Has anyone from the Maemo team actually responded to any bugs?
 

Just wondering.

All I see is people telling others to post bug reports. But there are so many reports.

Has anyone actually gotten a reply regarding a bug they posted? Or has anyone from the Maemo team actually responded to a bug report saying they will address it? I have this sinking feeling the website is just a giant black hole to keep people quiet while resources are put into Maemo 6 :rolleyes:

Re: Has anyone from the Maemo team actually responded to any bugs?
 

Yes they do, they always respond to my report after 1 working day.
Every bug reports will be looked at and get an appropriate respond as to what action will take place to it, so just file them when you find any bugs.

Re: Has anyone from the Maemo team actually responded to any bugs?
 

It would be great if we could get some info from the devs on what is currently being worked on, ETA on next firmware, etc.

Re: Has anyone from the Maemo team actually responded to any bugs?
 

Those fixing bugs don't know when Nokia will release firmware with the fixes.

ETA of the firmware is in Nokia's hand, Nokia releases whenever they feel right..

Re: Has anyone from the Maemo team actually responded to any bugs?
 

Well yeah, but they did promise a new fw before years end, which means they have just 25 days left to release it.

Re: Has anyone from the Maemo team actually responded to any bugs?
 

25 days = 3 weeks = plenty of time ;)

I reckon week 46 or 47 update will be out soon :)

Re: Has anyone from the Maemo team actually responded to any bugs?
 

Yeah, i mean i doubt they will release it past 24th, because they don't work on X-Mas do they? So it makes more less just 20 days left, but that still is alot of time. I think the new fw should fix alot things, as well as add new ones, right?
I expect the new firmware to feature:
- Added portrait mode for browser
- Added portrait mode for sms
- Added portrait mode for pdf
- Added mms
- Added more options for videorecorder
- Fixed noise issue with images
- Increased battery life by 10%
- Updated Ovi Maps to version 3.0

Re: Has anyone from the Maemo team actually responded to any bugs?
 

They might release it after Xmas. We have a few working days between christmas and new years in Finland. Alot of people decide to stay at work for those few days and save vacation days for our summer. I'd bet they'll release then.

Re: Has anyone from the Maemo team actually responded to any bugs?
 

- color fax functionality

Re: Has anyone from the Maemo team actually responded to any bugs?
 

You can check the bugtracker for potential fixes. Improving batterylife by 10% isn't really something to fix, since it is very application dependant. Also I doubt mms will make it in the next release because of it's complexity. Noise issue with images cannot be fixed without altering image quality. Noise is a feature of the sensor in the camera, you can diminsh it with certain software algorithms but that almost always results in a loss of detail as well.

Re: Has anyone from the Maemo team actually responded to any bugs?
 

thats hardly a request that the general public deems a priority.
sorry.

Re: Has anyone from the Maemo team actually responded to any bugs?
 

Wow. Brace yourself for disappointment then.

Re: Has anyone from the Maemo team actually responded to any bugs?
 

Why? You work in Nokia on the new firmware? I'm sorry, but what i listed is nothing special, but something the average non-geek user will expect. I'm not a normal user, but i don't request miracles, considering the firmware which the phone is being sold with is roughly already 5 weeks old.

Re: Has anyone from the Maemo team actually responded to any bugs?
 

New features are definitely nothing that developers are allowed to talk about, that's stuff for the marketing guys.
And Nokia never announces ETAs for firmware updates in advance...

Re: Has anyone from the Maemo team actually responded to any bugs?
 

6500 bugs are nothing and quite handable. For example GNOME Bugzilla has more than half a million. :-P

Nope. Mostly it's the Bugsquad and me who are the first folks to take a look at a bug report, but I definitely also see a growing number of Nokians that care. Plus I import useful bugs so Nokians must care about them, but unfortunately there is still too much stuff that happens behind a curtain, yeah, but I see slow but sure improvements.

Re: Has anyone from the Maemo team actually responded to any bugs?
 

Heh, I see some disappointments coming up for Jack6428... :-)

EDIT: Darn, sjgadsby wrote that already.

