[News.eclipse.foundation] Re: Call for discussion: "User experience" pro

[René Treffer <treffer@xxxxxxxxx>]

> - improve the Eclipse out-of-box experience
> - create small native installers with commonly used functionality
> - create automatic updates that work and that everybody uses
> - provide a one-click way to install plug-ins from the web
> - provide wizards to help people migrating from other systems
> - be a more effective competitor
Hi,

Another bad user expirience....

Today (it's now 00:17, erata: now 00:40) at 16:00 we will have our Local 
Contest for the ICPC (http://icpc.baylor.edu/icpc/), and of course I'll 
use eclipse 3.2 and java 1.5 on the contest machine...

so "ssh -Y", wget an eclipse platform, tar -xvzf eclipse-platform-... 
(the gtk/amd86 version), cd eclipse, ./eclipse, splash screen, crash.

What happened? I looked into the log file, unsatisfied links... Well, 
this SuSE linux boxes didn't have a Java 1.5 installed, propably not 
even the amd64 version, a old java 1.4... was used!

Now tell a linux user to read the ~/.eclipse/.metadata/.log, or the 
~/workspace/.metadata/.log file, figure out what's going on, install 
Java 1.5 (the amd64 version) and use the hardly documented "-vm" eclipse 
switch to start eclipse... (btw: I just wanted to view the "Istalling 
Eclipse" documentation - it doesn't work, I have to klick play for every 
single frame, thought I'll give it a try before complaining)

I don't want to know how many users are not able to do this and move away...

Just another sad installation story from a happy eclipse user,
	René Treffer