FC2 doubtful quality?

[HaJo Schatz]

Hi List,

Long story, short question: Should I fall back to FC1 instead of using
FC2? I am somewhat very concerned about the release quality of FC2.
Here's what happened:

I just upgraded a laptop (Fujitsu-Siemens E2010) from RH9 to FC2. After
that, I couldn't log on to Gnome, after username/password, X just hung
without any error message, neither in the logs. Never mind, I did a
fresh install instead & immediately after updated all the packages. Then
the surprises really started:

- Service PCMCIA doesn't load the yento-sockets module. This is known @
bugzilla, one has to patch the pcmcia script by hand. Through this bug,
the PCMCIA subsystem is non-functional!
- Kernel 2.6.6-1.435 gives a "failed to bind key 255 to value..." every
time you log in at a console, whereas kernel -358 doesn't. This appeared
at bugzilla but was closed as "magically disappeared"
- Hotplug calls the script ide, which in turn calls /sbin/ide_info.
/sbin/ide_info simply doesn't exist! Had to copy it in from a FC1
install. Through this bug, you can't mount CF-Cards in a PCMCIA adapter.
Just found out that bugzilla also knows about this -- since FC2 test3!
- USB updfstab doesn't work. Devices get detected in the kernel, hotplug
@ updfstab gets executed, but /mnt & fstab entries are not created.
Trying to debug, I realized that the issue is somehow timing-related.
When I do some sleep at the "right" points in the updfstab scripts,
things work sometimes. Can't resolve the issue though and have to live
without using my Flash-Stick & Camera reliably.
- Kernel -435 sometimes segfaults when plugging USB devices in/out,
whereas -358 seems reliable here.
- My console-beep (emitted through the sound card) disappeared ever
since FC2. I don't seem to be able to find a pointer on how to trace
this...

This is the result after a few hours of FC2 experience and I really
start wondering about what level of testing this release experienced
before being released into the public -- even IMHO obvious things like
the PCMCIA subsystem doesn't work! Seems to me that FC1 was by far the
more reliable system. 

My question now is whether I should give up on FC2 (I'm really tempted)
and go back to FC1 or hang in there. 
- Will I experience more of these surprises with FC2?
- How fast will issues be attented to through updates? The PCMCIA issue
is known, so is the ide_info issue (since FC2 test3), but still no fix
today.
- Is this what we have to expect from a "community distro" in the long
run? As with RH9 the last consumer-distro is discontinued, my logical
conclusion would then be to leave RH behind and move on to another
packager, say Suse?

A bit disappointed,
HaJo

[HaJo Schatz]

One more question:

I've installed the usual TTF fonts as follows:
mkdir /usr/share/fonts/ttf
cd /usr/share/fonts/ttf
cp /foo/*.ttf .
ttmkfdir
mkfontdir
chkfontpath -a /usr/share/fonts/ttf

I can see the fonts in the apps. But Netscape 7.1, when rendering say
Arial in small font sizes, looks horrible, like not anti-aliased at all.
Mozilla doesn't have this problem though.

Any ideas?

HaJo
On Tue, 2004-06-22 at 14:54, HaJo Schatz wrote:
>  Hi List,
>  
>  Long story, short question: Should I fall back to FC1 instead of using
>  FC2? I am somewhat very concerned about the release quality of FC2.
>  Here's what happened:
>  
>  I just upgraded a laptop (Fujitsu-Siemens E2010) from RH9 to FC2. After
>  that, I couldn't log on to Gnome, after username/password, X just hung
>  without any error message, neither in the logs. Never mind, I did a
>  fresh install instead & immediately after updated all the packages. Then
>  the surprises really started:
>  
>  - Service PCMCIA doesn't load the yento-sockets module. This is known @
>  bugzilla, one has to patch the pcmcia script by hand. Through this bug,
>  the PCMCIA subsystem is non-functional!
>  - Kernel 2.6.6-1.435 gives a "failed to bind key 255 to value..." every
>  time you log in at a console, whereas kernel -358 doesn't. This appeared
>  at bugzilla but was closed as "magically disappeared"
>  - Hotplug calls the script ide, which in turn calls /sbin/ide_info.
>  /sbin/ide_info simply doesn't exist! Had to copy it in from a FC1
>  install. Through this bug, you can't mount CF-Cards in a PCMCIA adapter.
>  Just found out that bugzilla also knows about this -- since FC2 test3!
>  - USB updfstab doesn't work. Devices get detected in the kernel, hotplug
>  @ updfstab gets executed, but /mnt & fstab entries are not created.
>  Trying to debug, I realized that the issue is somehow timing-related.
>  When I do some sleep at the "right" points in the updfstab scripts,
>  things work sometimes. Can't resolve the issue though and have to live
>  without using my Flash-Stick & Camera reliably.
>  - Kernel -435 sometimes segfaults when plugging USB devices in/out,
>  whereas -358 seems reliable here.
>  - My console-beep (emitted through the sound card) disappeared ever
>  since FC2. I don't seem to be able to find a pointer on how to trace
>  this...
>  
>  This is the result after a few hours of FC2 experience and I really
>  start wondering about what level of testing this release experienced
>  before being released into the public -- even IMHO obvious things like
>  the PCMCIA subsystem doesn't work! Seems to me that FC1 was by far the
>  more reliable system. 
>  
>  My question now is whether I should give up on FC2 (I'm really tempted)
>  and go back to FC1 or hang in there. 
>  - Will I experience more of these surprises with FC2?
>  - How fast will issues be attented to through updates? The PCMCIA issue
>  is known, so is the ide_info issue (since FC2 test3), but still no fix
>  today.
>  - Is this what we have to expect from a "community distro" in the long
>  run? As with RH9 the last consumer-distro is discontinued, my logical
>  conclusion would then be to leave RH behind and move on to another
>  packager, say Suse?
>  
>  A bit disappointed,
>  HaJo 
-- 
HaJo Schatz <hajo(a)hajo.net&gt;
http://www.HaJo.Net

PGP-Key:  http://www.hajo.net/hajonet/keys/pgpkey_hajo.txt

[Jose Luis Ricardo Chavez]

HaJo Schatz wrote:

> One more question:
>
> I've installed the usual TTF fonts as follows:
> mkdir /usr/share/fonts/ttf
> cd /usr/share/fonts/ttf
> cp /foo/*.ttf .
> ttmkfdir
> mkfontdir
> chkfontpath -a /usr/share/fonts/ttf
>
> I can see the fonts in the apps. But Netscape 7.1, when rendering say
> Arial in small font sizes, looks horrible, like not anti-aliased at all.
> Mozilla doesn't have this problem though.
>
> Any ideas?
>
> HaJo
> On Tue, 2004-06-22 at 14:54, HaJo Schatz wrote:
>   
>
> >Hi List,
> >
> >Long story, short question: Should I fall back to FC1 instead of using
> >FC2? I am somewhat very concerned about the release quality of FC2.
> >Here's what happened:
> >
> >I just upgraded a laptop (Fujitsu-Siemens E2010) from RH9 to FC2. After
> >that, I couldn't log on to Gnome, after username/password, X just hung
> >without any error message, neither in the logs. Never mind, I did a
> >fresh install instead & immediately after updated all the packages. Then
> >the surprises really started:
> >
> >- Service PCMCIA doesn't load the yento-sockets module. This is known @
> >bugzilla, one has to patch the pcmcia script by hand. Through this bug,
> >the PCMCIA subsystem is non-functional!
> >- Kernel 2.6.6-1.435 gives a "failed to bind key 255 to value..." every
> >time you log in at a console, whereas kernel -358 doesn't. This appeared
> >at bugzilla but was closed as "magically disappeared"
> >- Hotplug calls the script ide, which in turn calls /sbin/ide_info.
> >/sbin/ide_info simply doesn't exist! Had to copy it in from a FC1
> >install. Through this bug, you can't mount CF-Cards in a PCMCIA adapter.
> >Just found out that bugzilla also knows about this -- since FC2 test3!
> >- USB updfstab doesn't work. Devices get detected in the kernel, hotplug
> >@ updfstab gets executed, but /mnt & fstab entries are not created.
> >Trying to debug, I realized that the issue is somehow timing-related.
> >When I do some sleep at the "right" points in the updfstab scripts,
> >things work sometimes. Can't resolve the issue though and have to live
> >without using my Flash-Stick & Camera reliably.
> >- Kernel -435 sometimes segfaults when plugging USB devices in/out,
> >whereas -358 seems reliable here.
> >- My console-beep (emitted through the sound card) disappeared ever
> >since FC2. I don't seem to be able to find a pointer on how to trace
> >this...
> >
> >This is the result after a few hours of FC2 experience and I really
> >start wondering about what level of testing this release experienced
> >before being released into the public -- even IMHO obvious things like
> >the PCMCIA subsystem doesn't work! Seems to me that FC1 was by far the
> >more reliable system. 
> >
> >My question now is whether I should give up on FC2 (I'm really tempted)
> >and go back to FC1 or hang in there. 
> >- Will I experience more of these surprises with FC2?
> >- How fast will issues be attented to through updates? The PCMCIA issue
> >is known, so is the ide_info issue (since FC2 test3), but still no fix
> >today.
> >- Is this what we have to expect from a "community distro" in the long
> >run? As with RH9 the last consumer-distro is discontinued, my logical
> >conclusion would then be to leave RH behind and move on to another
> >packager, say Suse?
> >
> >A bit disappointed,
> >HaJo
> >    
> > 
Although your post has obtained many replies since everybody feels 
touched by
the doubtful quality of FC2, nobody answered your question about TTF font
support in Netscape. Mozilla and Netscape are GTK applications, there 
are two
version of the GTK library: GTK1+ and GTK2+. Only GTK2+ supports
antialiased fonts so to have nice antialiased font effects look for a 
Netscape version
compiled with the GTK2+ library.

 - Jose Luis

[Dexter Ang]

HaJo Schatz wrote:
>  Hi List,
>  
>  Long story, short question: Should I fall back to FC1 instead of using
>  FC2? I am somewhat very concerned about the release quality of FC2.
>  Here's what happened: 
It is all your choice. No one is forcing you to use FC2. If FC1, or even 
RH9 works well for you, then you should continue using it unless there 
is compelling reason for you to use FC2.

>  
>  [snip]
>  
>  - Service PCMCIA doesn't load the yento-sockets module. This is known @
>  bugzilla, one has to patch the pcmcia script by hand. Through this bug,
>  the PCMCIA subsystem is non-functional! 
This seems to be system specific. My IBM Thinkpad T30's PCMCIA works 
without any problems.

>  
>  - My console-beep (emitted through the sound card) disappeared ever
>  since FC2. I don't seem to be able to find a pointer on how to trace
>  this... 
You must load the pcspkr module. It's been discussed and is in the archives.

>  
>  This is the result after a few hours of FC2 experience and I really
>  start wondering about what level of testing this release experienced
>  before being released into the public -- even IMHO obvious things like
>  the PCMCIA subsystem doesn't work! Seems to me that FC1 was by far the
>  more reliable system.  
Realibility will depend on the number of people testing "test" releases. 
If you want a quality release, you should help out by testing and 
reporting bugs. If you can't afford to use your machine for testing, 
your best hope is to report bugs and wait for fixes. There really is so 
many hardware to test on, that the chances of certain configurations not 
working is very high.

>  
>  My question now is whether I should give up on FC2 (I'm really tempted)
>  and go back to FC1 or hang in there. 
>  - Will I experience more of these surprises with FC2?
>  - How fast will issues be attented to through updates? The PCMCIA issue
>  is known, so is the ide_info issue (since FC2 test3), but still no fix
>  today.
>  - Is this what we have to expect from a "community distro" in the long
>  run? As with RH9 the last consumer-distro is discontinued, my logical
>  conclusion would then be to leave RH behind and move on to another
>  packager, say Suse?
>  
>  A bit disappointed,
>  HaJo 
Again, no one's forcing you to use FC2. Obviously you have the time to 
format and install an entirely new system without assessing the possible 
issues first, so why not try SuSE? It's 9.1 Personal edition is 
available in ISO now. Or why not stick with RH9? Is there some very good 
reason (other than having fun) to use FC2? Giving up on FC2 is really 
your decision. Either help out, by living through bugs and reporting 
them, or just switch to something that works. Granted, one less person 
testing on their hardware is never good. Me, I use FC2 for work and for 
fun. I am hoping that through my and others' efforts, FC3 will be a 
superb release.

dex

[Andy Green]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Tuesday 22 June 2004 09:51, Dexter Ang wrote:

Hi -

>  Realibility will depend on the number of people testing
> "test" releases.
>  If you want a quality release, you should help out by testing and
>  reporting bugs. If you can't afford to use your machine for testing,
>  your best hope is to report bugs and wait for fixes. There really is so
>  many hardware to test on, that the chances of certain configurations not
>  working is very high. 
To be fair  this is not the only factor: witholding the release until the 
nastiest known bugs are squished is as critical.  This is a pure RH decision.

I thought you made a good answer Dexter, but I have seen a lot of posts lately 
blowing off all criticism of FC2, when there clearly have been serious 
troubles.  Acknowledging the problems and going on in a way to avoid them 
next time would be the right solution.

>  > My question now is whether I should give up on FC2 (I'm
> really tempted)
>  > and go back to FC1 or hang in there. 
Only you can answer this.  Despite the hassle, gaining experience with the 2.6 
kernel and the latest stuff is valuable.  I guess it turns on whether you see 
hassle has that upside or if it just hassle to you.

>  > - Will I experience more of these surprises with FC2? 
Probably, but SuSE for example has its share of 2.6-related surprises too it 
seems.

>  > - How fast will issues be attented to through updates? The
> PCMCIA issue
>  > is known, so is the ide_info issue (since FC2 test3), but still no fix
>  > today. 
The RH folks pick their own targets and will get to stuff at their own speed 
(this is the same everywhere of course).  I had a bug with memory management 
in the kernel that sat there in Bugzilla for months and months, it got 
mentioned in the list recently [NB: with a link to the Bugzilla entry to make 
it easy for them], somebody from RH looked at it then and it was fixed 
quickly and very effectively.  So I think mentioning your problem from time 
to time on the list with a Bugzilla link may jog memories.

>  > - Is this what we have to expect from a "community
> distro" in the long
>  > run? As with RH9 the last consumer-distro is discontinued, my logical
>  > conclusion would then be to leave RH behind and move on to another
>  > packager, say Suse? 
SuSE may not be the panacea you are hoping for, it certainly isn't any more 
community driven than Fedora.  I know SuSE fanboys are using the FC2 problems 
to beat FC2 users up, since I had some of that myself, but have a look around 
on the SuSE user ml archives and you'll see a similar amount of difficulties.  
Some folks have recommended Debian as the next stop if Fedora is not 
inclusive enough.  There was also some "community" distro Bruce Perens was 
starting up, but he picked Gnome as the single official desktop for it and 
that is a big turn-off for me at least.

