren't, does it mean you need (more) dedicated testers?

Do Xfce devs generally test each others' changes before official release?

Which IDE or text editor do you use? (I'm using Code::Blocks, but it kills clipman every time I copy something...)

Is anyone really using the annoying session-saving feature?

Do you have statistics about what Xfce users... use? (Their settings and the Xfce programs they run.)

Edit: One more: Why aren't devs using this forum? It seems that discussions about Xfce development are hidden (there is no link that I can see on this web site to any mailing list or forum about Xfce development, even on the Get Involved page.)

Feel free to cherrypick . Some questions are probably more interesting than others...

Last edited by stqn (2011-06-11 10:34:12)

phrac · 2011-06-11 19:47:47

Thanks a lot for the contribution stqn.

I'm not sure how many more people will submit but I'm going to add my own over the next couple of days. As I put in the post above I think one week from OP gives people a chance to add theirs too without expecting Nick and Jannis to wait too long. So a new thread will be made on 16/06 with a more accurate title as they are both kindly contributing.

desktorp · 2011-06-11 20:55:05

It has been suggested that recent changes to the desktop environment neighborhood have forced Xfce to evolve beyond its original ideals. Comments such as "LXDE is the new Xfce" and "Xfce is the new Gnome 2" are enough to stir up conversation amongst users, but how do (Xfce's) developers feel about these comparisons?

phrac · 2011-06-11 21:22:43

That's a great question desktorp, thanks. I'll have to try hard to consider mine as thoughtfully.

As a note... I think to be fair to the developers any questions not specific to xfce, financially related or those which could be deemed as negative won't make it to the new thread.

phrac · 2011-06-12 06:31:58

About time I added my own questions!

There's a funny joke on the Wiki about hiring the Xfce team! Smart phones are getting a lot of attention nowadays so if you were approached by a company what kind of things would you want to see in mobile Xfce?

How are things going with the Xfce Foundation? What developments are you looking forward to in the future?

I'm not a user of Macs although I like some of the features. One of the things I have seen banded about is their color labels system and some of the frustration converts to Linux experience with not having similar functionality or the ability to retain the labels when importing data. As developers how do you balance time between working on shiny new features, awareness of cross platform compatibility and the latest DE trends?

jeromeg · 2011-06-12 08:29:51

stqn wrote:

Here are some questions:
Edit: One more: Why aren't devs using this forum? It seems that discussions about Xfce development are hidden (there is no link that I can see on this web site to any mailing list or forum about Xfce development, even on the Get Involved page.)

The forum is intended to be used for support, we already have our channels for development and multiplying channels brings no benefit.

For development we have two main channels:
- mailing lists, listed on http://www.xfce.org/community: the main one is xfce4-dev. Just subscribe if you want to follow the discussions and feel free to take part.
- IRC channel: #xfce-dev on freenode where all developers hang, mostly at the end of day (European time).

So no discussion is hidden, it's just that the forum is not (and should not) be used for discussing development and bug reports as we don't want to have to keep track of 45 different places.

jeromeg · 2011-06-12 08:37:27

stqn wrote:

Here are some questions:
Do you have automated tests in place to check for regressions in RAM and CPU usage?

There are no such tests. The only automated tests we have are build tests using http://buildbot.xfce.org/ which allows us to make sure our code builds fine on several platforms and architecture. For RAM and CPU usage, we rely on our own testing and bug reports.

stqn wrote:

When 4.8 was released (on Arch Linux), some panel plugins weren't working anymore. I'm thinking about the mail plugin and the sensors plugin. Currently the sensors plugin is crashing at startup. If you were aware of these problems, what motivated you to release 4.8 anyway? If you weren't, does it mean you need (more) dedicated testers?

We were aware of those problems but thought it was not worth delaying the release for this: plugins are not part of the Xfce core and have their own release schedule. We have a limited development team and you can't expect us to maintain all Xfce goodies which are supposed to have their own maintainers. For me, it means that we need more contributors willing to help fixing the issues and to get involved with maintenance, our testing community is already doing a wonderful job and we generally have very good bug reports.

stqn wrote:

Do Xfce devs generally test each others' changes before official release?

