YaST/Surveys/Ncurses survey

From openSUSE

What is this all about?

On a recent YaST workshop a discussion topic "Should we handle graphical and text-mode UI differently?" has been presented. However, we found out that we do not know the answer to several questions:

• Who are the users who use text-mode YaST (yast2-ncurses)?
• Why do people use text-mode YaST?
• In which ways would they be hit/restricted if text-mode YaST were dropped?
• What do people mostly miss in text-mode YaST?

YaST text-mode UI usage survey

To find an answer to at least some of the above questions, I carried out a short and informal survey on talk@suse.cz I got 24 distinct and sometimes very inspiring answers to the following questions

1. Do you use YaST text-mode UI?
   • If yes, why?
     • It runs even on old and slow hardware
     • I can use it remotely
     • It is very simplistic and not overcrowded with icons and animations
     • Something else, please specify ...
   • If no, why not?
     • I feel more comfortable controlling UI with mouse
     • I prefer colourful and clickable UI for aesthetic reasons
     • There is lot of bugs in text-mode UI and nothing really works
     • Something else, please specify ...
2. What is it you like on YaST text-mode UI?
3. What do you miss in YaST text-mode UI? (for example - more colours, better navigation, ascii art,...)
4. If (just hypothetically) YaST text-mode UI were to be dropped, what should be an adequate substitution?
   • Web interface
   • Commandline (ev. with interactive mode)
   • Something else, please specify ...
   • Drop text-mode and ... #$@&*%^#$
5. Did you know that several YaST modules already have command line interface?

Why do users use text-mode YaST

(multiple answers possible)

Why users don't use text-mode YaST

Not many users actually answered this question (actually just 1/4 of them). Most of them stated that they use text-mode YaST as well and used this question just to comment on text-mode cons.

"Yes, controlling UI with the mouse might be more comfortable, but enforcing it makes imho 
no sense"

What do users like on YaST text-mode UI?

• It is usable even without X
• It provides the same functionality as GUI
• It is better choice for using over the network
• It is faster and has lower memory requirements
• and many others ...

"Yellow-on-black design is really cool"

"I like its simplicity and its developers"

"Thanks to ncurses, lot of tasks can be done even from not-so-eye-candy environment and 
what more can a developer (geek? weirdo?) need, not to mention the fact that it simply 
works the same way as in GUI"

"It does not keep grabbing focus and spitting annoying popup windows as QT and Gtk YaST does"

"Yast gtk sw_single is so dumb that I really rather use *anything* else"

"I don't want YaST to fly all over my desktop, I prefer to keep in in single window"

"It does not require gfx hardware and it does not require *configured* gfx hardware.
Even if X crash on my machine, I can still comfortably configure it."

"It runs in Xen"

"It's faster for working over the network. Remote X, even compressed, have quite a 
vast overhead"

What users miss in YaST text-mode UI?

The most answers included two areas of concern

• more intuitive and easy-to-use navigation & help
• mouse support

"TUI should really be as similar to GUI as possible"

"The interface control is bit unintuitive and clumsy"

"If only the arrow keys jumped between the widgets and Enter could be used 
to submit the whole form, it'd be much better"

"It is sometimes necessary to jump somewhere with TAB while it is clear that 
the focus is currently on something one does not need at all. It is really 
only the same version of what we have in GUI, but without mouse, it is much 
more difficult to control"

What should be an adequate substitute for text-mode YaST UI?

(multiple answers possible)

"But I believe that text-mode YaST is really _very_ useful tool. Non-functional X 
is nowadays quite a common problem. Remote administration via ssh is nice and comfortable,
while configuring remote X, or Vnc or something like that is simply PITA. Besides that, I
believe that there's no place for X/QT/GTK/... on the server.

"Web interface, it sounds interesting, *provided it would be easily usable from lynx/links*"

"In my opinion, "do it yourself in commandline" approach does not belong to SuSE. In that case 
 I'd use something else. Any other option that ncurses YaST is worse."

"If text-mode YaST was dropped, I'd stop using SUSE Linux"

"Adequate substitute for text-mode YaST? apt-get"

"Do not drop ncurses YaST. It's exceptionally well-usable thingie. It has no equivalent 
in other distros."

"Command line with interactive mode would be cool, but I would most likely be unable to
 remember all the commands, so I would need to consult help all the time."

Did you know about YaST command line interface?

Only 10% of all respondents do not know about YaST CLI, but these numbers are somewhat skew, respondents were openSUSE developers.

"I realised it (existence of CLI) only recently, and it really helps me with scripting.
 Keep up good work!"

"I know it (CLI) exists, but I don't use it. I don't remember the parameters and using
 text-mode UI is then faster."

"It is difficult to find out something like that (CLI) exists, if not even 'yast --help' says
anything about it"