>  > A bit disappointed, 
It could have done with a release delay by a few weeks.  But it is not 
actually as bad in the general case as your bad experience has indicated to 
you.

BTW you mention USB/updfstab: something is really screwed with USB in current 
(RH?) kernels at the moment, leading to data loss on transfers from USB 
Storage devices like cameras.  

- -Andy

- -- 
Automatic actions for USB cameras, cardreaders, memory sticks, MP3 players
http://warmcat.com/usbautocam
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux)
>
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> dkUTztmySsZB/b/0Yj61c1g=
> =M7CD
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

[HaJo Schatz]

Andy,

Tnx a lot, this is the kind of answer I've been hoping for...


On Tue, 2004-06-22 at 18:51, Andy Green wrote:
>  -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>  Hash: SHA1
>  
>  On Tuesday 22 June 2004 09:51, Dexter Ang wrote:
>  
>  Hi -
>  
>  > Realibility will depend on the number of people testing "test" releases.
>  > If you want a quality release, you should help out by testing and
>  > reporting bugs. If you can't afford to use your machine for testing,
>  > your best hope is to report bugs and wait for fixes. There really is so
>  > many hardware to test on, that the chances of certain configurations not
>  > working is very high.
>  
>  To be fair  this is not the only factor: witholding the release until the 
>  nastiest known bugs are squished is as critical.  This is a pure RH decision.
>  
>  I thought you made a good answer Dexter, but I have seen a lot of posts lately 
>  blowing off all criticism of FC2, when there clearly have been serious 
>  troubles.  Acknowledging the problems and going on in a way to avoid them 
>  next time would be the right solution.
>  
>  > > My question now is whether I should give up on FC2 (I'm really tempted)
>  > > and go back to FC1 or hang in there.
>  
>  Only you can answer this.  Despite the hassle, gaining experience with the 2.6 
>  kernel and the latest stuff is valuable.  I guess it turns on whether you see 
>  hassle has that upside or if it just hassle to you.
>  
>  > > - Will I experience more of these surprises with FC2?
>  
>  Probably, but SuSE for example has its share of 2.6-related surprises too it 
>  seems.
>  
>  > > - How fast will issues be attented to through updates? The PCMCIA issue
>  > > is known, so is the ide_info issue (since FC2 test3), but still no fix
>  > > today.
>  
>  The RH folks pick their own targets and will get to stuff at their own speed 
>  (this is the same everywhere of course).  I had a bug with memory management 
>  in the kernel that sat there in Bugzilla for months and months, it got 
>  mentioned in the list recently [NB: with a link to the Bugzilla entry to make 
>  it easy for them], somebody from RH looked at it then and it was fixed 
>  quickly and very effectively.  So I think mentioning your problem from time 
>  to time on the list with a Bugzilla link may jog memories.
>  
>  > > - Is this what we have to expect from a "community distro" in the
> long
>  > > run? As with RH9 the last consumer-distro is discontinued, my logical
>  > > conclusion would then be to leave RH behind and move on to another
>  > > packager, say Suse?
>  
>  SuSE may not be the panacea you are hoping for, it certainly isn't any more 
>  community driven than Fedora.  I know SuSE fanboys are using the FC2 problems 
>  to beat FC2 users up, since I had some of that myself, but have a look around 
>  on the SuSE user ml archives and you'll see a similar amount of difficulties.  
>  Some folks have recommended Debian as the next stop if Fedora is not 
>  inclusive enough.  There was also some "community" distro Bruce Perens was 
>  starting up, but he picked Gnome as the single official desktop for it and 
>  that is a big turn-off for me at least.
>  
>  > > A bit disappointed,
>  
>  It could have done with a release delay by a few weeks.  But it is not 
>  actually as bad in the general case as your bad experience has indicated to 
>  you.
>  
>  BTW you mention USB/updfstab: something is really screwed with USB in current 
>  (RH?) kernels at the moment, leading to data loss on transfers from USB 
>  Storage devices like cameras.  
>  
>  - -Andy
>  
>  - -- 
>  Automatic actions for USB cameras, cardreaders, memory sticks, MP3 players
>  http://warmcat.com/usbautocam
> >  -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> >  Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux)
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> >  =M7CD
> >  -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- 
>

[David Jansen]

On Tue, Jun 22, 2004 at 11:51:16AM +0100, Andy Green wrote:
>  It could have done with a release delay by a few weeks.  But it is
> not 
>  actually as bad in the general case as your bad experience has indicated to 
>  you. 
Or a re-release of the ISOs, e.g. to fix the ASUS board boot issues and
others. I still wonder why the updates boot.iso is still only on Arjan V.'s 
personal page and not officially released as a bugfix. (BTW: great work
on fixing that bug!)

An similarly of course with the Windows dual-boot issue, although one
could say that there is no complete fix yet, only a set of recipes to
recover after the problems, or to prevent them from happening. But if
there were an universal fix, it should be in the installer since that is
the only place were the original partition table is available, so there
it is still possible to save the C/H/S values to be restored later.

On the other hand, FC2 works fine if you just take the time to read the
archives and search the internet for answers. It was never intended as a
"plug & play" OS for the clueless and inexperienced.

David Jansen

[Timothy Murphy]

David Jansen wrote:

>  On the other hand, FC2 works fine if you just take the time to read
> the
>  archives and search the internet for answers. 
This is a silly remark.
All you can say is that "FC2 works fine" on the machines
it is reported to work on.
There are many unresolved bugs,
eg Xorg does not work properly on machines with ATI Rage 128 video boards.

As far as I can see, 
FC2 was released when there were known unresolved bugs in the test releases.
In my view, it should have been delayed until these were fixed.
It seems to have been released because a release date 
had been fixed in advance.
That is a silly way to organise distributions.
I hope it will be changed.

>  It was never intended as a 
>  "plug & play" OS for the clueless and inexperienced. 
It's amazing what idiotic excuses are made for software bugs.
A bug is a bug - that's all there is to it.


-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
tel: [phone]
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland

[Patrick Boutilier]

Timothy Murphy wrote:
>  David Jansen wrote:
>  
>  
> >On the other hand, FC2 works fine if you just take the time to read the
> >archives and search the internet for answers.
>  
>  
>  This is a silly remark.
>  All you can say is that "FC2 works fine" on the machines
>  it is reported to work on.
>  There are many unresolved bugs,
>  eg Xorg does not work properly on machines with ATI Rage 128 video boards.
>  
>  As far as I can see, 
>  FC2 was released when there were known unresolved bugs in the test releases.
>  In my view, it should have been delayed until these were fixed.
>  It seems to have been released because a release date 
>  had been fixed in advance.
>  That is a silly way to organise distributions.
>  I hope it will be changed.
>  
>  
> >It was never intended as a 
> >"plug & play" OS for the clueless and inexperienced 
>  
>  
>  It's amazing what idiotic excuses are made for software bugs.
>  A bug is a bug - that's all there is to it. 

Well then fix it. You have the source.




>  
>

[Robert P. J. Day]

On Tue, 22 Jun 2004, Patrick Boutilier wrote:

>  Timothy Murphy wrote: 
> > It's amazing what idiotic excuses are made for software
> bugs.
> > A bug is a bug - that's all there is to it. 
>  Well then fix it. You have the source. 

Unhappy customer: "This car I got from you last week doesn't run well at 
all.  Sometimes, it doesn't start and, every so often, it stalls, even
on the freeway at high speed."

Salesman: "Well then fix it.  You have the tools."


   hmmm .... nope, doesn't sound persuasive in *that* context, either.

rday

[Patrick Boutilier]

Robert P. J. Day wrote:
>  On Tue, 22 Jun 2004, Patrick Boutilier wrote:
>  
> > Timothy Murphy wrote:
>  
>  
> >> It's amazing what idiotic excuses are made for software bugs.
> >> A bug is a bug - that's all there is to it.
>  
>  
> > Well then fix it. You have the source.
>  
>  
>  
>  Unhappy customer: "This car I got from you last week doesn't run well at 
>  all.  Sometimes, it doesn't start and, every so often, it stalls, even
>  on the freeway at high speed."
>  
>  Salesman: "Well then fix it.  You have the tools."
>  
>  
>    hmmm .... nope, doesn't sound persuasive in *that* context, either. 

If you went into the car lot and they gave you a car for free, why not?


>  
>  rday
>  
>

[Timothy Murphy]

Patrick Boutilier wrote:

> > Unhappy customer: "This car I got from you last week
> doesn't run well at
> > all.  Sometimes, it doesn't start and, every so often, it stalls, even
> > on the freeway at high speed."
> > 
> > Salesman: "Well then fix it.  You have the tools."
> > 
> > 
> >   hmmm .... nope, doesn't sound persuasive in *that* context, either.
>  
>  
>  If you went into the car lot and they gave you a car for free, why not? 
Do you realise what a dis-service you do to Fedora
by suggesting that because it is free
you shouldn't complain if it doesn't work?

In my (very long) experience
the quality of Unix/Linux/RedHat/Fedora is very high
and does not need "salesmen" telling you
that you mustn't expect it to work properly.

All software has bugs.
These are due to mistakes on someone's part,
and should be corrected as soon as possible.



-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
tel: [phone]
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland

[Patrick Boutilier]

Timothy Murphy wrote:
>  Patrick Boutilier wrote:
>  
>  
> >>Unhappy customer: "This car I got from you last week doesn't run well at
> >>all.  Sometimes, it doesn't start and, every so often, it stalls, even
> >>on the freeway at high speed."
> >>
> >>Salesman: "Well then fix it.  You have the tools."
> >>
> >>
> >>  hmmm .... nope, doesn't sound persuasive in *that* context, either.
> >
> >
> >If you went into the car lot and they gave you a car for free, why not?
>  
>  
>  Do you realise what a dis-service you do to Fedora
>  by suggesting that because it is free
>  you shouldn't complain if it doesn't work? 
File a bug report but don't get all PO'ed if it doesn't get fixed right 
away. You seem to think that Fedora owes you support or something.

>  
>  In my (very long) experience
>  the quality of Unix/Linux/RedHat/Fedora is very high
>  and does not need "salesmen" telling you
>  that you mustn't expect it to work properly.
>  
>  All software has bugs.
>  These are due to mistakes on someone's part,
>  and should be corrected as soon as possible. 
If you can't wait until they are fixed fix them yourself or use 
something else. You have a choice.

>  
>  
>

[Alexandre Oliva]

On Jun 22, 2004, "Robert P. J. Day" <rpjday(a)mindspring.com&gt; wrote:

>  Unhappy customer: "This car I got from you last week doesn't
> run
>  well at all.  Sometimes, it doesn't start and, every so often, it
>  stalls, even on the freeway at high speed." 
>  Salesman: "Well then fix it.  You have the tools." 
Customer/Salesman, eh?  How is the conversation about related in any
way with the Fedora community?

-- 
Alexandre Oliva             http://www.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
Red Hat Compiler Engineer   aoliva(a){redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org}
Free Software Evangelist  oliva(a){lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}

[Robert P. J. Day]

On Tue, 22 Jun 2004, Alexandre Oliva wrote:

>  On Jun 22, 2004, "Robert P. J. Day"
> <rpjday(a)mindspring.com&gt; wrote:
>
> > Unhappy customer: "This car I got from you last week doesn't run
> > well at all.  Sometimes, it doesn't start and, every so often, it
> > stalls, even on the freeway at high speed."
>
> > Salesman: "Well then fix it.  You have the tools."
>
>  Customer/Salesman, eh?  How is the conversation about related in any
>  way with the Fedora community? 
in a general but, IMHO, relevant way.  even if FC is free, red hat and the 
fedora community in general are still "selling" it in the sense that they 
want people to use it, no?  the fact that people are getting it for free 
doesn't detract from the fact that there's definitely some salesmanship 
going on.

direct from the fedora "about" page, you read:

   "By using this more open process, we hope to provide an operating system
   more in line with the ideals of free software and more appealing to the
   open source community."

that's salesmanship right there, even if no money changes hands.

rday

[Rodolfo J. Paiz]

At 06:30 AM 6/22/2004, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> Unhappy customer: "This car I got from you last week doesn't
> run well at 
> all.  Sometimes, it doesn't start and, every so often, it stalls, even
> on the freeway at high speed."
>
> Salesman: "Well then fix it.  You have the tools." 
This is a *users* list. No one is selling you anything in this case. One 
user is bitching at 4,000 others about something. Regardless of the content 
of his post and/or its merits if any, there is no "sales" analogy which 
could possibly be relevant.


-- 
Rodolfo J. Paiz
rpaiz(a)simpaticus.com
http://www.simpaticus.com

[Craig White]

On Tue, 2004-06-22 at 05:30, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
>  On Tue, 22 Jun 2004, Patrick Boutilier wrote:
>  
>  > Timothy Murphy wrote:
>  
>  >> It's amazing what idiotic excuses are made for software bugs.
>  >> A bug is a bug - that's all there is to it.
>  
>  > Well then fix it. You have the source.
>  
>  
>  Unhappy customer: "This car I got from you last week doesn't run well at 
>  all.  Sometimes, it doesn't start and, every so often, it stalls, even
>  on the freeway at high speed."
>  
>  Salesman: "Well then fix it.  You have the tools."
>  
>  
>     hmmm .... nope, doesn't sound persuasive in *that* context, either. 
---
Lot's of posts but nothing anybody is going to say is going to change
people's minds on this. It seems with each new kernel change/distro,
this repeats itself.

It seems to me that the people that have a long time investment in Linux
understand what occurs when there is a major upgrade and hold back
installing it on production systems, be they server or workstation until
the issues get worked out. Newer Linux users expect every new distro
(without regard to kernel version upgrades) to work extremely well. 

I would suggest that rather than trying to convince people to lower
their expectations, it would be more beneficial to suggest that we work
together to solve the problems and develop a better sense of humor (i.e.
less whining) about the problems we face.

