Hi all, I seem to be very bad in getting my point acros (which is actually positive!)
So before I reply specifically to some points, I want to explicitly say THANK YOU to all who contribute to Mandrake and Linux in advance, since that is something that I imply by using Mandrake (although you couldn't have known that from my face, which you didn't see ;-) On Thu, Sep 11, 2003 at 01:23:35PM +0200, Buchan Milne wrote: > Simon Oosthoek wrote: > > > > Based on past experience, 9.2 will be released on schedule on 20th of > > September even when it doesn't install for some people who have reported > > serious issues for their particular hardware. > > Well, it we wait until everyone's hardware is supported, the whole > distribution is likely to be 3 months behind everyone else's. I know and understand! > If you really want to have your hardware supported, and no-one has > managed to yet, jump in, test patches, report the results, maybe Thomas > will be able to merge a patch you report as working, and then push it > upstream. My experience is that I have a very difficult laptop and very little time to test stuff. I do what I can, but that's obviously not enough. I live with it :-( > Not only the company. Or do you want to keep the distro in freeze until > KDE3.2 is out so we can install ancient software on the hardware that is > current now, in 3 month's time? No, but I have different priorities, somewhat more conservative regarding features. > I don't think Mandrake is planning on releasing an update for > OpenOffice.org. unless a security bug is found, I assume... > > Probably there will be lots of "security" updates and bugfixes > announced in > > the first 2-3 months after the release of 9.2. Which is probably > better than > > not providing them at all ;-) > > Well, some bugs aren't found until the software is deployed, so if we > wait for all bugs to be fixed, we will still find new ones. true, but that is what a feature freeze is for, stabilising the system to test all the interactions of bugfixes and prevent new bugs from being introduced. I would prefer a longer freeze period, but I'm not the release manager. (In fact, I'm mostly a user/sysadmin) > > Anyway, I share your concerns, but they are/will be ignored completely by > > the Mandrake development process. > > Wow, thanks for the confidence in those people who maintain software in > the distro but aren't employed by Mandrakesoft. Ok, that didn't come out right, I'm sorry! I think I meant that a vague statement of a user that something "doesn't work" is not enough to stop a release. But I probably thought it obvious and forgot to mention it... > > PS, if I sound cynical, I am! > > And some of your statements seem unfounded ... well, maybe I forgot to qualify them, but the cynical bit comes from the difference in priority for me versus the Mandrake development process. > > But Mandrake still rules the desktop for me. > > I've learnt to live with all the cuts and bruises Mandrake's products > cause > > me, but look at all my cool scars! > > I get fewer scars on Mandrake that the other distros I have run in > production ... and I get features most other distros don't even know about. I only have a few Debian systems, all the other machines I manage are Mandrake 9.1 or Solaris. At work I setup a system with Linux servers (Mandrake/Debian) and Mandrake 9.1 desktops (about 16!) and a few Windows clients. The only real problems I have are with Printing (unstable with CUPS and Linux clients) and with Evolution, due to gconf's lock problems over NFS. Lately I noticed some problems with /var partitions filling up with logfiles, because they filled faster than logrotate rotates. Overal, Mandrake suites me, mostly because of the packaging with urpmi. Hopefully, this puts my earlier e-mail into perspective... I'm only trying to help! Cheers Simon