Of course! We all run the development branch of Xfce and report bugs for the modules we don't maintain ourselves. Hey, what did you expect?

stqn · 2011-06-13 21:04:57

Thanks for answering, Jérôme.

jannis · 2011-06-14 20:31:20

BTW, so far I'm fine with all of these questions, including those about being paid or not and even the basic income question is kinda interesting. Personally, I'm happy to answer ANY kind of questions as long as they are not racist, sexist or offensive in general.

phrac · 2011-06-16 07:41:54

Well... that was pretty cool reading all the info Jérôme has already added above!

Also thanks to you Jannis it's great to see your comment about how open you are to the questions. I did comment about filtering stuff, my view with just to deter any future negative comments and what Nick posted about keeping the questions relevant. This is even better though as I can list all the questions in the new thread!

I'd like to thank everyone who posted questions and for the great support and time out from the developers. Of course I mentioned putting all the questions in a new thread from today. This should hopefully achieve the aims of grouping the questions people have submitted and providing a more appropriate title now more developers are kindly giving their time too.

So here is the new thread --> "Questions And Answers With The Xfce Developers" - I'm hoping that title is OK eek!

Last edited by phrac (2011-06-16 08:01:46)

ComputerBob · 2011-06-16 15:00:06

My "tree" question was a joke -- an example of the type of question that a very poor manager will read off of a sheet of prepared questions when interviewing a job candidate.

stqn · 2011-06-16 15:27:48

Some of my questions might seem rude ("annoying session saving"), or not really related to Xfce (bitcoins...). It was just what was passing though my head, and I wrote everything down since almost no-one seemed to have questions to ask . I'm still interested in the answers of course, but I guess if I had taken the time to formulate them better I would have regrouped some of them and made them more "serious"...

phrac · 2011-06-16 16:00:36

@ComputerBob + @stqn
OK guys I've clipped some of the questions as requested. Check #17; I've left in the basic income one.

I'm hoping that if the developers are happy the new thread might provide a kind of ongoing format for new questions so there may be further opportunity to add more. Of course this is entirely up to them and I appreciate the generous commitment they've already shown.

I think to some degree this thread needs to close otherwise things will get a bit confusing for everyone.

Last edited by phrac (2011-06-16 16:20:22)

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#1 2011-06-09 01:54:42

Interview with Nick? [Question Research]

#2 2011-06-09 11:27:26

Re: Interview with Nick? [Question Research]

#3 2011-06-09 13:48:33

Re: Interview with Nick? [Question Research]

#4 2011-06-09 16:14:46

Re: Interview with Nick? [Question Research]

#5 2011-06-09 16:23:09

Re: Interview with Nick? [Question Research]

#6 2011-06-09 17:59:19

Re: Interview with Nick? [Question Research]

#7 2011-06-09 21:45:46

Re: Interview with Nick? [Question Research]

#8 2011-06-10 06:27:20

Re: Interview with Nick? [Question Research]

#9 2011-06-11 10:18:39

Re: Interview with Nick? [Question Research]

#10 2011-06-11 19:47:47

Re: Interview with Nick? [Question Research]

#11 2011-06-11 20:55:05

Re: Interview with Nick? [Question Research]

#12 2011-06-11 21:22:43

Re: Interview with Nick? [Question Research]

#13 2011-06-12 06:31:58

Re: Interview with Nick? [Question Research]

#14 2011-06-12 08:29:51

Re: Interview with Nick? [Question Research]

#15 2011-06-12 08:37:27

Re: Interview with Nick? [Question Research]

#16 2011-06-13 21:04:57

Re: Interview with Nick? [Question Research]

#17 2011-06-14 20:31:20

Re: Interview with Nick? [Question Research]

#18 2011-06-16 07:41:54

Re: Interview with Nick? [Question Research]

#19 2011-06-16 15:00:06

Re: Interview with Nick? [Question Research]

#20 2011-06-16 15:27:48

Re: Interview with Nick? [Question Research]

#21 2011-06-16 16:00:36

Re: Interview with Nick? [Question Research]

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