Craig

[Robert P. J. Day]

On Tue, 22 Jun 2004, Craig White wrote:
...
>  I would suggest that rather than trying to convince people to lower
>  their expectations, it would be more beneficial to suggest that we work
>  together to solve the problems and develop a better sense of humor (i.e.
>  less whining) about the problems we face. 
   since i apparently started this barroom brawl, let me make a suggestion 
that might solve a lot of problems.  what FC2 (and future FC releases) 
needs is a structured, somewhat-moderated repository of well-written and 
important info for new users.  quite simply, it needs a moderated wiki.

   why a wiki?  as it stands, there's *loads* of info out there on FC2. 
there's fedora.redhat.com, there's the mailing list(s) and their archives, 
there's private websites like fedoranews.org and fedorafaq.org, and on and 
on and on.  quite simply, there's just *too* *much* information out there, 
a lot of it redundant, a lot of it almost but not quite usable, a lot of 
it non-searchable, many people reinventing the wheel, etc.

   all of those repositories have their strengths and weaknesses.  the 
mailing list archives are a perfect example.  someone asks, "how do i do 
X?".  many respond (sometimes a bit testily), "hey, it's in the archives, 
go look there."  so one goes to the archives and starts looking at all 
postings related to X, and finds:

   * half of them *asking* about X
   * half of the remainder saying, "yeah, i had that problem, too"
   * half of what's left saying, "funny, *i* didn't get that problem"
   * still half of what's left suggesting incomplete fixes that just
     happen to work on *their* system, but might not work on anyone
     else's ...
   * ... and the occasional posting actually saying, "hey, *here's* why
     that's happening and *here's* how you fix it."  (whew)

is it any wonder that lots of folks are kind of reluctant to dive into the
archives?  the point is that, when folks have a problem, they're not so 
much concerned about getting *a* solution, what they really want is *the* 
solution.  that is, the complete explanation about why a problem exists 
and how to deal with it.  and there don't need to be 500 different 
versions of this, just one, well-written, edited, and at least somewhat 
quality-tested version, in a well-known place.

what i imagine is a mixture of fedoranews.org and fedorafaq.org. 
fedornews has loads of great little articles and HOWTOs, but not in any 
semblance of organization and (IMHO) too much stuff that has nothing to 
do with fedora.  fedorafaq doesn't have *near* the content, but 
it has a nicer layout, even if i think it could be refined even further
into more subcategories.

wouldn't it be great if, at a single site, once could find articles 
organized as follows:

    Fedora Core 2

Known issues
 	The infamous XP dual-boot problem -- how not to screw yourself
 	PCMCIA won't start at boot time, why the heck not?
 	...

Filesystems
 	How to get NTFS support
 	How to create encrypted filesystems
 	What is LVM and how do I use it?
 	...

Multimedia
 	How to get ALSA sound working
 	How do I play MP3s?
 	How to play DVDs
 	Digital video under Linux
 	...

The FC desktop
 	How do I edit my &^#^^%(* GNOME menus?
 	How can I add additional fonts?
 	...

and on and on -- you get the idea.

   now, the trick is that this approach would take a little extra effort. 
first, someone would have to occasionally restructure the top level 
topics, if it seems justified.  and, second, one or a small group of 
people would be responsible for QA, to make sure that submissions are 
correct and complete.  as an example, as an explanation of how to get NTFS 
support, it wouldn't be acceptable to write, "go to ntfs.sourceforge.net, 
get the module and load it."  a bit more detail would, i think, be in 
order; perhaps how to build a kernel to add your own support as well,
dangers involved, etc.

   it wouldn't even be necessary to write totally new submissions -- it 
would be perfectly reasonable to link elsewhere if good explanations 
already exist.  the important thing is to have good and organized docs in 
a single place so people aren't bouncing around all over the net and, just 
as important, to make sure this info is always kept up to date.  (a rapid 
response wiki, so to speak.)

   keith lofstrom proposed starting a new mailing list.  i don't think a 
new mailing list would solve the problem, but a disciplined wiki would
go a long way to removing a lot of the current frustration.

   thoughts?

rday

[Scot L. Harris]

On Wed, 2004-06-23 at 10:10, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
>  On Tue, 22 Jun 2004, Craig White wrote:
>  ...
>  > I would suggest that rather than trying to convince people to lower
>  > their expectations, it would be more beneficial to suggest that we work
>  > together to solve the problems and develop a better sense of humor (i.e.
>  > less whining) about the problems we face.
>  
>     since i apparently started this barroom brawl, let me make a suggestion 
>  that might solve a lot of problems.  what FC2 (and future FC releases) 
>  needs is a structured, somewhat-moderated repository of well-written and 
>  important info for new users.  quite simply, it needs a moderated wiki. 
>     thoughts?
>  
>  rday
>  
>   
Good idea, go do it.

-- 
Scot L. Harris
webid(a)cfl.rr.com

In the long run we are all dead.
		-- John Maynard Keynes

[Rodolfo J. Paiz]

At 08:46 AM 6/23/2004, Scot L. Harris wrote:
> On Wed, 2004-06-23 at 10:10, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
>  >    since i apparently started this barroom brawl, let me make a suggestion
>  > that might solve a lot of problems.  what FC2 (and future FC releases)
>  > needs is a structured, somewhat-moderated repository of well-written and
>  > important info for new users.  quite simply, it needs a moderated wiki.
>
>  >    thoughts?
>  >
>
> Good idea, go do it. 
rday, or anyone who is working on a GUI (Good and Useful Idea [tm]) to help 
the Fedora community, is welcome to ask for my specific support in any way 
and I'll do my best to help. I'm having major trouble coping with the 
demands of my Real World Life, and have not even had any real time to do 
(drastically necessary) updates to simpaticus.com, but I *will* do my best 
to help.

For the record, I also think the wiki thing is a good idea. Never seen a 
wiki yet <grin>, but the way the post was written made it sound like a good 
idea.

Cheers,


-- 
Rodolfo J. Paiz
rpaiz(a)simpaticus.com
http://www.simpaticus.com

[Sean]

On Wed, 23 Jun 2004 23:07:45 -0600
"Rodolfo J. Paiz" <rpaiz(a)simpaticus.com&gt; wrote:


>  For the record, I also think the wiki thing is a good idea. Never
> seen a 
>  wiki yet <grin>, but the way the post was written made it sound like a good 
>  idea. 
There is already a WIKI with some Fedora subject matter here:

http://www.fedora.us/wiki

It might be worth taking a look at to generate ideas about its use or how
a new wiki might be organized.   It looks pretty straight forward and it
would be great to have a central place where people could help
keep documentation current.

Cheers,
Sean.

USB Drive

[Thornton]

Fedora Core 2 is not reading my USB flash drive.

Is there a patch or something I need to do to get that to work?

Thanks

[Robert P. J. Day]

On Thu, 24 Jun 2004, Sean Estabrooks wrote:

>  On Wed, 23 Jun 2004 23:07:45 -0600
>  "Rodolfo J. Paiz" <rpaiz(a)simpaticus.com&gt; wrote:
>
>
> > For the record, I also think the wiki thing is a good idea. Never seen a
> > wiki yet <grin>, but the way the post was written made it sound like a good
> > idea.
>
>  There is already a WIKI with some Fedora subject matter here:
>
>  http://www.fedora.us/wiki
>
>  It might be worth taking a look at to generate ideas about its use or how
>  a new wiki might be organized.   It looks pretty straight forward and it
>  would be great to have a central place where people could help
>  keep documentation current. 
ah, i hadn't seen that before.  at first glance, it's still not what i was 
imagining, since it seems to have an initially confusing layout.  let's 
say, as a newbie, i go there.  i desperately need help with topic X.
upon arrival, i have to choose between a couple links:

   FedoraDocuments
   WikiHomePage

which one?  they both sound tempting.  so i pick the first one, at which 
point i get a whole lot more choices, none of which are obvious.  do i
want the User Documents, under which i find the HOWTO and the Users FAQ?
or, wait, there's the Volunteer Documents.  do i want the Volunteers FAQ?
or, wait, my topic is kind of, sort of related to hardware.  maybe i 
better check out the Hardware Info link first.  argh.

but if i knew beforehand this was a wiki, i might have chosen to visit
the Wiki Home Page, where i can see what a wiki is, how to use it, how to 
sign in, see recent changes ... etc.  at which point, i kinda feel that i 
have the right to scream, "Where's the freakin' content!?"  (yes,
i'm 
exaggerating to make a point.  so sue me. :-)

personally, the layout i've seen that i like the most is max k-a's
www.fedorafaq.org.  you go there and, after a short intro, you're at the 
content.  perfect.  my only issue with it is that it would be nice to have 
it more hierarchical and refined -- i think it's too general to have an 
entire section called "Problems and Their Solutions."  but max clearly has 
the right idea -- get to the content right away, don't make readers dig 
their way thru introductory fluff.

as i mentioned before, it's not even necessary to have all the content at 
the wiki site.  clearly, there's lots of good content out there, it's just
scattered around.  parts of the wiki can link to external pages if that's
the best solution (given permission, of course).

as i see it, the two most important things to have are:

1) a nice, usable hierarchical layout
2) the ability to add new entries quickly as the need arises

this might very well involve a small group of moderators who ride herd
on the content, who might need to shuffle or refine sections every so 
often, but for the most part, it should be world-editable, as long as
contributors read a short intro describing what entries should look
like.

this kind of site is not meant to take the place of the eventual, official 
docs.  it's also not meant to replace the idea of a forum, like 
www.fedoraforum.org.  a "forum" is where you present problems, argue back 
and forth about their solution and finally figure out what the heck to do
about it.  the wiki is where you would *publish* that final solution.

anyway, time for coffee and real, billable work.  :-)

rday

[Robert Crowther]

On Thu, 24 Jun 2004 07:19:31 -0400 (EDT), Robert P. J. Day
<rpjday(a)mindspring.com&gt; wrote:
>  as i see it, the two most important things to have are:
>  
>  1) a nice, usable hierarchical layout
>  2) the ability to add new entries quickly as the need arises
>   
Faq-o-matic might also fit the bill?

http://faqomatic.sourceforge.net

Rob

[Max Kanat-Alexander]

>  personally, the layout i've seen that i like the most is max
> k-a's
>  www.fedorafaq.org.  you go there and, after a short intro, you're at the 
>  content.  perfect.  my only issue with it is that it would be nice to have 
>  it more hierarchical and refined -- i think it's too general to have an 
>  entire section called "Problems and Their Solutions."  but max clearly has 
>  the right idea -- get to the content right away, don't make readers dig 
>  their way thru introductory fluff. 
	Hey, thanks. Yeah, I actually agree with you -- the "Problems and their
Solutions" section is too long.

	For FC1, there were many fewer questions, so it wasn't a problem.

	I think I'll consider breaking it down into more sections, probably
using some of the ones you proposed in your previous email. Of course, I
expect there to be fewer questions for FC3, and then maybe I can go back
to the single section. We'll see. :-)

	-Max

[Jeff Vian]

On Sun, 2004-07-04 at 02:04, Max K-A wrote:
>  > personally, the layout i've seen that i like the most is max
> k-a's
>  > www.fedorafaq.org.  you go there and, after a short intro, you're at the 
>  > content.  perfect.  my only issue with it is that it would be nice to have 
>  > it more hierarchical and refined -- i think it's too general to have an 
>  > entire section called "Problems and Their Solutions."  but max clearly has
>
>  > the right idea -- get to the content right away, don't make readers dig 
>  > their way thru introductory fluff.
>  
>  	Hey, thanks. Yeah, I actually agree with you -- the "Problems and their
>  Solutions" section is too long.
>  
>  	For FC1, there were many fewer questions, so it wasn't a problem.
>  
>  	I think I'll consider breaking it down into more sections, probably
>  using some of the ones you proposed in your previous email. Of course, I
>  expect there to be fewer questions for FC3, and then maybe I can go back
>  to the single section. We'll see. :-)
>  
>  	-Max
>   
just my $0.02.

If you keep the separate sections you will likely see a decrease in the
numbers of problems.  That would indicate progress in eliminating the
problems and thus tend to give newbies a better assurance that things
are actually improving.

IE:   FC2 had 10,000 problems but FC3 only has 1,000 :  Would indicate a
progress.
(yes, I know I exaggerated)

-Jeff

[Robert P. J. Day]

On Sun, 4 Jul 2004, Jeff Vian wrote:

>  If you keep the separate sections you will likely see a decrease in
> the
>  numbers of problems.  That would indicate progress in eliminating the
>  problems and thus tend to give newbies a better assurance that things
>  are actually improving. 
but who says that a FAQ would contain only problems?  as FC goes from 
version to version, there are certainly going to be new features and 
new ways of doing things that deserve to be in the FAQ.  even as the 
quality steadily improves, nothing says that a FAQ would necessarily 
decrease in size.

if you look at max's www.fedorafaq.org, there's a number of things in 
the "Problems and their Solutions" that i don't think qualify as real
problems.

* how do i play MP3s?
* how to i mount NTFS?
* how do i get wine to work?
* how do i edit menus?

i don't think any of these are "problems" -- they're just things 
people are going to want to know about, that's all.

rday

[Robert Locke]

On Wed, 2004-06-23 at 10:10, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
>  On Tue, 22 Jun 2004, Craig White wrote:
>  ...
>  > I would suggest that rather than trying to convince people to lower
>  > their expectations, it would be more beneficial to suggest that we work
>  > together to solve the problems and develop a better sense of humor (i.e.
>  > less whining) about the problems we face.
>  
>     since i apparently started this barroom brawl, let me make a suggestion 
>  that might solve a lot of problems.  what FC2 (and future FC releases) 
>  needs is a structured, somewhat-moderated repository of well-written and 
>  important info for new users.  quite simply, it needs a moderated wiki.
<snip>
>     thoughts?
>  
>  rday
>   
This is "real" community at work.....  I really appreciate the shift
from the proverbial whining of late.....

An excellent suggestion, and a great list of recurring issues.  You also
summarized where a lot of information is being kept.  I find one of the
greatest challenges, at the moment, is, as you point out, how to locate
the information.

But my question is whether we really need yet another source....  I
think a better use of our efforts might be to improve the format and
volume of information at fedorafaq.org because, frankly, what you are
describing sounds like a better organized (hierarchical) FAQ - and they
do seem to address, to some extent, some of the more critical things in
your list.  Converting to more of a Wiki environment I think has merit
too...  Perhaps you could bring this suggestion to the folks there and
see if they are interested (or need some competition :-) )....

I am also concerned that this should really be addressed by the
"community" side of the Fedora Project and be better linked in with the
"official" fedora.redhat.com site, though I do not think those of us on
the outside are able to do this yet.....  Does anyone have a sense of
where/how we might be able to "open up more" some of these "support"
things?

Let's keep these thoughts going.....

--Rob

[Peter Boy]

Am Di, den 22.06.2004 schrieb Patrick Boutilier um 14:14:
>  Well then fix it. You have the source. 
Excuse me, but this is one of the most idiotic postings.

Fixing a bug is - in most cases - not as easy as getting a nail into the
wall  -  and a lot of people are not even able to do that. We depend on
a cooperative process with a dedicated division of labour in place.

Peter

[Timothy Murphy]

Patrick Boutilier wrote:

> > There are many unresolved bugs,
> > eg Xorg does not work properly on machines with ATI Rage 128 video
> > boards. 
> >>It was never intended as a
> >>"plug & play" OS for the clueless and inexperienced 
> > It's amazing what idiotic excuses are made for software
> bugs.
> > A bug is a bug - that's all there is to it.
>  
>  
>  Well then fix it. You have the source. 
Perhaps you could post a list of your XFree fixes
so that I can see how it should be done.

As it happens, I did look at the source,
and tried to back-port the previous ATI driver.
This didn't work because of changes in the libraries that are in use.

I don't set myself up as an X-Windows guru.
I registered a bug with bugzilla,
and hope and trust it will be seen to sooner or later.

To repeat myself - bugs are mistakes in code.
They should be corrected, not excused.

People who excuse bugs on the grounds that Linux is free,
or that Fedora is "experimental",
do an enormous disservice to Linux.

-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
tel: [phone]
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland

[Patrick Boutilier]

Timothy Murphy wrote:
>  Patrick Boutilier wrote:
>  
>  
> >>There are many unresolved bugs,
> >>eg Xorg does not work properly on machines with ATI Rage 128 video
> >>boards.
>  
>  
> >>>It was never intended as a
> >>>"plug & play" OS for the clueless and inexperienced
>  
>  
> >>It's amazing what idiotic excuses are made for software bugs.
> >>A bug is a bug - that's all there is to it.
> >
> >
> >Well then fix it. You have the source.
>  
>  
>  Perhaps you could post a list of your XFree fixes
>  so that I can see how it should be done. 
I didn't say I had any.

>  
>  As it happens, I did look at the source,
>  and tried to back-port the previous ATI driver.
>  This didn't work because of changes in the libraries that are in use.
>  
>  I don't set myself up as an X-Windows guru.
>  I registered a bug with bugzilla,
>  and hope and trust it will be seen to sooner or later.
>  
>  To repeat myself - bugs are mistakes in code.
>  They should be corrected, not excused. 
Sure, but since nobody buys Fedora and doesn't get support from Fedora 
we can't expect everything to be fixed right away, or at all. On the 
other hand if you purchase another OS, or even a different Linux dist 
that does come with support then you should expect bugs to be fixed 
promptly.

>  
>  People who excuse bugs on the grounds that Linux is free,
>  or that Fedora is "experimental",
>  do an enormous disservice to Linux.
>

[Mike Fedyk]

Timothy Murphy wrote:
>  eg Xorg does not work properly on machines with ATI Rage 128 video
> boards.
>   
I've been using fc2 with a Dell Dimension 4400 with one of these cards 
without much trouble.  The only thing was my cursor went black after 
testing some 3d screensavers that are in fc2.  Here's my lspci output:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corp. 82845 845 (Brookdale) Chipset Host 
Bridge (rev 04)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82845 845 (Brookdale) Chipset AGP Bridge 
(rev 04)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82801BA/CA/DB/EB/ER Hub interface to PCI 
Bridge (rev 05)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corp. 82801BA ISA Bridge (LPC) (rev 05)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82801BA IDE U100 (rev 05)
00:1f.2 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801BA/BAM USB (Hub #1) (rev 05)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corp. 82801BA/BAM SMBus (rev 05)
00:1f.4 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801BA/BAM USB (Hub #2) (rev 05)
00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corp. 82801BA/BAM AC'97 Audio 
(rev 05)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Rage 128 Pro 
Ultra TF
02:09.0 Ethernet controller: Digital Equipment Corporation DECchip 21140 
[FasterNet] (rev 22)

>  As far as I can see, 
>  FC2 was released when there were known unresolved bugs in the test releases.
>  In my view, it should have been delayed until these were fixed.
>  It seems to have been released because a release date 
>  had been fixed in advance.
>  That is a silly way to organise distributions.
>  I hope it will be changed.
>   
It looks like with the fast schedule the fixes will be in the next 
release instead of fixing the current release.  I'm just speculating 
though...

[Timothy Murphy]

Mike Fedyk wrote:

> > eg Xorg does not work properly on machines with ATI Rage 128
> video
> > boards.
> > 
>  
>  I've been using fc2 with a Dell Dimension 4400 with one of these cards
>  without much trouble.  The only thing was my cursor went black after
>  testing some 3d screensavers that are in fc2.  
Sorry, I should have said "Rage Mobility",
ie ATI Rage 128 for portables.

Part at least of the problem seems to be that this card
does not send back the information required by system-config-display
and similar programs.

-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
tel: [phone]
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland

[Steffen Kluge]

On Tue, 2004-06-22 at 22:05, Timothy Murphy wrote:
>  As far as I can see, 
>  FC2 was released when there were known unresolved bugs in the test releases.
>  In my view, it should have been delayed until these were fixed.
>  It seems to have been released because a release date 
>  had been fixed in advance.
>  That is a silly way to organise distributions.
>  I hope it will be changed. 

I hope it won't. Please keep releasing early and often. That is the only
way a large and complex beast like a Linux distro can mature quickly. As
soon as the developers and packagers feel that it maybe of use and value
to a sizable user community they should kick it out of the door and let
the real QA begin.

Linux is designed to work on a huge variety of hardware. Exposing it to
as large a test group as possible is the only hope of having at least
the more common of all the countless possible combinations of hardware
put to test.

As for FC1 vs FC2, FC2 is special in many respects. I see FC1 as the
debut release meant to introduce the project to a wider audience, but it
was quite conservative, and not really that much different from RH9.

FC2 is groundbreaking: it uses a new generation kernel (as one of the
first mainstream distros), a new GNOME, a new Xserver (sort of), and
whatnot. You couldn't possibly wait for all known unresolved bugs in
this to be fixed before you release the lot. It would never get
released. It would stew in its own juices for decades (like Hurd)
without getting any closer to completion. Btw, have you ever checked how
many thousand known bugs every new Mozilla release carries over?

Speaking of the kernel, remember 2.4? Is wasn't really fit for
mainstream consumption before 2.4.10 or thereabouts. Chances are the 2.6
kernel will mature quicker, partly to its bigger exposure by mainstream
distros (assuming a lot of people actually give them a go).

I don't believe various posters on this thread are out to excuse bugs,
and neither am I. We are just annoyed at the small bunch of people that
grab of lot of air time bitching and ranting and scaring people away
from FC2, rather than encouraging them to participate. Bring on your bug
reports, preferably with bugzilla ID, and everybody who can will be glad
to discuss them. But chanting the same horror tales like a broken record
over and over, and questioning QA, release strategy and state of mind of
those people at RedHat isn't going to help the project along.

Alright, that'll be enough soapbox for a while...

Cheers
Steffen.

[Don Dupy]

I for one am sticking with FC1, for now
With all the posts, I am real leary of going to FC2.
It's doing everything I want it to do and doing it well.

I will switch to FC2 when I feel it's bugs are for the most part "squshed"

I am using it for a server, though.This may be ok in FC2. It may be all
the X related stuff that everyone is having problems with. For the most
part, that is what it looks like.
I am still just leary, so for now it's FC1 for me........


Don Dupy
Systems Administrator
Maxxrad PC Services
http://www.maxxrad.net
email: fedora(a)maxxrad.net

On Tue, 22 Jun 2004, Andy Green wrote:

>  -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>  Hash: SHA1
>
>  On Tuesday 22 June 2004 09:51, Dexter Ang wrote:
>
>  Hi -
>
>  > Realibility will depend on the number of people testing "test" releases.
>  > If you want a quality release, you should help out by testing and
>  > reporting bugs. If you can't afford to use your machine for testing,
>  > your best hope is to report bugs and wait for fixes. There really is so
>  > many hardware to test on, that the chances of certain configurations not
>  > working is very high.
>
>  To be fair  this is not the only factor: witholding the release until the
>  nastiest known bugs are squished is as critical.  This is a pure RH decision.
>
>  I thought you made a good answer Dexter, but I have seen a lot of posts lately
>  blowing off all criticism of FC2, when there clearly have been serious
>  troubles.  Acknowledging the problems and going on in a way to avoid them
>  next time would be the right solution.
>
>  > > My question now is whether I should give up on FC2 (I'm really tempted)
>  > > and go back to FC1 or hang in there.
>
>  Only you can answer this.  Despite the hassle, gaining experience with the 2.6
>  kernel and the latest stuff is valuable.  I guess it turns on whether you see
>  hassle has that upside or if it just hassle to you.
>
>  > > - Will I experience more of these surprises with FC2?
>
>  Probably, but SuSE for example has its share of 2.6-related surprises too it
>  seems.
>
>  > > - How fast will issues be attented to through updates? The PCMCIA issue
>  > > is known, so is the ide_info issue (since FC2 test3), but still no fix
>  > > today.
>
>  The RH folks pick their own targets and will get to stuff at their own speed
>  (this is the same everywhere of course).  I had a bug with memory management
>  in the kernel that sat there in Bugzilla for months and months, it got
>  mentioned in the list recently [NB: with a link to the Bugzilla entry to make
>  it easy for them], somebody from RH looked at it then and it was fixed
>  quickly and very effectively.  So I think mentioning your problem from time
>  to time on the list with a Bugzilla link may jog memories.
>
>  > > - Is this what we have to expect from a "community distro" in the
> long
>  > > run? As with RH9 the last consumer-distro is discontinued, my logical
>  > > conclusion would then be to leave RH behind and move on to another
>  > > packager, say Suse?
>
>  SuSE may not be the panacea you are hoping for, it certainly isn't any more
>  community driven than Fedora.  I know SuSE fanboys are using the FC2 problems
>  to beat FC2 users up, since I had some of that myself, but have a look around
>  on the SuSE user ml archives and you'll see a similar amount of difficulties.
>  Some folks have recommended Debian as the next stop if Fedora is not
>  inclusive enough.  There was also some "community" distro Bruce Perens was
>  starting up, but he picked Gnome as the single official desktop for it and
>  that is a big turn-off for me at least.
>
>  > > A bit disappointed,
>
>  It could have done with a release delay by a few weeks.  But it is not
>  actually as bad in the general case as your bad experience has indicated to
>  you.
>
>  BTW you mention USB/updfstab: something is really screwed with USB in current
>  (RH?) kernels at the moment, leading to data loss on transfers from USB
>  Storage devices like cameras.
>
>  - -Andy
>
>  - --
>  Automatic actions for USB cameras, cardreaders, memory sticks, MP3 players
>  http://warmcat.com/usbautocam
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> >
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> >  dkUTztmySsZB/b/0Yj61c1g=
> >  =M7CD
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>  fedora-list(a)redhat.com
>  To unsubscribe: http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
>

FC2 working fine (Re:)

[Stephan Matthiesen]

Hi,

Am Dienstag, 22. Juni 2004 20:09 schrieb Don Dupy:
>  I for one am sticking with FC1, for now
>  With all the posts, I am real leary of going to FC2.
>  It's doing everything I want it to do and doing it well. 
Just for the record: My FC 2 is running well, I had a smooth transition from 
FC 1 and can't complain. The transition was done in an afternoon (start 
update, go away to do something else, come back in the evening, finished).

I just mention this because mailing lists tend to give a very selective, 
biased picture. Lots of people with lots of problems, but all the millions of 
users who are happy have no reason to post to the list, so they are 
invisible. So I think when you are planning an upgrade, it would be good to 
look at the complete picture, and this seems to me that the likelihood of 
something seriously going wrong is very small.

It would be interesting to know what proportion of the user base has problems. 
Any data on this?

Of course it is bad if there are problems, and statistics doesn't help you if 
you actually are the unlucky person. So I'm not saying that one shouldn't 
care, or that bugs are ok. Quite the opposite. It is understandable that 
people are angry when things go wrong. But the developers are not necessarily 
the right target for this anger. Sometimes things just go wrong without 
anybody being responsible for it, that's how the world is. The best we can do 
is work together and help each other making things better.

I would like to thank all the competent people here who try to give answers 
even to questions that don't give much details, or that are less than 
friendly. It is understandable that they also get frustrated when you try to 
help and get an angry response. Really, you are helping many people a lot, 
even if you get less positive feedback than you deserve.

On the other hand I would also like to raise some awareness of some 
difficulties for non-experts. Please do remember that for less experienced 
users it may be very difficult to ask the right thing and give the correct 
details. Something behaves in an unexpected way, but you may not know which 
programs, scripts, whatever are involved. 

It is of course a fair answer to say "Search the archive" if a question has 
been asked before. But again for many users it may be difficult to do that, 
because the user may not know the correct terms, or not sufficiently precise 
terms ("sound not working").

Sometimes a user may already have searched the archives with the wrong terms, 
and then the reply "Search the archive" can seem quite arrogant. Also 
remember that people from other (cultural) backgrounds may be more sensitive 
to "unpolite" answers. So perhaps often a more careful wording leads to less 
tension. Instead of something like:
"Why haven't you searched the archive? This has been discussed so many 
times!!"
better:
"I remember that this has been asked before. Can you search the archive? 
Perhaps searching for 'x' and 'y' leads you to the old posts. Hope that 
helps."
As you see, a reply like this isn't really more work, but it may be more 
helpful and sounds much more friendly.

I'm saying this because we will have to live with the situation that more and 
more unexperienced users ask for help. Although I agree that it would be good 
if anybody asked their questions in a friendly way with all the necessary and 
relevant details, realistically this won't happen. There are always new 
people who have to learn this, and people who are unfamiliar with the style 
of mailing lists. So I ask the experienced users to remain patient.

Again, thanks for all the good work, and for all the competent answers.

All the best
Stephan

FC2 working fine (Re:)

[ne...]

On Jun 23, 2004 at 09:56, Stephan Matthiesen in a soothing rage wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Am Dienstag, 22. Juni 2004 20:09 schrieb Don Dupy:
> > I for one am sticking with FC1, for now
> > With all the posts, I am real leary of going to FC2.
> > It's doing everything I want it to do and doing it well.
>
> Just for the record: My FC 2 is running well, I had a smooth transition from 
> FC 1 and can't complain. The transition was done in an afternoon (start 
> update, go away to do something else, come back in the evening, finished). 
This is
really just a me too post. I chose to do an install
over FC1 saving /home. Took about 1hr with most of that time
spent choosing rpms. Took a day to compile KDE, 15 min to get
the ATi drivers going and I have been happy ever since. BTW,
I follow KDE from cvs so I need to compile my own. I also
have W2K3 on this machine and had no problems booting it. I
don't use it tho, no solitaire.

N.Emile...
-- 
Registered Linux User # 125653 (http://counter.li.org)
Switch to: http://www.speakeasy.net/refer/190653
You two ought to be more careful--your love could drag on for years and years.
 07:36:58  up 12 days,  1:10,  4 users,  load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00

FC2 working fine (Re:)

[Don Dupy]

thats cool.
I like to hear positives about FC2 !

Don Dupy
Systems Administrator
Maxxrad PC Services
http://www.maxxrad.net
email: fedora(a)maxxrad.net

On Wed, 23 Jun 2004, ne... wrote:

>  On Jun 23, 2004 at 09:56, Stephan Matthiesen in a soothing rage
> wrote:
>
>  >Hi,
>  >
>  >Am Dienstag, 22. Juni 2004 20:09 schrieb Don Dupy:
>  >> I for one am sticking with FC1, for now
>  >> With all the posts, I am real leary of going to FC2.
>  >> It's doing everything I want it to do and doing it well.
>  >
>  >Just for the record: My FC 2 is running well, I had a smooth transition from
>  >FC 1 and can't complain. The transition was done in an afternoon (start
>  >update, go away to do something else, come back in the evening, finished).
>  This is really just a me too post. I chose to do an install
>  over FC1 saving /home. Took about 1hr with most of that time
>  spent choosing rpms. Took a day to compile KDE, 15 min to get
>  the ATi drivers going and I have been happy ever since. BTW,
>  I follow KDE from cvs so I need to compile my own. I also
>  have W2K3 on this machine and had no problems booting it. I
>  don't use it tho, no solitaire.
>
>  N.Emile...
>  --
>  Registered Linux User # 125653 (http://counter.li.org)
>  Switch to: http://www.speakeasy.net/refer/190653
>  You two ought to be more careful--your love could drag on for years and years.
>   07:36:58  up 12 days,  1:10,  4 users,  load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
>
>
>  --
>  fedora-list mailing list
>  fedora-list(a)redhat.com
>  To unsubscribe: http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
>

FC2 working fine (Re:)

[janne]

Many people have very good experience with FC2 (count me among them).
It's just not common for people to post about how everything is fine. 


tor 2004-06-24 klockan 13.13 skrev Don Dupy:
>  thats cool.
>  I like to hear positives about FC2 !
>  
>  Don Dupy
>  Systems Administrator
>  Maxxrad PC Services
>  http://www.maxxrad.net
>  email: fedora(a)maxxrad.net
>  
>  On Wed, 23 Jun 2004, ne... wrote:
>  
>  > On Jun 23, 2004 at 09:56, Stephan Matthiesen in a soothing rage wrote:
>  >
>  > >Hi,
>  > >
>  > >Am Dienstag, 22. Juni 2004 20:09 schrieb Don Dupy:
>  > >> I for one am sticking with FC1, for now
>  > >> With all the posts, I am real leary of going to FC2.
>  > >> It's doing everything I want it to do and doing it well.
>  > >
>  > >Just for the record: My FC 2 is running well, I had a smooth transition from
>  > >FC 1 and can't complain. The transition was done in an afternoon (start
>  > >update, go away to do something else, come back in the evening, finished).
>  > This is really just a me too post. I chose to do an install
>  > over FC1 saving /home. Took about 1hr with most of that time
>  > spent choosing rpms. Took a day to compile KDE, 15 min to get
>  > the ATi drivers going and I have been happy ever since. BTW,
>  > I follow KDE from cvs so I need to compile my own. I also
>  > have W2K3 on this machine and had no problems booting it. I
>  > don't use it tho, no solitaire.
>  >
>  > N.Emile...
>  > --
>  > Registered Linux User # 125653 (http://counter.li.org)
>  > Switch to: http://www.speakeasy.net/refer/190653
>  > You two ought to be more careful--your love could drag on for years and years.
>  >  07:36:58  up 12 days,  1:10,  4 users,  load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
>  >
>  >
>  > --
>  > fedora-list mailing list
>  > fedora-list(a)redhat.com
>  > To unsubscribe: http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
>  > 
-- 
 
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
 
Tel.    [phone]             Dr. Janne Morén (mr)
Home:   [phone]             Dept. of Cognitive Science
Fax:    [phone]             Kungshuset, Lund
                                     S-222 22 Lund, Sweden

FC2 working fine (Re:)

[David Jansen]

On Wed, Jun 23, 2004 at 09:56:29AM +0100, Stephan Matthiesen wrote:
>  I just mention this because mailing lists tend to give a very
> selective, 
>  biased picture. Lots of people with lots of problems, but all the millions of 
>  users who are happy have no reason to post to the list, so they are 
>  invisible. So I think when you are planning an upgrade, it would be good to 
>  look at the complete picture, and this seems to me that the likelihood of 
>  something seriously going wrong is very small. 
So true. And some others, including myself, have run into problems that
could be solved to read the FAQ and search the list archives, and maybe
ask a couple of questions. 

So far I have installed FC2 on 12 machines and helped a couple of friends 
and collegues to install it on their machines. My statistics so far:
- 9x hit by the Windows dual boot issue, but easily solvable without loss
  of data, thanks to the info on this list (it's not entirely fair,
  those 9 systems are identical configurations, so this is actually just
  one data point in the bug statistics)
- 1 machine failed to boot. Asus-board issue, solved by downloading the 
  updated boot.iso
Everything else just worked. So yes, it is somewhat more problematic
than FC1 (but in many respects still better than some previous RHL
versions).

Bugs are to be expected in any OS. And bugs are getting fixed, usually
at a reasonable pace. Now, what can we do to make Fedora Core even
better for users?

1. A real community
Let's hope the point will soon be reached where there is the public CVS
repository, the ability for members of the community to become
maintainers of packages, the 'real" Fedora Extras and Fedora Alternatives
repositories etc. That would be a great step forward (but apparently
somewhat difficult from redHat's end)

2. Documentation and information, and letting the users know about it.
It would be great if the release notes or the Fedora website would
mention the unofficial resources available to the users, like
fedoranews.org, fedora forum, the unofficial Fedora FAQ, additional
software repositories etc. 
Not everyone likes mailinglists, but it seems the only way to find out
about e.g. fedoranews is to read on the website or release notes about
the mailinglist, then subscribe or search the archive and wade through
the enourmous amount of mail (which is a great reasource, but it is a lot
to search through!) and then finally find out such a site exists. 

3. A policy about updates. 
Why isn't the updated boot.iso for the ASUS boards available from the
official locations? That would make it easier to find, and available on
the mirrors. Seems to me like a much better solution than downloading it
from ArjanV's personal site. An announcement of such an update would
also be useful, on fedora-announce, and on the Fedora website. That
would probably have saved us a lot of questions on the list.
I fear the same will happen if an universal solution to the dual-boot 
problems will be found, since this will probably require an update of
the anaconda installer or disk druid, so that's probably an updated boot
disk. Will we have to create one ourselves or wait for FC3, or will such
an update be officially published? Bugs in the installer will happen
again, just like bugs in any piece of software. So a mechanism to fix
them is necessary. It used to be possible to just wait for a fix in the
next release, but with the shorter lifetime of the FC versions, this is
not always an option any more.
I would find it somewhat acceptable if the Fedora project had an
official policy not to release installer updates but only package
updates. I wouldn't like such a policy, but at least then the situation
would be clear. 


Note: most of this was not relevant to me, I have used RedHat since 3.x
and I knew about fedora.us int he RedHat 8 or 9 days, and I started
using FC 1 at test 2 last autumn. But I'm thinking here from the
perspective of a new user, who may or may not know about Linux already,
and who may or may not be aware in advance of the goals of the fedora
project. 

David Jansen

[Dexter Ang]

Andy Green wrote:
>  On Tuesday 22 June 2004 09:51, Dexter Ang wrote:
> >>Realibility will depend on the number of people testing "test"
> releases.
> >>If you want a quality release, you should help out by testing and
> >>reporting bugs. If you can't afford to use your machine for testing,
> >>your best hope is to report bugs and wait for fixes. There really is so
> >>many hardware to test on, that the chances of certain configurations not
> >>working is very high.
>  
>  
>  To be fair  this is not the only factor: witholding the release until the 
>  nastiest known bugs are squished is as critical.  This is a pure RH decision.
>  
>  I thought you made a good answer Dexter, but I have seen a lot of posts lately 
>  blowing off all criticism of FC2, when there clearly have been serious 
>  troubles.  Acknowledging the problems and going on in a way to avoid them 
>  next time would be the right solution.
>   
I see your point. Unfortunately, as far as I understand, Fedora Core is 
to be released on a schedule basis (dated deadlines) as opposed to 
"squish all bugs" schedule. As stated on the main fedora.redhat.com page:

"The project will produce time-based releases of Fedora Core about 2-3 
times a year with a public release schedule."

So I guess developers were "pressured" to release on a deadline, hoping 
to fix most bugs through updates. As much as I'd personally love to help 
test and test until all bugs are stamped out, you can't avoid the fact 
that a lot of other people simply won't test until a "final" release is
out.

I think everyone acknowledges that there are major problems. But it 
seems the only way to avoid them is to have more testers, have more 
bugzilla reports logged in, and have fun along the way.

dex

[Timothy Murphy]

Dexter Ang wrote:

>  So I guess developers were "pressured" to release on a
> deadline, hoping
>  to fix most bugs through updates. As much as I'd personally love to help
>  test and test until all bugs are stamped out, you can't avoid the fact
>  that a lot of other people simply won't test until a "final" release is
>  out. 
I'm not sure how typical I am,
but I haven't run any test releases because it has been said
that one cannot upgrade from a test release to a new FC release.

It would simply be too time-consuming for me
to re-install FC whenever a new release comes out.
Perhaps I'm not very well organised,
but I would have to go through dozens of config files
to see which need to be copied, and which updated.

So I would suggest to the Fedora administrators
that if it were possible to upgrade from test releases
there might be a lot more people willing to test.




-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
tel: [phone]
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland

[Robert P. J. Day]

On Wed, 23 Jun 2004, Timothy Murphy wrote:

>  Dexter Ang wrote:
>
> > So I guess developers were "pressured" to release on a deadline, hoping
> > to fix most bugs through updates. As much as I'd personally love to help
> > test and test until all bugs are stamped out, you can't avoid the fact
> > that a lot of other people simply won't test until a "final" release
> is
> > out.
>
>  I'm not sure how typical I am, but I haven't run any test releases 
>  because it has been said that one cannot upgrade from a test release to 
>  a new FC release. 
for good reason -- since a test release is attempting to emulate, as 
closely as possible, the upcoming official release, to "upgrade" from a 
test release to a new FC release is, in essence, upgrading from a version 
to something representing that same version.  logically, it really doesn't 
make a lot of sense -- i suspect the logistics involved would be just
nightmarish.

rday

[Robin Laing]

Robert P. J. Day wrote:
>  On Wed, 23 Jun 2004, Timothy Murphy wrote:
>  
> > Dexter Ang wrote:
> >
> >> So I guess developers were "pressured" to release on a deadline,
> hoping
> >> to fix most bugs through updates. As much as I'd personally love to help
> >> test and test until all bugs are stamped out, you can't avoid the fact
> >> that a lot of other people simply won't test until a "final"
> release is
> >> out.
> >
> >
> > I'm not sure how typical I am, but I haven't run any test releases 
> > because it has been said that one cannot upgrade from a test release 
> > to a new FC release.
>  
>  
>  for good reason -- since a test release is attempting to emulate, as 
>  closely as possible, the upcoming official release, to "upgrade" from a 
>  test release to a new FC release is, in essence, upgrading from a 
>  version to something representing that same version.  logically, it 
>  really doesn't make a lot of sense -- i suspect the logistics involved 
>  would be just
>  nightmarish.
>  
>  rday
>  
>   
Why would this be so hard?  Using up2date and package names should 
make updating easy.  Testing packages could be named with a 't' or use 
the 'rc' in the package name.  When the final release is out, drop the 
'rc' or 't' so up2date knows that these need to be updated.  Heck, the 
package xxx.1.0-0t should be updated when xxx.1.0-1 is released, correct?

My problem for not using "testing" packages is I have to have my 
machines working at all times.  I also require the applications to be 
working for work.  At home my wife will kill me if I cannot explain 
the reason for updating from 1.1 to 1.1.1.  But that is some of the 
fun of being married to someone that won't allow the other major OS 
into our house or M$ Windows.

-- 
Robin Laing

[Jim Cornette]

Timothy Murphy wrote:

> Dexter Ang wrote:
>
>   
>
> >So I guess developers were "pressured" to release on a deadline, hoping
> >to fix most bugs through updates. As much as I'd personally love to help
> >test and test until all bugs are stamped out, you can't avoid the fact
> >that a lot of other people simply won't test until a "final" release is
> >out.
> >    
> >
>
> I'm not sure how typical I am,
> but I haven't run any test releases because it has been said
> that one cannot upgrade from a test release to a new FC release.
>   
>  
Nothing is supported anyway. I have upgraded from test cycles to final 
releases several times. This may leave newer versions of programs on 
your machine that were not stable enough t be released with the final 
version of the distro. Hopefully, the program will become stable enough 
that the fonal release version will replace the not ready for release 
version.

I have one system that is always paced with current rawhide packages. 
This system is surprisingly stable. In fact, my network cards both work 
on this environment.

I have another version that is an install of FC1 and went through the 
test phase (FC1 to FC2) and is staying at current FC2 released packages. 
This upgraded environment has all of the multimedia related packages and 
is what I consider my main OS.

The third version is a fresh install of FC2 and is pretty limp in that 
it does not have all of the multimedia related add-ons included. This 
evironment works great for things like dvd burning and the sound to be 
set to a decent default level.

> It would simply be too time-consuming for me
> to re-install FC whenever a new release comes out.
> Perhaps I'm not very well organised,
> but I would have to go through dozens of config files
> to see which need to be copied, and which updated.
>   
>  
If you are not running a lot of services, add-on programs and user 
related data seem to be the only major drawbacks. I've been held back by 
pre-existing config files on several occasions. I was unaware that CD 
burning worked on later versions of RHL. The hdx=ide-scsi addition to 
the boot loader from RHL 6.x series to RHL 7.x series never took place. 
Once I did a fresh install and found out that I no longer needed to boot 
into windows to burn CDs, I was happy with catching up.

> So I would suggest to the Fedora administrators
> that if it were possible to upgrade from test releases
> there might be a lot more people willing to test.
>  
The answer that you most likely will get is that this is unsupported. 
The good news is that other than progressively upgrading through the 
test cycle is not that bad. At least from my exposure to doing *the 
unsupported* betas to next release cycles.

Disadvantages of upgrading throughout the OS cycle. New programs added, 
they will not be installed. Config or default application settings 
changes for the better, config files might be better with a new install.

Advantages of clean installations. You will get newer packages that are 
included in the new version. You will get the latest configuration file 
defaults, which seem more sanely based.

Good luck and have fun testing. Who knows what is supported anymore on 
an unsupported OS. It works great though, at least for me.

Jim

[Jim Cornette]

Dexter Ang wrote:

>  Andy Green wrote:
>
> > On Tuesday 22 June 2004 09:51, Dexter Ang wrote:
> >
> >>> Realibility will depend on the number of people testing "test" 
> >>> releases.
> >>> If you want a quality release, you should help out by testing and
> >>> reporting bugs. If you can't afford to use your machine for testing,
> >>> your best hope is to report bugs and wait for fixes. There really 
> >>> is so
> >>> many hardware to test on, that the chances of certain 
> >>> configurations not
> >>> working is very high.
> >>
> >
> >
> > To be fair  this is not the only factor: witholding the release until 
> > the nastiest known bugs are squished is as critical.  This is a pure 
> > RH decision.
> >
> > I thought you made a good answer Dexter, but I have seen a lot of 
> > posts lately blowing off all criticism of FC2, when there clearly 
> > have been serious troubles.  Acknowledging the problems and going on 
> > in a way to avoid them next time would be the right solution.
> >
>
>  I see your point. Unfortunately, as far as I understand, Fedora Core 
>  is to be released on a schedule basis (dated deadlines) as opposed to 
>  "squish all bugs" schedule. As stated on the main fedora.redhat.com page:
>
>  "The project will produce time-based releases of Fedora Core about 2-3 
>  times a year with a public release schedule."
>
>  So I guess developers were "pressured" to release on a deadline, 
>  hoping to fix most bugs through updates. As much as I'd personally 
>  love to help test and test until all bugs are stamped out, you can't 
>  avoid the fact that a lot of other people simply won't test until a 
>  "final" release is out.
>
>  I think everyone acknowledges that there are major problems. But it 
>  seems the only way to avoid them is to have more testers, have more 
>  bugzilla reports logged in, and have fun along the way.
>
>  dex
>
>  
I have noticed a lot fewer problems with the RHL to FCL change. The 
major improvements seem to be from either picking up information from 
"distress calls" from changes to certain software that went rabid 
because of a seemingly mild change to one program. Also, if a problem 
with a program or hardware interface were broken, things were corrected 
when knowledge and resources were adequate to snuff the bug, either 
through regression or advancment to the other inflicted programs or 
hardware.

Since RHL moved away from supporting chancy things like mp3, ntfs or 
other programs with restrictive or "McDonalds hot coffee" attributes. I 
think that the move to release RHL into Fedora Core was a worthwhile move.

Except for the cow on the trampoline not working on FC2 with an S3 based 
video chip, I see way more advancements to FC2 compared to earlier RHL 
or other Linux distros that I've tried out.

The point, if any, RHL was in a too restrictive environment. FC is in a 
seemingly more progressive state and is softly linked to repositories 
that can provide more to what was restricted by copyright/patent related 
issues.

Thanks for help from both the community and to those of the community 
that develop the software that go into the core distribution.

Good points Dexter,

Jim

-- 
Be security conscious -- National defense is at stake.

S3 support in FC2 (was: Re: FC2 doubtful quality?)

[Rodolfo J. Paiz]

At 01:32 PM 6/23/2004, Jim Cornette wrote:
> Except for the cow on the trampoline not working on FC2 with an S3
> based 
> video chip, I see way more advancements to FC2 compared to earlier RHL or 
> other Linux distros that I've tried out. 
Jim,

I have an IBM Thinkpad T23 (P3/1.2G, 512MB, 40GB, 14" 1400x1050, S3 
Savage/IX w/8MB) and it picked up FC2 without even blinking. Pardon the 
pun. Can you be more specific about your problem, and whether it's a 
"problem" or if you *know* it won't work?

Cheers,


-- 
Rodolfo J. Paiz
rpaiz(a)simpaticus.com
http://www.simpaticus.com

S3 support in FC2

[Jim Cornette]

Rodolfo J. Paiz wrote:
>  At 01:32 PM 6/23/2004, Jim Cornette wrote:
>  
> > Except for the cow on the trampoline not working on FC2 with an S3 
> > based video chip, I see way more advancements to FC2 compared to 
> > earlier RHL or other Linux distros that I've tried out.
>  
>  
>  Jim,
>  
>  I have an IBM Thinkpad T23 (P3/1.2G, 512MB, 40GB, 14" 1400x1050, S3 
>  Savage/IX w/8MB) and it picked up FC2 without even blinking. Pardon the 
>  pun. Can you be more specific about your problem, and whether it's a 
>  "problem" or if you *know* it won't work?
>  
>  Cheers,
>  
>   
I believe the card is SIS instead of S3. (630 version.)

http://www.voxtechnologies.com/SBCs/pcisa-3716e2v.htm

or on this cpu board

http://www.voxtechnologies.com/SBCs/rocky-3705ev.htm

I was thinking that I was using this board version when trying the 
screensaver. The error for the screensaver referenced S3. This version 
has an S3 Trio3D

http://www.voxtechnologies.com/SBCs/rocky-3702ev-r4v8.htm


I also had the screensaver problem with a system running the latest 
version of vmware, on an XP host. I first thought the problem was 
exclusive to vmware and vmware tools.

Just a by chance discovery. Regular programs seemed to work alright and 
display.
With this problem, there is no preview available for the inflicted 
screensaver. Usually you will get error message text in yellowish 
writing displayed on the screen.

Jim



-- 
You will overcome the attacks of jealous associates.

[Robert P. J. Day]

On Tue, 22 Jun 2004, Dexter Ang wrote:

>  HaJo Schatz wrote:
> > Hi List,
> > 
> > Long story, short question: Should I fall back to FC1 instead of using
> > FC2? I am somewhat very concerned about the release quality of FC2.
> > Here's what happened:
>
>  It is all your choice. No one is forcing you to use FC2. 
    to those folks who habitually respond to critisicm of FC 1/2 with this 
annoying, circle-the-wagons, defensive mentality, a piece of advice: grow 
up.

    when someone takes the time to document a number of legitimate concerns 
and obvious flaws in an *official* release (after three, count 'em, 
*three* test releases), and also legitimately asks whether he should be 
concerned about its quality, he deserves a better and more mature answer 
than "No one is forcing you to use FC2."

    it's become really tedious to watch the growing trend of promoting 
fedora core, talking about making it just a terrific distro, how it has a 
dynamic user community behind it ... yadda yadda yadda ... but whenever 
someone posts perfectly reasonable criticism of some aspect, there's a 
sudden surge of, "hey, if you don't like it, don't use it, ok?"  i
suspect 
it's not the quality of FC2 that might drive people off, it's the 
closed-minded and dismissive attitude of its alleged supporters.

> > - Service PCMCIA doesn't load the yento-sockets module. This
> is known @
> > bugzilla, one has to patch the pcmcia script by hand. Through this bug,
> > the PCMCIA subsystem is non-functional!
>
>  This seems to be system specific. My IBM Thinkpad T30's PCMCIA works without 
>  any problems. 
    well, good for you.  and the fact that it works for you means ... what? 
that it doesn't qualify as a real problem?  fact is, the 
/etc/init.d/pcmcia file has historically been a bit of a mess -- heck, i 
recall submitting a bug report on that file as far back as april of 2003:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=88054

it's depressing that it's still broken, and in such a blatant way.

> > - My console-beep (emitted through the sound card) disappeared
> ever
> > since FC2. I don't seem to be able to find a pointer on how to trace
> > this...
>
>  You must load the pcspkr module. It's been discussed and is in the archives. 
which doesn't dismiss the original poster's contention that it's still a
mildly-annoying bug, and one which didn't exist in FC1.  i don't think 
it's unreasonable for folks to gripe when things which once worked in FC1 
suddenly stopped working in FC2.

> > This is the result after a few hours of FC2 experience and I
> really
> > start wondering about what level of testing this release experienced
> > before being released into the public -- even IMHO obvious things like
> > the PCMCIA subsystem doesn't work! Seems to me that FC1 was by far the
> > more reliable system. 
>
>  Realibility will depend on the number of people testing "test" releases. If 
>  you want a quality release, you should help out by testing and reporting 
>  bugs. 
oh, man, you *so* did not want to go there.  working from memory here so i 
hope i'm remembering correctly, i'm pretty sure there have been at least a 
couple folks who pointed out that they *did* put in time running the test 
releases, that they *did* identify and report obvious bugs way back when 
and yet, when FC2 hit the streets, those bugs were still there.

under the circumstances, then, it's pretty offensive to get testy with 
folks about how they should get involved in the testing process when many 
of them have done exactly that, only to see their efforts at bug 
identification and reporting make no difference in the final release. one 
might conclude that, under those circumstances, they really do have the 
right to wonder if it was worth the time and effort.

>  If you can't afford to use your machine for testing, your best
> hope is 
>  to report bugs and wait for fixes. 
see above.

>  Again, no one's forcing you to use FC2. 
and again, this is a really childish response.  one has to wonder, just 
what do you do for a living?  i can just imagine, say, a car salesman with 
this kind of "don't you dare criticize me and my product" attitude:

Salesman: "Yes, sir, Mr. Smith, this van has the horsepower you need for 
pulling your boat, loads of cargo space and foldout seats for the kids, 
optional 6-way sound system since you like music."

Mr. Smith: "Yup, it's almost perfect, but I'm not sure if my current roof 
rack is compatible with the roof mounts ..."

Salesman: "HEY!  No one's *forcing* you to buy this thing, OK?  You got a 
problem with it?!  There's lots of other dealers out there, all right?!"

>  Obviously you have the time to format and install an entirely new
> system 
>  without assessing the possible issues first, so why not try SuSE? 
hey, good idea, dude.  there's nothing that placates an unsatisfied user 
more than suggesting they take their talents elsewhere.  *that'll* help 
the cause, fer shure.

>  Giving up on FC2 is really your decision. Either help out, by living
>
>  through bugs and reporting them, or just switch to something that works. 
once again, see above.  ("... or just switch to something that works." 
now *there's* some great testimonial.)

>  I am hoping that through my and others' efforts, FC3 will be a
> superb 
>  release. 
and if it isn't, well, those whiners can take their complaints elsewhere, 
can't they?

rday

[Matthias Bauw]

I would like to congratulate the developers that made FC2.

I am using a Dell P4 3.0Ghz with 120Gig SCSI harddrive a gig of ram and a
speedtouch usb modem and an ATI Radeon 9800Pro. I have loads of problems
with FC1 (I couln't even start the setup in grafical mode). But FC2 is a big
improvement, it took me ten minutes to install it and most of it seems to be
working fine. I did have some problems with the MySQL server rpm that i
installed but after changing some config parameters that too works
perfectly.

Way to go FC-team!

Matt.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Robert P. J. Day" <rpjday(a)mindspring.com&gt;
To: "For users of Fedora Core releases" <fedora-list(a)redhat.com&gt;
Sent: Tuesday, June 22, 2004 1:35 PM
Subject: Re: FC2 doubtful quality?


>  On Tue, 22 Jun 2004, Dexter Ang wrote:
>
>  > HaJo Schatz wrote:
>  >> Hi List,
>  >>
>  >> Long story, short question: Should I fall back to FC1 instead of using
>  >> FC2? I am somewhat very concerned about the release quality of FC2.
>  >> Here's what happened:
>  >
>  > It is all your choice. No one is forcing you to use FC2.
>
>      to those folks who habitually respond to critisicm of FC 1/2 with this
>  annoying, circle-the-wagons, defensive mentality, a piece of advice: grow
>  up.
>
>      when someone takes the time to document a number of legitimate 
concerns
>  and obvious flaws in an *official* release (after three, count
> 'em,
>  *three* test releases), and also legitimately asks whether he should be
>  concerned about its quality, he deserves a better and more mature answer
>  than "No one is forcing you to use FC2."
>
>      it's become really tedious to watch the growing trend of promoting
>  fedora core, talking about making it just a terrific distro, how it has a
>  dynamic user community behind it ... yadda yadda yadda ... but whenever
>  someone posts perfectly reasonable criticism of some aspect, there's a
>  sudden surge of, "hey, if you don't like it, don't use it, ok?"  i
> suspect
>  it's not the quality of FC2 that might drive people off, it's the
>  closed-minded and dismissive attitude of its alleged supporters.
>
>  >> - Service PCMCIA doesn't load the yento-sockets module. This is known @
>  >> bugzilla, one has to patch the pcmcia script by hand. Through this bug,
>  >> the PCMCIA subsystem is non-functional!
>  >
>  > This seems to be system specific. My IBM Thinkpad T30's PCMCIA works
without
>  > any problems.
>
>      well, good for you.  and the fact that it works for you means ... 
what?
>  that it doesn't qualify as a real problem?  fact is, the
>  /etc/init.d/pcmcia file has historically been a bit of a mess -- heck, i
>  recall submitting a bug report on that file as far back as april of 2003:
>
>  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=88054
>
>  it's depressing that it's still broken, and in such a blatant way.
>
>  >> - My console-beep (emitted through the sound card) disappeared ever
>  >> since FC2. I don't seem to be able to find a pointer on how to trace
>  >> this...
>  >
>  > You must load the pcspkr module. It's been discussed and is in the
archives.
>  which doesn't dismiss the original poster's contention that it's still a
>  mildly-annoying bug, and one which didn't exist in FC1.  i don't think
>  it's unreasonable for folks to gripe when things which once worked in FC1
>  suddenly stopped working in FC2.
>
>  >> This is the result after a few hours of FC2 experience and I really
>  >> start wondering about what level of testing this release experienced
>  >> before being released into the public -- even IMHO obvious things like
>  >> the PCMCIA subsystem doesn't work! Seems to me that FC1 was by far the
>  >> more reliable system.
>  >
>  > Realibility will depend on the number of people testing "test" releases.
If
>  > you want a quality release, you should help out by testing and
> reporting
>  > bugs.
>
>  oh, man, you *so* did not want to go there.  working from memory here so i
>  hope i'm remembering correctly, i'm pretty sure there have been at least a
>  couple folks who pointed out that they *did* put in time running the test
>  releases, that they *did* identify and report obvious bugs way back when
>  and yet, when FC2 hit the streets, those bugs were still there.
>
>  under the circumstances, then, it's pretty offensive to get testy with
>  folks about how they should get involved in the testing process when many
>  of them have done exactly that, only to see their efforts at bug
>  identification and reporting make no difference in the final release. one
>  might conclude that, under those circumstances, they really do have the
>  right to wonder if it was worth the time and effort.
>
>  > If you can't afford to use your machine for testing, your best hope is
>  > to report bugs and wait for fixes.
>
>  see above.
>
>  > Again, no one's forcing you to use FC2.
>
>  and again, this is a really childish response.  one has to wonder, just
>  what do you do for a living?  i can just imagine, say, a car salesman with
>  this kind of "don't you dare criticize me and my product" attitude:
>
>  Salesman: "Yes, sir, Mr. Smith, this van has the horsepower you need for
>  pulling your boat, loads of cargo space and foldout seats for the kids,
>  optional 6-way sound system since you like music."
>
>  Mr. Smith: "Yup, it's almost perfect, but I'm not sure if my current roof
>  rack is compatible with the roof mounts ..."
>
>  Salesman: "HEY!  No one's *forcing* you to buy this thing, OK?  You got a
>  problem with it?!  There's lots of other dealers out there, all right?!"
>
>  > Obviously you have the time to format and install an entirely new system
>  > without assessing the possible issues first, so why not try SuSE?
>
>  hey, good idea, dude.  there's nothing that placates an unsatisfied user
>  more than suggesting they take their talents elsewhere.  *that'll* help
>  the cause, fer shure.
>
>  > Giving up on FC2 is really your decision. Either help out, by living
>  > through bugs and reporting them, or just switch to something that works.
>
>  once again, see above.  ("... or just switch to something that works."
>  now *there's* some great testimonial.)
>
>  > I am hoping that through my and others' efforts, FC3 will be a superb
>  > release.
>
>  and if it isn't, well, those whiners can take their complaints elsewhere,
>  can't they?
>
>  rday
>
>
>  -- 
>  fedora-list mailing list
>  fedora-list(a)redhat.com
>  To unsubscribe: http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
>
>

