to all those who feel left out:
please consider that here is not
the place to object/talk about
enhancements this way!
the dev-one already stated:
it had to be done - period!
to get an impression how it goes
one should take a carefull read of:
it is also crucial to take a look
at the git and mailinglist 
i hope this helps to prevent the waste of resources 
or the need to scensor/delete posts 
WUI is a field of taste. Period.
If someone is ‘offended’ by the main line decisions, the user can recommend enhancements by sending souce changes. IMO the ability to make/change HTML code is present by many users ( more as ‘real’ programming knowledge ).
There is a factor of lost productivity when user interfaces change. IPFire devs have every right to change the look and feel of the firewall. They should keep in mind, though, that when users become comfortable with a look or function that has stayed consistent for years, then if you change that look or function without warning or explanation, this will frustrate many users. Most of them will stay silent because they appreciate what they are getting for free, but that does not mean the ones who express their frustration are being unappreciative of the final product.
indeed.
but this projects very attitude should be publicised
more widely in order to prevent misconceptions
and prevent this kind of topics 
@bloater99
you really have to take a look into the git
and the mailinglist to get a better view about
this project … 
I’ve been a member of these forums off and on for over 10 years and have contributed a lot over that time (not as much as I’ve been helped, though!), especially to the QoS section. I am the one who created the customized QoS that is still referenced in the online documentation. In that time I have read through the mailing list several times on occasion. I am not sure what you are hinting at when you mention twice that I really need to look into the git and mailing list. I am not saying anything overly critical, controversial, or naive. Just common-sense stuff.
I have explaining this many times before and I will do it again:
We are incredibly cutting corners and doing things on the cheap here. That is due to severe lack of time in the team and lack of funding. So in this instance I can only give the complaints back to the community and point out once again that there are ways how we can solve this.
Obviously we don’t want to make compromises in places where the security of IPFire is at risk, so it is very often the UI. The connections page had to be rewritten because we were looking at adding support for WireGuard to the system. I had about an hour to do this and so some functionality had to go.
I can now give you the choice of either getting WireGuard at some point or getting the old connections.cgi back. I personally don’t mind either way.
So far we have received nothing towards funding WireGuard and therefore I currently have very little time to sit down again and work on this and the connections.cgi.
Instead I am opening the forum on a daily basis to just hear complaints that are really not that important to me. And clearly not to you all either because at least someone would have sat down at some point and see what positive impact they can make towards this.
I agree with this. But the amount and the tone of complaints have massively changed and there are next to no notes from people liking IPFire. I cannot honestly not remember the last time I have read something along the lines of “well done” after an update, instead it is just full of whinging and crying.
How are we supposed to keep up morale in the development team with this?
let me try to mitigate that:
hi
i like the dev of ipfire i think ipfire is best open project
god luck for you work
ty
I do appreciate this and is why I set up a recurring donation a couple of months ago. I have seen other forums that give users who donate a badge. Not to pat the donater on the back, but to be a reminder to other users who aren’t donating.
Now that you explain it, it makes sense. If this was in the release notes, I feel it would’ve been not as big of a deal on the forums. It’s the “surprise” factor that is unsettling to the end-user.
The more popular IPFire gets, the more feedback you will get. Both positive and negative. Unfortunately, people tend to speak up more about bad experiences than good experiences. I tried to help with more feedback when I suggested we look into why Distrowatch stopped posting core updates and it got fixed. I posted a review on Distrowatch, linked to it here, and encouraged others to write their own reviews.
I do believe the more transparent IPFire is with their release notes, that will set up IPFire for fewer complaints. I might even suggest some sort of poll or voting system when considering non-essentials changes to the WUI. Users feel more invested if they play a role in changes that they end up really liking. An invested user is a happy user. A happy user is less likely to complain and more likely to donate.
This is planned. There will be some bigger changes around the donation process coming.
This is very valuable for us and I appreciate it very much.
There is only so many ways to express the same things again and again. I don’t know how we can make changes like these more clear and get people on board. A picture says a lot more than half a page of text. Or something similar.
We do have a voting process… Well kind of… Every single change that goes into IPFire goes through the mailing lists. There is usually weeks when an update is around for testing. That is the time when I am open to receive feedback. Once things are being released I am assuming that everything went through the process correctly and that enough people are happy with the changes - or simply don’t care about specific things which is also acceptable.
Let’s be honest, the people who complain are never even sending a penny. The donors are usually the silent people and therefore there is this skewed image on the forum that “so many users are unhappy with this too”. That is simply not true, because the people who are happy or don’t mind don’t come forward. They express those things differently.
So, on here, I know that I am coming across as direct and sometimes harsh. That is because I have to see the bigger picture and I cannot waste hours and hours to chew once again through debates that have been had by the people who care about the code. If I would ask the moaners (and by that I don’t mean the constructive feedback people at all) there is nothing that would make them happy. They just want to moan.
Having worked in IT projects for years, my observation is that most people mainly notice what they have lost and it overrides anything they have gained - and they tend to be quite vocal about it. People who gain just get on with it. This, unfortunately, is not very nice for the people involved in the projects but seems to be a fact of life.
Do people have the impression that IPFire is regressing?
Not necessarily true. I am a donater and I have complained here on occasion. Though I try to frame my complaints as constructive criticism, I still react like a human. I believe I called the most recent changes to the UI “irritating”. LOL. That’s how I felt, and I wanted to be honest. But I’m not flying off the handle and spamming every thread with my opinion. Ahem.