Re: Has anyone from the Maemo team actually responded to any bugs?
 

You basically ask for a lot of non-trivial-to-code features.
"Already 5 weeks old" is a bit funny to me. I wonder if you get huge new features every 5 weeks for Microsoft Windows too...
Interesting expectations here, but there is no unlimited manpower, plus also quite some bugs to fix.

Re: Has anyone from the Maemo team actually responded to any bugs?
 

Which is sad :(

Re: Has anyone from the Maemo team actually responded to any bugs?
 

Inline below.

Announced, so a given.

There's been no indication that Nokia has reversed course to consider a portrait on-screen keyboard necessary. So: very unlikely.

It's highly unlikely this is a priority item at this time. There are bigger bugs to squash. Also, community software, such as Xournal, can fill in here.

This may be added at some point, but I'd say it's unlikely to happen so soon.

Also unlikely to be a priority.

There was talk of work on various camera improvements at the summit. I wouldn't be surprised by some improvements to the camera, but "fixed" might be a hard target to hit for everyone, especially as the flash hardware simply is what it is.

Power efficiency is likely to see continued improvement. I wouldn't bank on any specific percentage though.

Nokia has repeatedly stated Ovi Maps on Maemo and Ovi Maps on Symbian are two entiely different programs, and the versions and features of each will be increased independantly. Therefore, asking for "version 3.0" on Maemo is meaningless.

Re: Has anyone from the Maemo team actually responded to any bugs?
 

Looking at some of the sample images (for instance this one), to me the artefacts from excessive noise reduction actually seem to be more annoying than the noise itself.

Re: Has anyone from the Maemo team actually responded to any bugs?
 

it's helpful to avoid ill-formed assumptions when asking questions-- helps avoid pointless arguments.

but the answer is yes.

Re: Has anyone from the Maemo team actually responded to any bugs?
 

That photo looks very uncharacteristic of N900 photos taken in daylight. I noticed the directory is 08 2009, was this a very early sample?

Re: Has anyone from the Maemo team actually responded to any bugs?
 

While you're at it, why not add "extra inches" to the screen, via a firmware update...
:rolleyes:

Re: Has anyone from the Maemo team actually responded to any bugs?
 

You know, this is rather interesting in a way, seeing all these people who have no clue about the sheer complexity of software release and maintenance getting to peek inside the process - and have a voice :eek:

Maybe there needs to be some sort of new user orientation that forces them to go through some article about the difficulty of creating and testing software before they can post a new thread complaining about the "lack of updates" or "why are there bugs in the software"
(I guess I am only half-joking).

Re: Has anyone from the Maemo team actually responded to any bugs?
 

No, it's much easier to just ignore all that and start complaints with "There's no excuse ..." :)

Re: Has anyone from the Maemo team actually responded to any bugs?
 

I think the frustration is not without reason. Waiting suck, and long waiting suck even more. I think it is mainly caused by the monolithic release process - all or nothing. There is a release and it has certain things it should have. It there is issues with address book, the updates for browser are no-go until the address book is fixed. I understand it is one way, but I can't see it as customer friendly or efficient way to operate.

If somebody else thinks the same, please add some weight by voting up the following brainstorm: http://maemo.org/community/brainstor..._packages-002/

Re: Has anyone from the Maemo team actually responded to any bugs?
 

Naturally! I pity any involved Maemo team members that have as part of their job description navigating the tumultuous seas of irritated masses on the "intartoobzwebz" :D ! Seriously, after years in software QA I see some of these posts and immediately think "what alternate universe do these people live in?"

Re: Has anyone from the Maemo team actually responded to any bugs?
 

I know it may seem to be a simple issue of just updating some components and sending them out but it is a complex issue.

I agree, some updates would be nice to be released earlier (like having the hardware keyboard language switch working, for instance :-( ) but remember that this software will come packaged with the device so everything work together in concert out of the box.

