Now that we have hundreds of N900 testers it's a good time to settle on something that we have discussed many time in the past: the big majority of users should rely on the maemo.org Extras repository and the official Nokia repos only.

Anybody installing extras-testing, extras-devel, a third party repository, a single deb package or any combination requiring openng xterm is not a pure end user anymore but a tester. At least s/he should know! So please think it twice before posting, forwarding, reposting and recommending anything out of the stable repositories at nokia.com and maemo.org.

Two very concrete examples that current N900 users can suffer already today:

- Full memory because of apps ignoring the recommendation of installing big files in the internal memory.

- Significantly shorter use times because of widgets and apps not paying much attention to power management.

The Maemo community has put a big effort creating a quality assurance process in order to guarantee certain standards. Advanced users aware of the risks of unstable software are helping evaluating whether apps are ready for end users or not. Don't bypass all this hard work by making popular buggy software. At least not without a big warning.

End users might be happy in the short term with your links and tricks but the risk of making their Maemo life miserable are high if they are unaware of the possible consequences. Instead, giving feedback to the generally goodwilling developers will help them fixing the problems and offering the software end users want without hacks, tricks and dirt under the carpet.

BIG THANK YOU for reading this, propagating the message and helping out.

should similar warning be put into apps-section and make it sticky? And in general one or two sticky threads to essential sections wouldn't hurt when people start getting their n900s

Agree. I think this is a VERY important point and should be written all over the Extras repository. Even though maemo has been available for years, now is the time for the "firsth impression" for it.

This is a very important point but I'd say the most of the applications in Extras right now aren't using the internal memory.
Sould it be a MUST in the QA list? IMHO it should be (applications and specially dependences).

I agree and ( although not yet aimed at the N900 ) to that end I have just added the following to the top of the first post of my announce thread:-

WARNING

Feel free to play with this software, but be aware that this is software under development. Do not install software from either Extras-Devel or Extras-Testing unless you know exactly what you are doing.

Unless you are a developer or an experienced tester you should not have these repositories configured.

Until informed otherwise all software refered to in this thread is suspect and may seriously effect the utility of your device. Although not dangerous to it physically it may seriously affect the utility or battery life of your device in lots of as yet, unknown ways.

It may be worth mandating something like this for all.

Rick

On behalf of Teddy Bear Users everywhere, thanks for this. I am not (yet) at a place where I'd know what to do if I installed something beta and it went err... belly up. If I volunteer to test something, I want to now that's what I'm doing - and have fairly quick access to the developer in case the whole thing hangs and I don't know what to do!

Nothing here sounds unreasonable, but I hope that developers won't shy away from introducing adventurous users to less stable programs/unapproved-but-useful-hackery. By all means, put up disclaimers that a solution for extras-testing isn't yet perfect, and may even have unwanted side-effects, but if you think half a solution from testing is better then no solution at all, please share.

One of the (many) things that I think makes the N900 better than the iPhone is that there's a community that treats users like adults. Users don't need to be nannied and told "oh you can't install that, it's much too untested". From time to time users do need to be told "that's probably a dumb idea since it will drain your battery in 2 hours" and speaking for users, I'm always greatful for the warning, but in the end, I'm going to make my own decisions about what packages/repositories/debs/etc. to install or enable.

In french :

ATTENTION

Ces logiciels sont en cours de développement. N'installez pas de logiciel provenant des dépôts Extras-Devel ou Extra-Testing sans savoir exactement ce que vous faites.

Ces dépôts ne devraient pas être configurés si n'avez pas d'expérience en tant que testeur ou développeur.

Tous les logiciels référencés ici doivent être considérés, pour le moment, comme suspects. Ils peuvent en effet sérieusement altérer les fonctionnalités de votre appareil ou diminuer de manière significative la durée de vie de votre batterie.

In German:

Warnung


Dieses Programm befindet sich noch in der Entwicklung. Installieren Sie bitte keine Programme aus den Quellen Extras-Devel oder Extras-Testing, solange Sie sich nicht genau über die möglichen Auswirkungen informiert haben.

Diese beiden Quellen sollten nur von Entwicklern oder erfahrenen Benutzern eingetragen werden.

Sofern nicht anders angegeben, kann nicht ausgeschlossen werden, dass alle in diesem Thread erwähnten Programme die Funktionsweise Ihres Gerätes ernsthaft beeinträchtigen könnten.
Obwohl die Gefahr eines Hardware-Defekts äußerst gering ist, könnten die Funktionsweise oder die Lebensdauer des Akkus auf unvorhergesehene Weise Schaden erleiden.

Personally, I hate those kind of warnings. They are addressing the issue from the wrong (=negative) angle.
Suppose I'm not a developer, I'm not an experienced tester and I really don't know what I'm doing. How is that ever going to change if I follow warnings like this? The only way to learn what is going on is to ignore warning like this and try it anyway. The only way to become an experienced tester is to test software which actually has bugs, etc.

The warning should really be phrased positive, e.g. "Feel free to play with this software, but be aware that..." And add the 'Restore factory image' instructions in there, doing so will scare more people away then any warning will.