I also work in IT and I fully agree. It seems a thick skin is required.
I certainly do not, and I can’t imagine that the masses do either. After all, you’re still around after years, updates continue to flow and the OS adds and improves core features several times a year. Simply reading every release note (which I do) tells you that. This was why I was so verbal about the release notes not mentioning the UI changes. I don’t recall such a major change NOT being mentioned in release notes before. Yes, major. From a usability experience, simple things like sorting and button size can be considered a big deal to the end-user. Most certainly not to the developer, who knows the code inside out and would certainly see these as minor cosmetic changes.
I specified this a little bit later in my answer that I didn’t mean people like you.
This is not a corporate office job where I am taking a big pay check home at the end of the month to make this all okay. I deliberately don’t want people to develop a big skin. I am far enough into that that people call me cold.
I think a big consequence of this all is as well that we keep a lot of stuff behind closed bars and don’t let people peek behind them.
I meant that a thick skin is required for any sort of software development, but ESPECIALLY for open-source. I can’t imagine the countless free hours people around the world put into projects because that project is a PASSION to them! It takes a certain personality to do this, and there is a lot of investment from the developer when it’s being done for pennies or even free. There have been several news stories of late where security bugs are found and reported to open source teams, and the person reporting the bug is not taken seriously and are basically forced to “go public” with the exploit to force the development team to fix the issue. IPFire is NOT one of these projects. You guys quickly fix potentially serious issues (recently the Suricata crash). I see Adolf constantly testing users issues out to duplicate them. He is a gem BTW on these forums.
But anyway, I think you shielding your team from the brunt of the criticism and taking it on yourself is an admirable trait for a leader. Keep up the good work! I will be here helping how I can, asking for help when I need it, and occasionally pointing out things that “irritate” me. I’m also happy to help in any other way within my capabilities and time availability. I’ve been here over 10 years and if I didn’t like IPFire, I’d have moved on by now.
Cheers!
Clothes do not define a soldier or a priest. He who is one, is one. Personally, I think the changes are good.
Greetings.
I back the changes made! The devs are doing whats in the best interest of the group, all the while fending off disagreements on how things should look and feel. I myself am trying to rework the connections.cgi to put the sorting back, not sure ill be successful, but ill share it like i do a lot of other things i tinker with. my point in all this is try to have a positive attitude and if you really don’t like something then sit down open the file, do the research, fix what you don’t like and share with the world what you accomplished.
I myself am a plumber by trade and sit down from time to time and learn something i don’t know about. i have no clue about sorting in Perl but I am determined to figure it out and learn while i do it…
just my two cents.
have a great day!
I really don’t think its regressing, but at times almost crossing the line of being too progressive. A lot of things in the linux world adopted a line that has nightly and a different branch that is stable or biannual updates and only security patches are carried forward. i.e. Experimental vs. LTS.
It just boils down to this: not everyone wants to update once they have everything the way they wanted. But do work on features that do need to be refined for the general user.
I know some things about the Linux eco-system since I am a Linux user since 1997, but because of the state of the world, I have to work a 8-12 hr job 6 days a week so a lot of my projects in programming and contributing them take some time.
I’m glad you guys exist. At least I didn’t have to write a router system myself.
No, never, at least I don’t see that and I’ve been around for quite a long time, I think, and IT/networking is a hobby of mine. If I look back to the days of the old forum, where people were collecting votes and money for certain features. There were always steps forward all the time. Whether things were added or changed, like from IDS to IPS or the locations block database, the blacklist feature, the kernel hardening and bug fixing against CPUs issues, changing the DNS Proxy to unbound or integrated monitoring tools in the status menu point. Also not to forget the complete rebuild of the website and the documentation/wiki. Nobody can say that Ipfire’s team has lost any of its drive, zeal or motivation to work on the project. Quite the opposite. So there are massive good things for which you the devs can and should be congratulated.
But no one does it, I think artists are the only people who get direct praise for their work. At least no one has thanked me for the millions of dollars in profits I’ve brought the company.
But I understand exactly what was meant and my criticism was more of a surprise and no, I don’t read the release message very carefully in detail, I just roughly scan what’s new and then decide whether I want to take a closer look, I’m not the brightest candle on the cake either and understand what all the messages are about. I’m also not on any mailing list for it, I just don’t have enough regular time to really be able to contribute there.
I do check the forum from time to time to see if I can help, if I have a specific question, or to report a problem that I can no longer solve myself.
I’m glad that Ipfire existed and still exists, that I found the project many years ago and that I got exactly what I needed, one of the best, rock solid and secure firewalls in the world.
I didn’t even know until just now that the reason for the rewrite of the code, to which the sorting function fell victim, would really be the Wireguard function. (And yes, I know that I commented above that I unfortunately couldn’t find the function and that I had spoiled it as a secret hint, I’m like that)
Einfach nur MEGA Loide! You can feel smooched 
So cheers 
and let people complain about other colors or because a button had to be removed, they are just spoiled brats who always have something to complain about.
(I hope everyone got the joke)
i will try to explain 
the git/list displays a handfull of contributors
are contributing and they are unbelievable
limited on 
and 
hence my hint to sniff around
good one 
what if common-sense was the root cause of this regression 