Warly wrote:
> It may be a good idea, before cooker opens again, to take these days to
> have some brainstorm.
> May you give your opinion on :
> - What was wrong in 9.2 development process?
I wasn't aware of it soon enough. Was the first beta announced on the
expert list? If so, I missed it.
Stop using the term RC. Recent rc versions are nothing but late betas,
not even close to suitable for release. Go to beta 4, 5, 6, or even 7 if
necessary. Maybe use the term rc one time on a discretional basis if
there is one single outstanding unresolved major issue.
> - We though a bit late in the 9.2 developement process to split cooker ml, we
> should do it now.
I vote no.
> - What could we do to improve 9.3/10.0 development.
Switch it to an 8 (subversion changes: 9.2->9.3) or 9 (major version
changes: 9.2->10) month release cycle. Yes, one year is too long, but
not only does a 6 month cycle cramp the process, it keeps new Mandrake
releases on the same schedule, which routinely of late is always just
missing being able to include new releases of major apps, such as
Mozilla (1.5), Samba (3.0) or OpenOffice (1.1 final). I would like the
beta processes to not use the same portions of the year every year.
> - Should we have cooker snapshot ISOs?
Yes.
> - What could we do, as a community, to increase the acceptance of mandrakelinux?
Boxes on the store shelves, and included at least as an option with far
more new PC's. Did you notice what Lindows just did? Lindows is now
installed on "all" new Seagate HD's, almost like all those 500, 700 &
1000 free hour AOL CD's we in the US don't seem to be able to avoid.
> And anything related to the mandrakelinux distro.
Package management in the GUI (not necessarily good in console either)
is horrid:
1-The main menu should say "software management" or
"install/remove/update programs" instead of "packaging". Packaging is
preparing a product for distribution and sale, but installation is
installation, not packaging.
2-"Software management" should open one panel with 5 options instead of
a submenu with 5 options. It should be an integrated suite, if not one
simple app.
3-"Configure media" is incomprehensible, and needs to be rebuilt with a
design a windoze convert (or any non-geek) can understand. It should
automatically initialize the usual mirror selection, so that messages
about "nothing to install" would never happen on a system that has never
been updated before. It needs to be much smarter about deciding where to
look for what is actually available. Users don't care about hdlists.cz
errors, only whether they can do what they want, which is find, add,
remove or update a program. They shouldn't need to see a main list that
specifies the location of each installation CD, particularly since they
typically were all located on the save device.
4-Installation from network or HD without having to extract the contents
of ISO files first. If install can ever set up a loopback to do CD1, it
ought to be able to do any case.
5-A usable normal boot and/or rescue floppy should be at least offered
for creation during install. After install, creating a boot and/or
rescue floppy should actually be possible on any system. Barring that,
the creation process that fails should offer some guidance on what to
change in order to enable success on future tries.
6-Time. /var/log/boot.log shouldn't start a boot at 13:00, then back up
4 hours to 09:00 for several startup items, then jump back to 13:01 to
finish up. If configuration is that the system clock is set to local
time, then all entries should be based upon that clock, and not adjusted
to anything else for any reason at any time. When a new system is
installed, no directory should be time stamped 4 hours before the
install started, which is the case now.
7-rc ordering is dumb. If the system is configured to start in runlevel
5, it nevertheless should finish init on runlevel 3 first. No one should
have to wait to get a prompt on vc[1-6] until substantially after the X
login manager has appeared, which is the case now. Services that can't
be used in runlevel 2 shouldn't be started before all runlevel 2
services have had their init.
8-Back to the old way with the installer. Used to be able to go back to
any particular step just by clicking on the item in the left column.
That was brilliant, and is missed.
9-NUMLOCK
I very much appreciate having this package installed by default, as it
makes me insane that any OS kernel feels compelled to switch NUM off
when in the BIOS it is set to ON. That said, I have to guess there is a
more efficient way to do it than with an rpm package, as SuSE has the
same functionality, but without a package named numlock. I don't know
how they do it, but I do know it is configured through
/etc/sysconfig/keyboard, which is 2509 bytes and has, among others, the
following settings on my SuSE 8.1 machine:
KBD_RATE="20.0"
KBD_DELAY="250"
KBD_NUMLOCK="bios"
In contrast, this same file in 9.1 and cooker is all of 36 bytes, and
has nothing in it that explains what any of its three lines are for.
Also, it needs to be fixed so that if enabled, it is in the ON state for
the X login manager so that I can use the NUM pad for password entry
without having to think "hmmm, is the NUM light on?".
--
"...[B]e quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry...."
James 1:19 NIV
Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409
Felix Miata *** http://members.ij.net/mrmazda/