Anytime you alter code that interacts through API/services/processes/et.c. you run the risk of inadvertently altering the expected input of other applications, causing them to fail or work in an undesirable way. Especially critical in a complex system like these devices that come with all this software packaged, installed and ready to go from point of sale. Legacy/regression testing is time consuming. Even solely crunching through automated testing cannot solve this (if nothing else it can give a false sense of security in some situations but that is a separate discussion ;) ).
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_testing

Re: Has anyone from the Maemo team actually responded to any bugs?
 

Of course it can be complex but it is not always. Maemo is more like a Linux distribution than one single binary. If you do modify libc, you're better to test a lot of stuff as almost everything has dependencies with it. But if you fixes for two applications which are not related..

Application is ready to release - run all possible test for it and the system -> they work -> release the application. Another application is ready -> run all possible test for it and the system -> they work -> release the application. Nokia has weekly builds and I'm quite certain that some poor bastard are testing from week to week the same applications which haven't had any changes..

Re: Has anyone from the Maemo team actually responded to any bugs?
 

Maybe there should two different types of updates, one specifically aimed a bug fixing and another to add new features...

Just a raw idea, because being forced to expect a big patch to fix small annoying issues that could be fixed in little patches is going to piss off people a lot. I know is a weird comparison, but it is like having to wait for a Service Pack while a small KB fix could solve your issue; in the M$ world.

Re: Has anyone from the Maemo team actually responded to any bugs?
 

I don't care what version it says it is, but I would expect it to be feature-for-feature equivalent or better than S60 OVI Maps 3.0. Where is the 3d routing? Where is our turn-by-turn (paid or otherwise)? Where is our offline loading of maps?

While i'm *****ing...
FIX YOUR EMAIL CLIENT. FIX EXCHANGE. RELEASE NOKIA PC/MAC SYNC CLIENTS (how about listing the n900 as supported on your site??).

You guys are saying don't ask for miracles, but features that were promised are catastrophically bugged. I love the phone, but I thought Maemo was supposed to be an evolution of a mature OS. Bugs that I'm seeing are ridiculous to see in v5. People are talking about getting Maemo6 early next year? Finish Maemo5.

Maybe step 5/5 is fxing bugs in a mobile strategy.

Re: Has anyone from the Maemo team actually responded to any bugs?
 

Hey dude, u are.like mindreader or sumthing ;)
(See and vote: http://maemo.org/community/brainstor..._packages-002/ )

As I wrote elsewhere, I think current release model can be traced back to days when full firmware flashing was done in store backroom. Hell, you didn't want to update as then you had to reinstall and configure everything. Then you wanted one big package with everything. Now in the era of "Over The Air" updates, this is no longer the case. Updates can come whenever.

Re: Has anyone from the Maemo team actually responded to any bugs?
 

That is often the case. I think its always favourable to be light on the image pre-processing.

The image can be captured and saved quicker. This allows more shots per minute and saves battery power. Also when you snap the picture you want it saved NOW so you can instantly take another, not a few seconds later. So processing will always be primitive (meaning less precise and lower quality) compared to what you can do in GIMP, Photoshop, etc, where it doesn't matter if it takes 30 seconds or minutes to process.

Also its far better being able to undo if the processing makes the image look worse, so doing as little processing as possible is ideal. In many cases you might take an excellent photo but the mandatory processing will actually cause a poor result. This is why professional cameras do RAW mode with no processing whatsoever.

That said, as we are dealing with Linux here I would expect third-party software to offer less or no processing, whereas the stock software to be a "happy medium" trying to get the best perceived quality the majority of the time, so average joe can upload straight to flickr.

Re: Has anyone from the Maemo team actually responded to any bugs?
 

And this is exactly what I am talking about. The paradigm of monolithic months-apart big patches should be replaced by a constant stream of small OTA patches (use the feature!).

Maemo 5 is very mature in many areas, however, the whole PIM section is quite new, and hence, full of bugs.

Re: Has anyone from the Maemo team actually responded to any bugs?
 

It seems like most of the complaining comes from end-users (myself included) who aren't used to an evolving mobile OS. The Maemo platform allows for constant development, somewhat alleviating the complaints about an operating system, and also potentially tending to the major bugs with quick updates that most OS leave unaddressed or only address in periodic big-fixes.

