X-Recipient: archive-cygwin AT delorie DOT com
X-SWARE-Spam-Status: No, hits=-1.9 required=5.0 	tests=BAYES_00
X-Spam-Check-By: sourceware.org
Message-ID: <4BBC9056.3030400@bopp.net>
Date: Wed, 07 Apr 2010 09:01:58 -0500
From: Jeremy Bopp <jeremy AT bopp DOT net>
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.9) Gecko/20100317 Thunderbird/3.0.4
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: installer improvements
References: <w2ia7459821004050247j1ea9461aw3f90e1b395115e0 AT mail DOT gmail DOT com>  	 <4BBB2836 DOT 3000601 AT gmail DOT com>  	 <u2oa7459821004060710k9e0107a3lfd4cc6fada44b240 AT mail DOT gmail DOT com>  	 <n2v4e41f5c21004060929gef01d197ydcd938bddcbf7fa2 AT mail DOT gmail DOT com>  <q2va7459821004070518wb8ae1202rc5d5d797e5a793c4 AT mail DOT gmail DOT com> <0105D5C1E0353146B1B222348B0411A208DEF24522 AT NIHMLBX02 DOT nih DOT gov>
In-Reply-To: <0105D5C1E0353146B1B222348B0411A208DEF24522@NIHMLBX02.nih.gov>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-IsSubscribed: yes
Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com; run by ezmlm
List-Id: <cygwin.cygwin.com>
List-Subscribe: <mailto:cygwin-subscribe AT cygwin DOT com>
List-Archive: <http://sourceware.org/ml/cygwin/>
List-Post: <mailto:cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
List-Help: <mailto:cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com>, <http://sourceware.org/ml/#faqs>
Sender: cygwin-owner AT cygwin DOT com
Mail-Followup-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Delivered-To: mailing list cygwin AT cygwin DOT com

On 4/7/2010 8:32 AM, Buchbinder, Barry (NIH/NIAID) [E] wrote:
> wefwef wefwef sent the following at Wednesday, April 07, 2010 8:18 AM
>> There are 94 servers on the list many of which don't have any obvious
>> geographic location (e.g. mirrors.dotsrc.org). There are 195 countries
>> in the world. That means an awful lot of people have to be an expert
>> on the geography of a foreign country in order to choose the correct
>> server. Well, I'm sure they can work it out - but wouldn't it be nice to
>> give them the choice to get the computer to work it out for them?
> 
> http://cygwin.com/mirrors.html gives locations.

As tiresome as this conversation is becoming, there is just no way a
simple user is going to first of all know to look at that location and
secondly spend the time to read it all while comparing with the mirror
list provided by setup.exe.  *Maybe* if the mirror panel in setup
mentioned that URL some users might look; otherwise, the mirrors.html
page may as well not exist for them.

What's being requested here is simply a button on the mirror selection
page which, when pressed, runs some sort of a ping test for each mirror
and reports the results.  Maybe the mirror list could be sorted from
fastest to slowest after the test completes, or a ping time column could
be added to the display.  It doesn't have to be perfect.  It just needs
to provide a clue and a starting point for new users to select their
first mirror.

All that said, the tone of the requester is not helping the setup
maintainer or the rest of the list really sympathize with his position.
 His points wouldn't be so bad if he merely asked for features and
improvements rather than demand them and belittle the maintainers when
they disagree.  Of course, his ideas might be accepted even quicker if
they were presented as patches.  Cygwin is a volunteer effort after all.

-Jeremy

--
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple