I've got Andre's Suse based distribution but have not yet burned to usb and fired up. However, thinking about this, there are some considerations about a reference distro, which could be a very useful possible way out of the Linux issues. Thoughts:
1) it needs to run Rev exactly as the developers expect. So, if revPrintField and multiple desktops are not supported, they should not work on the reference distribution, and the release notes should say so. Or, if they are, the release notes should say so, and they should work on the reference distribution. Rev Browser as well! This is normal quality management procedures, and Rev needs to start this right away. Define the standard and define the tests and give the results. Then we can be certain that if we don't get the same results, its down to our particular installation. 2) The chosen distribution should be reasonably pure. Many of the larger distributions are not. I don't think this is much of a problem in practice for users, but if you are using a reference distro, it should be one that has as few custom mods as possible. It should be one where you can be pretty sure that if a given feature works on this, it will work on anything, because you know its working on a non-customized install. A personal view: this will rule out using many large favorites as your reference distro. From this perspective perhaps the reference distro should be Slackware? That is the least tweaked distribution there is. A Debian stable standard installation would also be a candidate. What you do not want is one where all the configuration files are covered in ##do not edit this file it is generated automatically## It would be nice if its live, but probably not essentiaI. I am tempted to suggest Slax, which is Slackware live, very popular, and very compact, but its probably excessively customized to serve as a reference distribution. The point of a reference distribution is it should be unquestionable that if a feature works on this, it is implemented correctly. Slackware, I think most people would agree, meets this test. This is probably more important than being live. 3) Testing and certification, if thats the word, should be done running on real hardware, not in a virtual machine. It may be interesting that Rev does not work properly in XP running on VirtualBox on a Mac, but establishing that is not a robust way of testing a reference XP installation. Nor is the equivalent for Linux. Nor indeed would we test Rev for OSX on a Hackintosh as a reference installation! So we should not rely on this approach for Linux. The thing is, to prove a feature is implemented correctly, you only need to produce one standard distro on which it works to spec. At the moment we are in a situation where there is no reference, and people can always say, well, it works/does not work for me. And then they have to start talking which release of which version, all of which may well be, most probably is, totally irrelevant. But how do we know? I assume that when Mac or Windows releases are feature tested, it is against some specific version or feature pack. Same thing is needed for Linux. It would save a huge amount of time, speculation and irritation. Peter _______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list [email protected] Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
