>
> > > > Why would you (the general "you") ship a "commercial" product with alpha
> > > > code for a major component? Seems like someone in RH-land should be
> > > > slapped for that one.
> > >
> > > Because it's time to release a new distro, in order to keep that revenue
> > > coming in the door, so that you can stay a viable company. What's that?
> > > Not much significant has changed since the last one?
> >
> > Interesting....I always thought glibc was a significant part of the
> > distribution....seeing as almost every program makes use of it....
>
> I _did_ say not MUCH significant, not NOTHING significant. And honestly
> Rich, how many people even notice that glibc has been upgraded? Plus,
> didn't I hear that it too was buggy?
How can say that glibc isn't significant when just about every package
present on the CD(s) use it? As for how many people, it depends on what
you are interested in. As for other things updated:
GNOME (1.2 vs 1.0)
adding openssh/openssl
new installer that can use multi-CDs, which means more packages available
how about a newer kernel with USB, AGPGart support
much newer PCMCIA code
added MySQL, xemacs, new gimp....plus testing version of KDE, KOffice,
Glide....Mesa
RPM V4 (not sure of the benefit there though....)
That should touch most users right there. Can you get these packages
seperatly, of course, but as you say yourself, think of the new users.
On the buggy side...I think you could argue that just about every glibc is
buggy in one way or another.
>
> > It's very easy to say things like that....and while I don't agree with
> > some of RedHat's moves (mainly shipping gcc 2.96) I feel I must defend
> > them on this one. Shipping X4.0.1 was a good move...sure it's going to
> > cause a little pain for some people, and I'm sorry, but guess what, if we
>
> It's going to cause a lot of pain for a lot of people. As I understand, a
> good chunk of the drivers aren't working properly yet in 4.0.1 (they seem
> to have concentrated on the drivers for newer cards first, which does make
> sense) and I seem to recall reading something on the XFree homepage that
> said exactly that, and warning people before they swtich to it. I don't
> agree that shipping X4.0.1 was a good move, as it only gives the
> anti-redhat people more ammunition to point out what a crappy distro they
> ship. I always supported redhat in the past, but I'm starting to dislike
> them, and I think that while easy to install, their distro is one of the
> worst available in terms of bugginess.
RH shipped 3.3.6 servers for cards that don't work well under 4.x. Some I
think you can even manually pick which you would like.
> I think their best option would have been to ship both XF4 and XF3
> and give the user a choice, with a warning that XF4 may not work for them,
> especially if they have older cards.
I think they looked into this....but there was some fundamental
differences that made this not possible. Mainly to do with the Xlibraries
that various apps were compiled against.
> > keep taking this attitude that the code is 'alpha' and we shouldn't ship
> > it, then it never gets the wide audience of testing that it needs to get
> > out of an 'alpha' state. (Yes, the same argument could be made for gcc
> > 2.96, but I feel they should have have 1.1.2 be gcc, and install 2.96
> > as something else, like egcc for experimental gcc...).
>
> I don't agree with that... just in the tiny little corner of the world
> where I live, a lot of people I know are running XF4.0.1 including me. And
> it works great for me. But I don't think that means that RH should ship
> it as the default given how buggy some of the drivers are. People will
> naturally be interested in running 4.X because it offers (and will offer)
> more and more features that weren't available before. You'll have plenty
> of beta testers.
I you don't like using newer code then go back to Linux 2.0 and
libc5. After all they were stable. People bitched like there was no
tomorrow when RH moved to glibc. Yes, it hurt, but guess what. All the
archs are now on the same version of Glibc (give or take minor revs) and
things are much simpler. If RH had not done that, who would have? Would
i386 Linux still be using libc5 when Alpha and Sparc were on Glibc2?
> I also think that many new users will go with RH7.0 because it's what
> everyone recommends for new users, will find that they can't get video
> working reliably, and come out of the experience thinking that Linux
> sucks. Which is exactly what we don't want to happen, in my opinion.
Then don't recommend it to people. For the NUN night we're still got
6.2...and I wouldn't recommend 7.0 to a new user.
>
> > did, don't use them, there are a million other dists out there (all with
> > something else wrong I'm sure), or even replace X4.0 with 3.3.6 if that's
> > what you prefer.
>
> Keep thinking about those new users...
Who can also use a different dist. From what people on this list have
said, Mandrake is much easier than RH, even a decent RH revision like 6.2.
> > > Hmmm... better
> > > provide something new so that people will think they're getting their
> > > money's worth if they update to the new distro. Wait, I got it... let's
> > > throw in some alpha code so that we have some new stuff...
> >
> > Derek, I think you posted a while ago your experiences with RH7.0, well
>
> Nope. I haven't touched it. Don't intend to either. At best, I'll wait
> for 7.1, but more likely I'll switch to debian or mandrake. Are they
> perfect? Nope, but widespread opinion amongst people I know who've used
> both redhat and one of those is that they are MUCH better than redhat.
My appologies then, must have been someone else. Mandrake I haven't really
touched all that much, Debian is very impressive in terms of stability and
package management, the installer needs some help (and is being re-written
for woody).
>
> > FWIW I've have no problems with it what so ever. I've had it on my
>
> That's a good thing, of course, but you're only one out of how many cases?
2 so far...I only remember that one other person saying 7.0 was bad, at
least on this list.
> You're literally the only one I've heard of who's tried it that didn't
> have a fairly serious problem, as far as I can recall. Remember the sort
> command? Hasn't changed much in decades... but Redhat broke it. And the
> source even has regression tests to make sure it works, which by the way,
> failed. But they shipped it anyway (and probably never ran the tests).
Yes, RH does stupid things...and the sort one is a biggy. However, I would
rather the RedHat guys spent their time releasing the updates for Security
problems first and getting to things like that later. Am I happy about a
bug like that existing for so long? No, but it all comes down to
priorities.
>
> > clean install. Would I recomend this to somebody as a new user, to install
> > on a production server, no, I'd say stick with 6.2 or at least wait until
> > 7.1. Nobody gets a .0 release right...why do you think MS stopped using
>
> But that is exactly the reputation that RH has... it's good for new users.
> So you end up with the scenario I mentioned above. And people get turned
> away from Linux because of one distro vendor.
A while ago I would have agreed, but not recently (past year or so). Many
others are much easier to install.
--
Rich Payne
[EMAIL PROTECTED] www.alphalinux.org
**********************************************************
To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to
[EMAIL PROTECTED] with the following text in the
*body* (*not* the subject line) of the letter:
unsubscribe gnhlug
**********************************************************