[Phil Savoie]

On Tuesday 22 June 2004 07:35, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
>  On Tue, 22 Jun 2004, Dexter Ang wrote:
>  > HaJo Schatz wrote:
>  >> Hi List,
>  >>
>  >> Long story, short question: Should I fall back to FC1 instead of using
>  >> FC2? I am somewhat very concerned about the release quality of FC2.
>  >> Here's what happened:
>  >
>  > It is all your choice. No one is forcing you to use FC2.
>
>      to those folks who habitually respond to critisicm of FC 1/2 with this
>  annoying, circle-the-wagons, defensive mentality, a piece of advice: grow
>  up.
>
>      when someone takes the time to document a number of legitimate concerns
>  and obvious flaws in an *official* release (after three, count 'em,
>  *three* test releases), and also legitimately asks whether he should be
>  concerned about its quality, he deserves a better and more mature answer
>  than "No one is forcing you to use FC2."
>
>      it's become really tedious to watch the growing trend of promoting
>  fedora core, talking about making it just a terrific distro, how it has a
>  dynamic user community behind it ... yadda yadda yadda ... but whenever
>  someone posts perfectly reasonable criticism of some aspect, there's a
>  sudden surge of, "hey, if you don't like it, don't use it, ok?"  i
> suspect
>  it's not the quality of FC2 that might drive people off, it's the
>  closed-minded and dismissive attitude of its alleged supporters.
>
>  >> - Service PCMCIA doesn't load the yento-sockets module. This is known @
>  >> bugzilla, one has to patch the pcmcia script by hand. Through this bug,
>  >> the PCMCIA subsystem is non-functional!
>  >
>  > This seems to be system specific. My IBM Thinkpad T30's PCMCIA works
>  > without any problems.
>
>      well, good for you.  and the fact that it works for you means ... what?
>  that it doesn't qualify as a real problem?  fact is, the
>  /etc/init.d/pcmcia file has historically been a bit of a mess -- heck, i
>  recall submitting a bug report on that file as far back as april of 2003:
>
>  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=88054
>
>  it's depressing that it's still broken, and in such a blatant way.
>
>  >> - My console-beep (emitted through the sound card) disappeared ever
>  >> since FC2. I don't seem to be able to find a pointer on how to trace
>  >> this...
>  >
>  > You must load the pcspkr module. It's been discussed and is in the
>  > archives.
>
>  which doesn't dismiss the original poster's contention that it's still a
>  mildly-annoying bug, and one which didn't exist in FC1.  i don't think
>  it's unreasonable for folks to gripe when things which once worked in FC1
>  suddenly stopped working in FC2.
>
>  >> This is the result after a few hours of FC2 experience and I really
>  >> start wondering about what level of testing this release experienced
>  >> before being released into the public -- even IMHO obvious things like
>  >> the PCMCIA subsystem doesn't work! Seems to me that FC1 was by far the
>  >> more reliable system.
>  >
>  > Realibility will depend on the number of people testing "test" releases.
>  > If you want a quality release, you should help out by testing and
>  > reporting bugs.
>
>  oh, man, you *so* did not want to go there.  working from memory here so i
>  hope i'm remembering correctly, i'm pretty sure there have been at least a
>  couple folks who pointed out that they *did* put in time running the test
>  releases, that they *did* identify and report obvious bugs way back when
>  and yet, when FC2 hit the streets, those bugs were still there.
>
>  under the circumstances, then, it's pretty offensive to get testy with
>  folks about how they should get involved in the testing process when many
>  of them have done exactly that, only to see their efforts at bug
>  identification and reporting make no difference in the final release. one
>  might conclude that, under those circumstances, they really do have the
>  right to wonder if it was worth the time and effort.
>
>  > If you can't afford to use your machine for testing, your best hope is
>  > to report bugs and wait for fixes.
>
>  see above.
>
>  > Again, no one's forcing you to use FC2.
>
>  and again, this is a really childish response.  one has to wonder, just
>  what do you do for a living?  i can just imagine, say, a car salesman with
>  this kind of "don't you dare criticize me and my product" attitude:
>
>  Salesman: "Yes, sir, Mr. Smith, this van has the horsepower you need for
>  pulling your boat, loads of cargo space and foldout seats for the kids,
>  optional 6-way sound system since you like music."
>
>  Mr. Smith: "Yup, it's almost perfect, but I'm not sure if my current roof
>  rack is compatible with the roof mounts ..."
>
>  Salesman: "HEY!  No one's *forcing* you to buy this thing, OK?  You got a
>  problem with it?!  There's lots of other dealers out there, all right?!"
>
>  > Obviously you have the time to format and install an entirely new system
>  > without assessing the possible issues first, so why not try SuSE?
>
>  hey, good idea, dude.  there's nothing that placates an unsatisfied user
>  more than suggesting they take their talents elsewhere.  *that'll* help
>  the cause, fer shure.
>
>  > Giving up on FC2 is really your decision. Either help out, by living
>  > through bugs and reporting them, or just switch to something that works.
>
>  once again, see above.  ("... or just switch to something that works."
>  now *there's* some great testimonial.)
>
>  > I am hoping that through my and others' efforts, FC3 will be a superb
>  > release.
>
>  and if it isn't, well, those whiners can take their complaints elsewhere,
>  can't they?
>
>  rday 
Excellent post! I also have been noticing the elitist, unhelpful and downright 
rude replies to people who have legitament questions.  I just hope that 
people in general will lighten up and remember that manners certainly go a 
long way especially in perception of a forum such as this.

Phil Savoie

[Rodolfo J. Paiz]

At 05:53 AM 6/22/2004, Phil Savoie wrote:
> Excellent post! I also have been noticing the elitist, unhelpful and 
> downright
> rude replies to people who have legitament questions.  I just hope that
> people in general will lighten up and remember that manners certainly go a
> long way especially in perception of a forum such as this. 
Phil,

In your quest for manners, *please* trim the FOUR PAGES worth of 
unnecessary text which you left at the top of your email. It's rude to make 
4,000 read or page through that much flak just to see one paragraph. You 
may not like my post, but at least it was easy to read and didn't make you 
(or anyone else) do a lot of extra work, did it?

Cheers,


-- 
Rodolfo J. Paiz
rpaiz(a)simpaticus.com
http://www.simpaticus.com

[Andy Green]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Tuesday 22 June 2004 12:35, Robert P. J. Day wrote:

>      to those folks who habitually respond to critisicm of FC 1/2 with
> this
>  annoying, circle-the-wagons, defensive mentality, a piece of advice: grow
>  up. 
Well I also noted this, although to be fair Dexter wrote a good and mild 
reply, but I see this defensiveness coming from their not being empowered to 
do anything about the problem.  Only RH folks can do this because of the 
project structure.  Some people who do great work helping on the ml are 
threfore finding themselves becoming slightly shrill and embattled fanboys, 
equating acknowledging the problem they cannot do anything about with heresy 
against the project and the great RH people who lead it.  So they will not 
acknowledge the problem and it is easier to talk about how FC is meant to be 
cutting edge, unstable, not for everyone.

>      when someone takes the time to document a number of legitimate
> concerns
>  and obvious flaws in an *official* release (after three, count 'em,
>  *three* test releases), and also legitimately asks whether he should be
>  concerned about its quality, he deserves a better and more mature answer
>  than "No one is forcing you to use FC2." 
This is clearly a good point.  However, to be fair there was a weekly effort 
to triage bugs in Bugzilla I recall, I failed to help out on this.  Certainly 
as I noted the RH people are responsive and very effective if their attention 
is drawn to the need, I guess they are drowning in Bugzilla entries.   Maybe 
if people with outstanding killers in Bugzilla were more vocal during the 
test time the circle can be squared. 

- -Andy

- -- 
Automatic actions for USB cameras, cardreaders, memory sticks, MP3 players
http://warmcat.com/usbautocam
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[Robert P. J. Day]

On Tue, 22 Jun 2004, Andy Green wrote:

>  ... Only RH folks can do this because of the project structure.  Some
>
>  people who do great work helping on the ml are threfore finding 
>  themselves becoming slightly shrill and embattled fanboys, equating 
>  acknowledging the problem they cannot do anything about with heresy 
>  against the project and the great RH people who lead it. 
there was one other point that i thought was worth making -- it didn't 
really fit in the original post, but it's appropriate here, i think.

there's a constant emphasis that fedora core is *not* red hat -- that FC 
is a state-of-the-art, leading edge, way out there, community-based, use 
at your own risk distro meant partially as a proving ground for new 
technologies that will, someday, find their way into red hat's stable, 
enterprise-level offerings.

uh, yeah.  and the last time i looked, 69% of americans still thought 
saddam hussein had something to do with 9/11.

the point being that, regardless of what you tell people and regardless of 
the reality, a lot of folks are going to associate fedora core with red 
hat, and their experiences with FC are undoubtedly going to color their 
perception of red hat.  it may not be fair, but it's going to happen.

so the constant refrain of "if you don't like it, don't use it." is
going 
to be interpreted by some as a sign that *red hat* is not really 
interested in their business or their satisfaction.  and this is something 
that red hat might want to be just a wee bit concerned about.  in this 
case, image really might be everything.

rday

[Sean]

On Tue, 22 Jun 2004 08:11:33 -0400 (EDT)
"Robert P. J. Day" <rpjday(a)mindspring.com&gt; wrote:

>  On Tue, 22 Jun 2004, Andy Green wrote:
>  
>  > ... Only RH folks can do this because of the project structure.  Some 
>  > people who do great work helping on the ml are threfore finding 
>  > themselves becoming slightly shrill and embattled fanboys, equating 
>  > acknowledging the problem they cannot do anything about with heresy 
>  > against the project and the great RH people who lead it. 
There is no problem reporting problems.  In fact I see many people
getting help and having problems resolved on this list.   People who 
report problems and ask for help generally get it.   Those who become shrill
and start freaking out because things aren't perfect are given appropriate
answers as well, just probably not the sympathetic RedHat bashing
they were hoping for.

>  there was one other point that i thought was worth making -- it
> didn't 
>  really fit in the original post, but it's appropriate here, i think.
>  
>  there's a constant emphasis that fedora core is *not* red hat -- that FC 
>  is a state-of-the-art, leading edge, way out there, community-based, use 
>  at your own risk distro meant partially as a proving ground for new 
>  technologies that will, someday, find their way into red hat's stable, 
>  enterprise-level offerings.
>  
>  uh, yeah.  and the last time i looked, 69% of americans still thought 
>  saddam hussein had something to do with 9/11.
>  
>  the point being that, regardless of what you tell people and regardless of 
>  the reality, a lot of folks are going to associate fedora core with red 
>  hat, and their experiences with FC are undoubtedly going to color their 
>  perception of red hat.  it may not be fair, but it's going to happen. 
Well that is really an issue for RedHat to decide.  It's nice of you to
be concerned but i'm sure the folks at RedHat are smart enough
to deal with this one way or another.

>  
>  so the constant refrain of "if you don't like it, don't use it." is
> going 
>  to be interpreted by some as a sign that *red hat* is not really 
>  interested in their business or their satisfaction.  and this is something 
>  that red hat might want to be just a wee bit concerned about.  in this 
>  case, image really might be everything. 
That is why it is appropriate to explain to people the nature of the Fedora
project, its relationship to RedHat and adjust expectations so that
Fedora can fill the role it was designed for.  We don't need another Suse
or Gentoo, or Debian.  What you're describing is closer to RHL which was 
EOL'd for a reason.   In fact it was terminated because it had bigger problems 
than the potential problems you point out here with Fedora.

Cheers,
Sean

[Sanjay Arora]

On Tue, 2004-06-22 at 17:41, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
>  On Tue, 22 Jun 2004, Andy Green wrote:
>   
>  
>  there's a constant emphasis that fedora core is *not* red hat -- that FC 
>  is a state-of-the-art, leading edge, way out there, community-based, use 
>  at your own risk distro meant partially as a proving ground for new 
>  technologies that will, someday, find their way into red hat's stable, 
>  enterprise-level offerings. 
Well, Red Hatś got to do a Microsoft, now that its begin to build its
strategy for the big league and some of the bugs of closed source are
definitely going to make their way in ;-)), like use legal MS software!!

>  the point being that, regardless of what you tell people and
> regardless of 
>  the reality, a lot of folks are going to associate fedora core with red 
>  hat, and their experiences with FC are undoubtedly going to color their 
>  perception of red hat.  it may not be fair, but it's going to happen.
>   
Its true. Iḿ no whiz sys-admin, but I can roll my own, if provided the
raw materials and pointers from outside. I started using linux about
four-five years ago and have never used any distro but redhat and Iḿ
currently running RH9. I started a similar thread a few days ago and
getting some suggestions as to alternatives.

