Come one people, let it go....

To reiterate what repo posted, please keep all subsequents posts on topic, which is any kind of feedback on the feature at hand. Thanks.

--jeremy

Well, one thing that would help a lot is if the feature scanned the whole user agent string for the distribution name, not just the extra part at the end. That would make it much easier to modify by users and in many cases no modification would be necessary.

The entire UA is indeed scanned. Is there a case you're seeing otherwise?

--jeremy

It is ? Ok, just wanted to make sure. From previous posts I got the impression that it had to be at the end of the user agent string.

Yes you can change/add the distro. Please refer to my previous post where I explained that, and I did that for the benefit of other Opera users.

jlinkels

Hmm. Right now it looks like a fun toy, but it remains to be seen how useful it is in the answering of questions. I suppose it would be good to be able to think "it appears that he/she has been posting from a windows box, obviously something is still not working on the linux box (or that they are away from the linux box)"

Is the info post specific or user specific?

titanium_geek

(yes, also posting so I can see the icon... [edit]ok no icon.)

You can change any aspect of any user agent in any browser on Windows, Linux, and Apple (at least), regardless of whether or not the browser supports that capability.

In the early days, there was internet junkbuster http://www.junkbuster.com/ , which did exactly that (among other things).

Working from internet junkbuster, there is now Privoxy http://www.privoxy.org/ , which still does exactly that (among other things).

If you want, I'll show you by running IE and reporting that I am running Mosaic on a Mac Classic. Of course, I don't know how you'll recognize the browser as being IE when I do that, but I can do it.

It's post-specific. Check my last few posts- you'll find 2 distros (actually, Puppy showed as a 'generic' distro) + WinXP... until I disabled the feature.

Cheers

I'm not actually *voting against* the feature... perhaps I'm just a bit shocked to learn that this info is freely sent and received, and can be displayed on a public forum. Hell, I might even 'warm up' to the idea and re-enable it just for fun if it does become a permanent feature. As I stated before, maybe I'm just 'set in my ways'. But I am open-minded, and I always reserve the right to change my mind.

I do, however, still question it's usefulness in determining with what distro someone is having a problem, which I believe was the original purpose.

Cheers

It may be of some use. I mean when the OP makes a post and doesn't leave distro info, and didn't bother putting it in the profile, one can guess. There may also be a plausible way of catching bots using this method, if they all use a certain UA.

The logo display might not even be useful. But I like the Debian logo to show up in my post because I am a happy and proud user of my distro and I want everyone to know it. That is a little bit less pushing than putting a line in my signature. See it as a little fish symbol which many Christians attach to their car.

And we member of this forum are all too happy to try to answer him, right? I like the words "don't bother". It doesn't take him even 30 seconds to fill in his profile, while every answer takes me between 1 and 10 minutes to write. Who is the one asking here and who should put in effort.

That's a long preamble to what I want to say: This distro logo thingy is nice, and I am in favor of having it displayed. But to extract it from the browser string is maybe not the best way(1). Mandatory completion of the profile for members might be better. Yes, if the OP changes his distro and fails to update the profile he(2) is being left without accurate answers, not we.

(1) See? I am on my 4th regular machine now and I haven't updated the browser string yet.

(2) Please read he/she and his/her were applicable.

jlinkels

When I first saw the icons I went into the profile options to try to change it, but seeing it was not there I investigated further. So, yes it definitely makes sense to instead make this an option in the profile as to which distro icon should be displayed.

A simple test, hoping not to upset someone.

See if it works