On Thu, 26 Oct 2000, Rich Payne wrote:
> > > 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:
Rich, I'm not saying that at all... but on the other hand, what about
glibc has changed significantly as it affects the average Linux user?
IOW, why, as an average Linux user, would I want to upgrade my glibc from
2.1.3-19 (the RH 6.2 bug fix) to whatever is offered by RH7? And what
version is that, BTW?
> GNOME (1.2 vs 1.0)
Hmm... It's been a while since I actually used 1.0 since I've found Helix,
but were the changes really all that significant? Mostly some bug fixes,
weren't they? Even if they were, that wasn't really the gist of my point
(which is coming, eventually)...
> 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....)
In any case, how significant these are is largely subjective. For
example, I would consider the kernel changes significant, but that's
hardly worth buying a whole new distro for. The PCMCIA stuff isn't part
of the kernel proper, is very small, and can be upgraded rather quickly
and painlessly if you know how to build a kernel, so it isn't too
significant to me (though it might be to some, especially new users with
PCMCIA stuff that's not supported by the older code, but you've already
said you don't recommend RH7 for newbies, so that doesn't support your
argument at all).
Focusing on the appeal to non-newbies: Mesa, Glide, and xemacs are all on
the Powertools CD, and easily obtainable via ftp download if you don't
have it. Personally I've already got near to the latest versions of all
of those, and don't consider that a reason to upgrade. Betas of anything
generally (but not always) don't interest me, since the reason I run Linux
in the first place is that I want my software to WORK.
Now, that's me. It's very subjective, and somewhat irrelevant, really.
What I was attempting to point out is that RH is under pressure to sell
distros, so they need to appeal to 1) new users, who hopefully (from
RedHat's perspective) will buy their stuff as their first distro, and 2)
people who already have previous RedHat distros, who have been happy with
them, and want to get the latest stuff with the least amount of hassle.
They want to have the "latest and greatest" of what's out there to appeal
to both. But as it happens, right now a lot of that stuff is beta (or
even alpha) quality. That's what my original message was meant to
address. I don't blame RedHat for it so much... they are after all a
commercial company trying to thrive on software that's essentially free,
and the way they do that is by selling distros (and support too).
In general, I think the differences between their point releases are akin
to the differences between W95 and W98; i.e. largely cosmetic with some
bug fixes, but with lots of other broken stuff. I expect more than that
from a Linux distro... both from my perspective as an experienced Linux
user, who relies on Linux to be stable, high-quality software, and from
the perspective of attracting new users to Linux, for much the same
reasons.
Whether you or I would recommend 7.0 to newbies, they are a large part of
the group that RH is trying to attract, which I think in this case would
be unfortunate. Remember when you were a newbie? Did you have a lot of
friends that already used Linux, who could offer you intelligent
information about how to chose a distro? I didn't... and neither did a
lot of people in the early goings. And a lot of present-day new users
won't either. But if they've done any research, they've probably heard
that RH is a great distro for beginners. I also agree that Mandrake is
better for newbies, and their increase in market share suggests that we're
not alone. But RH still ranks very highly in most such polls, and if you
ask me a beginner faced with RH7 runs the risk of thinking that Linux
isn't any better than windows in terms of reliability and quality, and I
for one don't want to see that happen.
> 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'm glad to hear that. At least they're thinking about those issues...
> > 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.
If the libs for XF4 aren't backward compatible, then I guess that's a good
point. But then I upgraded from XF3.3.6 to XF4.0.1 without any hassle, so
I have some trouble buying that...
> 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 agree that eventually you have to move on. But see my earlier comments
about relying on stability etc... My hope is that we avoid the reputation
that Windows has, but I fear that we won't because of the very same
pressures that Microsoft experiences, exerting pressure on the commercial
distros to release new software.
> 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.
I don't, but a lot of people will. Oh well.
> 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).
No appology necessary. And I think that was Kenny.
> Yes, RH does stupid things...
Which is my point. The reason they do stupid things is because of market
pressure. (O.k. and some of it may be genuine stupidity too, but I'm
giving them the benefit of the doubt. :) I'd much rather see them spend
more time on their distro, and produce a quality product, than to have
them whip out the latest alpha code so they can keep the $$ rolling in,
but alas, that doesn't keep companies afloat. So much for idealism.
> A while ago I would have agreed, but not recently (past year or so). Many
> others are much easier to install.
I think it depends a lot. I still can do a complete RH install in about
10 minutes, provided I have a system which has only hardware which is well
supported. Granted, I can do that because I have enough experience with
Linux that I can chose such components to put in my systems, but
nevertheless I don't think there is any other distro that I could install
that fast.
But, a fast install time isn't the most important factor in chosing a
distro...
--
Derek Martin
Senior System Administrator
Mission Critical Linux
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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