On Friday 29 August 2003 05:02 am, Steffen Barszus wrote: > Hi ! > > pro-linux reports that rc1 nay be the last rc before final version. Is > that true ? I haven't read anything about that and don't know where > they got that information from. A typical pro-linux misinformation ? > > regards > > Steffen
Gosh I hope not. For the following reasons; 1 - Config files for pcmcia-wlan are reported to be messed up. This is *not* something newbies will be able to get working well on their own easily if at all. i.e. LOTS more testing is needed in this area, and Mandrake has gotten pcmcia card configs significantly wrong for several releases. (This is historic and not debatable. The config files were over 2 years old at one point ! It should be important to get this right for a change IMHO.) 2- KDE is not installing the correct stuff out of the box, and alot of menuing changes with odd results have taken place recently. While this could be very fixable with good stable mirroring for download testing, it is more likely that too many of the mirrors are messed up too often to allow for sufficient feedback on these problems. Additionally recent history with cooker would indicate that the problems associated with Mandrake's recent breakup of KDE into more discrete packages has had some (predictable) issues that have not been resolved through the past two beta/rc releases. 3 - A large number of install issues were present with the beta issues. Some of this was reported to be initscripting issues. IMHO if rc1 has alot of problems in this area, another rc would be indicated for the *obvious* reasons related to customer satisfaction. 4 - The current mirroring situation appears to be too many mirrors too often out of sync for too long a time period. If the changes/testing/feedback/ and fix cycle is too long for such short testing time frames and there are not enough releases to compensate for these long testing "time frames" then it is predictable that more problems will be present in the final release. 5 - I didn't catch a "freeze is upcoming on such and such a date" announcement. This lack of advanced notice appeared to be a major complaint from the testers on the 9.1 testing. The reasons testers wanted this to be announced were covered well at that time (or so I thought). In any event, there are some packages like OO that should probably be upgraded and given a chance to be tested well. A freeze announcement would have allowed this to happen in a more controllable manner other than "oh well, things are now frozen, no more changes, and this is the last testing release". Put another way: Yes freezes are important, but I do agree that some things need to be upgraded prior to a freeze and advanced announcement of an upcoming freeze allows everyone involved in testing a chance to be a part of these upgrades. I could go on some more, with some fine points, and some additional comments, but this should be sufficient for the purpose of outlining the major issues concerned with rc1 as the final testing release. Bob Finch
