On Thu, 26 Oct 2000, Rich Payne wrote:
> > 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?
>
> Yes, but updates to glibc are always small and incremental....you can't go
> making massive changes to something like that (at least no easily). So by
> your logic there would never be a reason for a new distribution, because
> the changes are usually small (unless of course it fixes a bug that
> effects you, in which it's probably a big deal).
I know what you're getting at, but obviously that's not the case.
Actually I thought the upgrade from RH 5.x to RH6.x was quite worthwhile.
New major kernel release, new major glibc, a slew of new and improved
packages. Some really major features were added. I didn't touch 6.0, but
waited for 6.1 (and was quite glad). 6.2 fixed some things in 6.1, but I
already had bug fixes for most of the broken stuff, and they broke a whole
bunch of other stuff.
And BTW, you didn't answer my question (what version is it?)...
> Come on...everything in Linux in beta.....nothing's ever 'finished'.
There's a difference between beta and beta-quality though. Some things
are beta because certain features are missing, or because the authors
can't find any more bugs, so to do real testing needs to be released to
make sure there aren't any. On the other hand, other things are beta
because the authors don't know how to test (yeah, and/or don't have the
resources), and their software is riddled with bugs.
> As for selling CDs...I'd be curious to how much of their income comes from
> box sets. My guess would be fairly small...the moneys in the support.
But that's part of it too. Fix all the problems with the current release,
and support costs go down. So, release a new distro, and more people need
more support.
> and people payed $99 for the Win98 update..7.0 is a bargain! (Sorry,
> couldn't resist).
Heh... can't disagree there!
> What would be interesting here would be to look at RH's release cycle for
> the past several years and see if they are really speeding it up. I don't
> think they are, but I don't have the release dates handy.
I think their stated goal is to get one out every six months. I could be
wrong about that but I think they've been pretty consistently right around
that.
> > But, a fast install time isn't the most important factor in chosing a
> > distro...
>
> Well, it could be....
Yes! I meant to say "isn't necessarily the most..."
:)
> Kickstart is a powerful thing (when it works). We've isntalled
> clusters of Alphas via NFS root and kickstart. I think it was about
> 3-4 minutes per machine for the install :)
Kickstart is WONDERFUL. If debian had such a thing, we'd be on it!
=8^)
--
Derek Martin
Senior System Administrator
Mission Critical Linux
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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