I don’t think @pike is the problem. You cannot expect to change how people are and how they express themselves (possible to some degree but unlikely in a broader sense).
Could have him worded it differently? YES. (again, @pike would say sugarcoating it even if it’s not what I mean). But let’s not make a fuss of it!
From my POV, it has declined in making new users feel welcome regardless of their background (experienced sysadmins, casual “sysadmin”, DIY/home users). But that’s off topic.
Some people in the team may feel hurt by the wording or feel unappreciated by other comments and posts. In both sports and work, team morale is important. Not talking about this or that comment in specific but of a growing burden to carry.
Generalizing, workers are only called/frown upon when something goes south but barely appreciated when they do good, as some people think that’s implied and goes with the payroll. But workers (in this case, developers) carry the burden not only at work but at home (difficult to disconnect thoughts from mind). Sometimes a hurt-felt comment weights more than 10 appreciative ones (call it human nature). Just saying mood, motivation… plays a role and people DO appreciate the work done so far. But maybe I’m derailing a bit.
There’s a saying that goes like this: “You cannot teach an old dog new tricks”; on IT field it does not apply but neither makes it less challenging.
Most probably, developers had to learn a new coding language, read thousands of docs, program/test/fix/repeat cycles…
It’s not the job of the developers to teach us how new stacks, containerization et al works. They can provide some minimal guidance for us to embrace NS8.
I think we expect from them to make complex things simple or easy. In the sense that we are presented with a server manager from where we can do our tasks without having to know each and every detail of the underlying technology. What I gather from comments is that we are not there yet neither from UI side nor from documentation and that official NS8 release was considered stable too soon.
Path was set a long time ago, discussed in the community although decision making not completely on their hands. Lacking some background knowledge it’s difficult to make educated decisions, and in everyone’s mind the interpretation on what NS8 would become could differ. Difficult to see the real picture without a tangible product.
Current NS7 users fear proximity of EOL. New users unsure or uncomfortable with NS8 stability. Both weighing upsides/downsides of embracing NS8 or looking elsewhere.
Not the most experienced/tech-savy user of the bunch, but will try to do a recap:
Hardware requirements (on-premises / VPS)
- more cores
- more storage space
- additional hardware:
- firewall (if not virtualized)
- additional server (if not virtualized; no in-place upgrade (risky), no restore from NS7 backup to NS8 —I hear you!, Andy)
It also relates on how people working in this field has to present it to customers.
Server Manager
- Not feature-par with old NS7 ways. NS8 more focused on App Stack than whole server (development freed from some OS and networking side of things that now falls entirely on the sysadmin side, if had ever left that side)
- Apps operational (could be a few exceptions) but lacking some advanced options
Migration
- Not stable enough
- Reporting of progress: progress bar is not that meaningful for long tasks as there is no context of what is being done: no way to tell if it is really progressing or it’s stale, current migration stage…
Notifications / Error messages
- cryptic without an straight comprehensible message of what has caused the problem (usually at the last line of the log excerpt).
Bugs
We, as users, have to distinguish the severity of bugs to put them in context with the current state of NS8, so a bunch of red dots doesn’t mean it’s chaos.
- Few operational bugs
- more cosmetic/UX bugs
Developers should consider priorities (both for bugs and feature requests). Maybe focus more on better migration, bring missing features back, and less with cosmetic side of things and new features. I’m not the one to tell.
Remember it’s not only community users but current customers (although some of them play both roles).
New Stack
- people not opposed to it
- bring new scenarios to the table
- more current versions of apps as opposed to LTS CentOS/Redhat (if maintainers keep it current)
- less limitation regarding dependencies
Knowledge / Documentation
- BIG ISSUE! Users unaware of how to deal with problems on their own without asking for help. (could I do something about the problem from the UI, or have look at OS level, container level, enter the instance user, use some command provided by the devs like api-cli, runagent, or use some podman command…)
- Users unaware of where things are (data, config file, etc… although some of this information is in some way in the documentation)
- Mixing of paths when thinking at OS level vs container level or symlinks… what is presented by apps to the user and how to find it.
Security
- NS8, with containerization, user isolation, apparmor/selinux… brings more security
- more security implies more restrictions (data inter operation, etc.)
And I let it hear (be it with errors or not, with lack of interpretation/understanding and some things missing) as now have to deal with other things.