[Freedombox-discuss] Iomega iConnect lessons for FreedomBox

[James Vasile]

On Thu, 24 Mar 2011 09:40:35 -0400, Les Orchard <l.m.orchard at pobox.com> wrote:
> On 3/24/11 8:56 AM, James Vasile wrote:
> >  Tremendously helpful writeup. Thanks, John.
> >
> >  "One thing well" should be our mantra. It's guidance I try to follow
> >  in my own life. Even when the box grows more functions, it's good
> >  advice-- when using it as a NAS, users shouldn't have to compromise
> >  on interface or experience because the thing is also a tor node.
> 
> Something I think is interesting here, comparing on-the-shelf gadgets 
> with a Debian distribution:

Just to be clear (and I think you already know this), this project is
not a Debian distribution.

> 
> Commercial gadgets are very good at hiding the guts, even when they 
> happen to be Linux-based. Occasionally, they tolerate some tinkering, 
> but only in rare celebrated cases (eg. the Linksys WRT54g)
> 
> In our case, we're working from the opposite direction. That is, we have 
> a pile of Debian-based ingredients from which to tinker and build a 
> FreedomBox, but we'll at some point need a unified umbrella of user 
> interface and convention to tie together disparate parts. That seems to 
> go against the grain a bit, I think, but needs to be addressed in some way.
> 
> At Mozilla, we have a UX design team: http://planet.firefox.com/ux/

Yes, we need one of those.

> 
> Their decisions are sometimes controversial, but there are at least 
> people considering the issues overall and making the decisions.
> 
> >  Bulletproofing is important but can only take us so far. We have to
> >  think hard about end-user support. The usual "Find us in IRC and
> >  hope nobody insults you." isn't sufficient here.
> 
> +1
> 
> >  I'd love to hear ideas on how we support end users and prevent
> >  early-adoption failure.
> 
> FWIW, we have this at Mozilla: http://support.mozilla.com/

Oh yes, that's the page I close when my kids hit F1 while I'm
browsing. :) Now that I actually look at its content, I agree that's
pretty nice.

> 
> That combines wiki pages, question/answer forums, and an occasionally 
> open live chat - mostly driven by volunteers. The software behind it 
> (named Kitsune) is all open source as a Django web app, though it's not 
> well-packaged by any means.

I cloned <https://github.com/jsocol/kitsune.git> and will play around
with it.  Thanks!

> 
> I'm not sure whether this particular software is appropriate for the 
> FreedomBox, but it's working pretty well for Firefox


Thanks for the info.  We're going to need something of this kind, so I'm
quite interested in it.  We already have the Debian wiki, and I'm a
little hesitant to have two wikis.  But maybe a dev wiki and a help wiki
makes sense.  This takes us in a useful direction.  Thanks, Les!