Unfortunately, Nokia decided to release this device before so many of these bugs to the major functions were fixed. And once a device is on the market, it is definitely fair to scrutinize it. Bugs and updates can only be addressed so quickly, so it was really in Nokia's best interest to just hold off on releasing it until it was ready to go.

I think people will always be more forgiving of a delay if the result is a more stable and functional product. There may be some gripes regarding a delay, but those would disappear shortly after release if the phone lives up to expectations.

I know the maemo 5 interface is great, but releasing it with bugs and undergoing a "fix-as-we-go" mentality just because the OS supports it isn't the best idea. If Nokia truly wanted to earn some of its smartphone users back, it would have released the N900 when it was ready to compete in those applications and functions that are most important to smartphone users. How many smartphone users do you think are salivating at the idea of addressing OS bugs themselves? Most just want their email and messaging to work.

Personally, the N900 early distribution breakdown (ahem!) combined with the lack of relatively common phone features and major function bugs has forced me to seriously reconsider picking the N900 up until later in the spring. By then, the price would've dropped to the price that it would have been if my preorder had been fulfilled while my rebate was valid (!), most of the bugs to the major functions would've been addressed (presumably), and the basic phone functions that are absent (mms, customized ringtones/alerts, intuitive BT functionality) should be present.

Re: Has anyone from the Maemo team actually responded to any bugs?
 

Absolutely. Push out feature packs every now and again when you deem them worthy. Bug fixes should roll out after a fast QA verification. I have seen ZERO core updates so far.

Re: Has anyone from the Maemo team actually responded to any bugs?
 

Nokia could absolutely not afford to release Maemo 5 late. With Symbian ^3 and ^4 far ahead yet, they needed something this year to keep their "street credibility" as being a top player, and that was the N900. Their stock even went up when it was released!

It is sad that people confuse pretty UI with advanced capabilities, but such is the state of things, and the only device with a top notch UI was the N900. Consider also how much time had passed since the N810 release, that there was no Elephantia version of the OS after Diablo (Elephantia features got integrated into Fremantle); this forum itself was becoming a wasteland before the announcement, and people were screaming bloody murder after the delay...

Yeah, they couldn't release it later.

Re: Has anyone from the Maemo team actually responded to any bugs?
 

See, defects are funny things. They tend to appear once the product is in the wild :p

I know it may sound facetious but to repeat myself, no piece of complex technology is ever released free of them. It is a question of what code/feature coverage can be done in the time/money/miscellaneous resources available. None of those are infinite. And having been on the other side of this, I can tell you that signing off on something knowing that it was impossible to catch everything and hoping that the test plans and coverage you assembled caught the critical issues with a reasonable degree of confidence is, well... harrowing. Exciting but harrowing :)

Yes, I many times have been in the situation where I had to make a judgment call on what to test and what to skip on a very tight schedule. Sometimes, that gamble would backfire.

In any event, being on the bleeding edge of a new platform (or semi-new) can be exciting but certainly is not for everyone! I can certainly understand if some people would rather wait out the first release of Maemo 5. For most people, I'd say that step 5 is the right one, not step 4 (at least if I understand correctly what Nokia's announced plans are).

Re: Has anyone from the Maemo team actually responded to any bugs?
 

These days expectations are too high and patience too short.

Re: Has anyone from the Maemo team actually responded to any bugs?
 

Maybe, maybe not. It'll just get more demanding when this goes more towards the consumer market. I see this part of the issue which hasn't really been addressed in last four years, before there was talks of how closed the process is - it is just one manifestation of closed monolithic release cycles. Changelogs, anybody? Constant update roll makes consumers more satisfied as the progress can be noticed. It is not so difficult to make changelogs for "nerds" then either. Nokia should switch to this operating mode now, not when the next device for consumers is out, as then it is too late to practice.

This is one reason why large monolithic updates are bad. As they tend to have these issues which are not found and which will not be addressed until next release. This create a lot of criticism, discussion and bad words. "Waiting sucks".

"Time for change" ;) http://maemo.org/community/brainstor..._packages-002/