Community support was what built Redhat but now stopping support of
earlier distros and trying to get users to ES by saying fedora is
bleeding edge and therefore unstable is unfair. RH could have said RH9
or other releases can upgrade to FC1 or whatever, which is stable and
will be supported and FC2 etc. are experimental but again supported.

No sys-admin in any company is going to work his butt off the chair by
using FC2 or even FC1 in a production environment, if his boss is
telling its unsupported and heśis responsible for the upgrade if he
screws up.

The issue here is not what is stable or not...issue is what the users
should upgrade to, if they can or wont pay $$ to the next MS...no
dis-respect to RH or MS meant ;-))

You know it feels like a child is being disowned by a parent ;-) On the
other hand, here in India, where bandwidth is in short supply, many
people depend upon magazine CDs for their distributions. One of the
major magazines www.pcquest.com which distributs about 25000 copies (if
I remember correctly), every-time a release comes and updates every
months, has gone on record stating in the last issue that there may not
be a RH based distro next time and their decision-makers are arguing
each other about going for their favourite distro next...Suse vs
Slackware etc.

Such major moves by people who virtually created Linux presence among
Indian public (and I am referring to power users, not sys-admins), are
changing Redhat perception here.

In fact, I met someone who sells pirated CDs here, hawking a copy of RH
ES...just like MS ;-)), stating after RH9 Fedora was unstable and heśis
selling lots of ES copies now ;-)

. 
>  so the constant refrain of "if you don't like it, don't
> use it." is going 
>  to be interpreted by some as a sign that *red hat* is not really 
>  interested in their business or their satisfaction.  and this is something 
>  that red hat might want to be just a wee bit concerned about.  in this 
>  case, image really might be everything. 
Not a wee bit concerned, I think...its already happening and I think if
Fedora is stable...i.e. bugs are looked after properly ;-) by redhat
putting more resources on Fedora, it will only build RH reputation among
the enterprise segment, where it wants a share. This kind of
attitude...even if the person is harassed by people like us, simply
because his company is not putting enough resources into its own
spin-off...will definitely put people off.

After 5 years of using RH exclusively, I am looking for alternatives
simply because of this sort of situation. I have written to four IT
magazines here stating that more distros should be put on CD so people
could try them out. I have tried my first install of SUSE 9.1 a few days
ago...I will be trying others. I don say I won´t hang on to something
that´s derived from RH9 or RH ES but I am definitely looking...and I
would not have been otherwise!

Well...thats all I have to say on this issue.

Sanjay.

[Manuel Moreno]

On Tue, 2004-06-22 at 20:40, Sanjay Arora wrote:
...
>  In fact, I met someone who sells pirated CDs here, hawking a copy of
> RH
>  ES...just like MS ;-)), stating after RH9 Fedora was unstable and heśis
>  selling lots of ES copies now ;-) 
...

you can also try http://www.whiteboxlinux.org/ if you feel uneasy with
pirated software...

>  Well...thats all I have to say on this issue.
>  
>  Sanjay.
>  
>

[Jeremy Brown]

Andy Green wrote:

>  Well I also noted this, although to be fair Dexter wrote a good and
> mild
>
> reply, but I see this defensiveness coming from their not being empowered to 
> do anything about the problem.  Only RH folks can do this because of the 
> project structure.
>  
I've seen this topic pop up on the fedora-devel list before, and it 
seems to be a large source of frustration for Fedora contributors.  From 
what I read, for the most part Fedora Core still develops under many of 
the same processes RedHat 9 did (user reports bugs, RedHat software 
developer fixes bugs, releases a new package).  Users can contribute 
fixes via mechanisms like Bugzilla, but this is nothing new either; and 
ideally you want an issue resolved by a user to sit in Bugzilla for as 
little time as possible before being re-integrated into Fedora.

Maybe there needs to be an intermediate package repository, created and 
managed by users.  Some place where "unstable" packages (with 
user-contributed fixes) can reside, before they've been reviewed by 
RedHat software developers and integrated into Fedora proper.  This way 
Fedora users could fix the bugs they care about and get them posted 
without having to bug RedHat people.

> Some people who do great work helping on the ml are 
> threfore finding themselves becoming slightly shrill and embattled fanboys, 
> equating acknowledging the problem they cannot do anything about with heresy 
> against the project and the great RH people who lead it.  So they will not 
> acknowledge the problem and it is easier to talk about how FC is meant to be 
> cutting edge, unstable, not for everyone.
>   
>  
It's not directly related...but I get the impression that a lot of 
people *are* considering using Fedora as a stable, server-oriented Linux 
distribution (gasp).  When you can piece together a fairly decent Linux 
server for $400 or so, it doesn't always make sense to spend $300 on the 
OS to run it; especially if you're strapped for cash (small business, or 
not-for-profit entity, for example).  I have the feeling a lot of people 
at one time used RedHat Personal on a lot of these systems to fill the 
need for a cheap, reliable Linux OS, and now these people are using 
Fedora because they don't have the money for RHEL.

I realize that RedHat has very little to gain by ensuring Fedora's 
stability for these sorts of customers (after all, they want paying 
customers, and you can't blame them), but it would be nice if the 
community could fill this gap.  For example, some sort of 
community-driven organization that did QA of packages would be a nice 
step towards offering a Fedora-based, stable, server-flavored OS.

Just some thoughts.

Jeremy

[Don Dupy]

Dell 600sc..............$400
Rack mount case.........$ 82
Fedora Core 1 ..........$  0

Being able to use it as an every day server running DHCP, Sendmail, DNS,
Apache, FTP, Big Brother,and without a hitch...............

priceless...............

;-)

Don Dupy
Systems Administrator
Maxxrad PC Services
http://www.maxxrad.net
email: fedora(a)maxxrad.net

On Tue, 22 Jun 2004, Jeremy Brown wrote:

>  Andy Green wrote:
>
>  > Well I also noted this, although to be fair Dexter wrote a good and mild
>  >
>  >reply, but I see this defensiveness coming from their not being empowered to
>  >do anything about the problem.  Only RH folks can do this because of the
>  >project structure.
>  >
>
>  I've seen this topic pop up on the fedora-devel list before, and it
>  seems to be a large source of frustration for Fedora contributors.  From
>  what I read, for the most part Fedora Core still develops under many of
>  the same processes RedHat 9 did (user reports bugs, RedHat software
>  developer fixes bugs, releases a new package).  Users can contribute
>  fixes via mechanisms like Bugzilla, but this is nothing new either; and
>  ideally you want an issue resolved by a user to sit in Bugzilla for as
>  little time as possible before being re-integrated into Fedora.
>
>  Maybe there needs to be an intermediate package repository, created and
>  managed by users.  Some place where "unstable" packages (with
>  user-contributed fixes) can reside, before they've been reviewed by
>  RedHat software developers and integrated into Fedora proper.  This way
>  Fedora users could fix the bugs they care about and get them posted
>  without having to bug RedHat people.
>
>  >Some people who do great work helping on the ml are
>  >threfore finding themselves becoming slightly shrill and embattled fanboys,
>  >equating acknowledging the problem they cannot do anything about with heresy
>  >against the project and the great RH people who lead it.  So they will not
>  >acknowledge the problem and it is easier to talk about how FC is meant to be
>  >cutting edge, unstable, not for everyone.
>  >
>  >
>
>  It's not directly related...but I get the impression that a lot of
>  people *are* considering using Fedora as a stable, server-oriented Linux
>  distribution (gasp).  When you can piece together a fairly decent Linux
>  server for $400 or so, it doesn't always make sense to spend $300 on the
>  OS to run it; especially if you're strapped for cash (small business, or
>  not-for-profit entity, for example).  I have the feeling a lot of people
>  at one time used RedHat Personal on a lot of these systems to fill the
>  need for a cheap, reliable Linux OS, and now these people are using
>  Fedora because they don't have the money for RHEL.
>
>  I realize that RedHat has very little to gain by ensuring Fedora's
>  stability for these sorts of customers (after all, they want paying
>  customers, and you can't blame them), but it would be nice if the
>  community could fill this gap.  For example, some sort of
>  community-driven organization that did QA of packages would be a nice
>  step towards offering a Fedora-based, stable, server-flavored OS.
>
>  Just some thoughts.
>
>  Jeremy
>
>
>  --
>  fedora-list mailing list
>  fedora-list(a)redhat.com
>  To unsubscribe: http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
>

[Steffen Kluge]

On Wed, 2004-06-23 at 07:37, Jeremy Brown wrote:
>  Maybe there needs to be an intermediate package repository, created
> and 
>  managed by users.  Some place where "unstable" packages (with 
>  user-contributed fixes) can reside, before they've been reviewed by 
>  RedHat software developers and integrated into Fedora proper.  This way 
>  Fedora users could fix the bugs they care about and get them posted 
>  without having to bug RedHat people. 
Now, there's a novel idea. Independent repositories, with unstable or
testing packages... I wonder why nobody's ever thought of that?
;-)

http://www.fedorafaq.org/samples/yum.conf

Cheers
Steffen.

[Jonathan Rawle]

Robert P. J. Day wrote:

>      to those folks who habitually respond to critisicm of FC 1/2 with
> this
>  annoying, circle-the-wagons, defensive mentality, a piece of advice: grow
>  up. 
Some people on both side of the argument do take things all out of
proportion. 

Also, I do wish people would stop replying to messages telling people to
search the archive rather than answering questions. In the time you've
written than, you could in many cases answer the question, and you're
generating just as many messages to the groups with the negative reply. If
you don't want to answer, write nothing.

> >> - Service PCMCIA doesn't load the yento-sockets module.
> This is known @
> >> bugzilla, one has to patch the pcmcia script by hand. Through this bug,
> >> the PCMCIA subsystem is non-functional!
> >
> > This seems to be system specific. My IBM Thinkpad T30's PCMCIA works
> > without any problems.
>  
>      well, good for you.  and the fact that it works for you means ...
>      what? 
It's true, there are a few rough edges, but I'm delighted with FC2 and have
no hardware problems. Maybe on some hardware configurations there are
problems, but that's even the case with Windows XP.

For example, my webcam simply isn't supported under XP. My graphics card
causes the system to lock up (unless I use the latest drivers, in which
case the graphics simply aren't displayed properly). Also, I couldn't
figure out how to set a static IP address, so I had to wait until I could
look it up on Google at work, then try again the next evening...

So there are some problems with FC2 on some motherboards, but then some
systems simply wouldn't support XP when it came out. In the latter case,
people would think "XP won't support my computer, I'll have to
upgrade".
With Linux at least there's another option, "FC2 won't support my computer,
I'll have submit a bug report / wait until someone fixes it / submit a
patch."

FC2 isn't perfect by any means, but for a freely-available, community
effort, we shouldn't be too harsh on it. And on some hardware
configurations (such as mine) FC2 is fantastic.

> >> - My console-beep (emitted through the sound card)
> disappeared ever
> >> since FC2. I don't seem to be able to find a pointer on how to trace
> >> this...
> >
> > You must load the pcspkr module. It's been discussed and is in the
> > archives.
>  
>  which doesn't dismiss the original poster's contention that it's still a
>  mildly-annoying bug, and one which didn't exist in FC1.  i don't think
>  it's unreasonable for folks to gripe when things which once worked in FC1
>  suddenly stopped working in FC2.
>   
Really? I thought the absence of a beep was a great new feature! It's
annoying to have a beep every time I use tab-completion in a console, and
it also means I don't have to hack my emacs config to stop it from beeping.

Maybe there could be a new system-config-beep utility to set whether the
pcspkr module is loaded at boot!


Jonathan

[Alexandre Oliva]

On Jun 22, 2004, Jonathan Rawle <jr36(a)leicester.ac.uk&gt; wrote:

>  Also, I do wish people would stop replying to messages telling people
> to
>  search the archive rather than answering questions. In the time you've
>  written than, you could in many cases answer the question, and you're
>  generating just as many messages to the groups with the negative reply. If
>  you don't want to answer, write nothing. 
Most often you remember the answer is in the archives, but don't have
a pointer handy.  Are you suggesting I should have to do more effort
to find the exact location of the answer, instead of just letting the
person know where it is?  I.e., give them the fish instead of teaching
them to fish?

-- 
Alexandre Oliva             http://www.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
Red Hat Compiler Engineer   aoliva(a){redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org}
Free Software Evangelist  oliva(a){lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}

[Jonathan Rawle]

Alexandre Oliva wrote:

>  Most often you remember the answer is in the archives, but don't
> have
>  a pointer handy.  Are you suggesting I should have to do more effort
>  to find the exact location of the answer, instead of just letting the
>  person know where it is?  I.e., give them the fish instead of teaching
>  them to fish?
>   
You have a good point there. But while your intention may be to be helpful,
there are some people on the list who jump on newbies with innocent
questions in a rather unpleasant manner.

Jonathan

[Andy Green]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Tuesday 22 June 2004 16:53, Alexandre Oliva wrote:

>  Most often you remember the answer is in the archives, but don't
> have
>  a pointer handy.  Are you suggesting I should have to do more effort
>  to find the exact location of the answer, instead of just letting the
>  person know where it is?  I.e., give them the fish instead of teaching
>  them to fish? 
Fair point, but the problem is the archives become crapped up with posts 
containing the keywords, in the quoted post of the questioner, but zero 
information about the solution, just a maddening exhortation to "search the 
archives", which you were doing until the plague of "search the archive"
hits 
drove you to smash your head into your LCD.

- -Andy

- -- 
Automatic actions for USB cameras, cardreaders, memory sticks, MP3 players
http://warmcat.com/usbautocam
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> wI5y9VhjZID+M7bCrq4AD3o=
> =8iR5
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[Camilo Mesias]

Alexandre

>  Most often you remember the answer is in the archives, but don't
> have
>  a pointer handy.  Are you suggesting I should have to do more effort
>  to find the exact location of the answer, instead of just letting the
>  person know where it is?  I.e., give them the fish instead of teaching
>  them to fish? 
If you don't have anything useful to add to the list, send the message 
directly to the person who's asking...

-Cam

-- 
camilo(a)mesias.co.uk                                                 <--

[Phil Schaffner]

On Tue, 2004-06-22 at 12:53 -0300, Alexandre Oliva wrote:
>  On Jun 22, 2004, Jonathan Rawle <jr36(a)leicester.ac.uk&gt; wrote:
>  
>  > Also, I do wish people would stop replying to messages telling people to
>  > search the archive rather than answering questions. In the time you've
>  > written than, you could in many cases answer the question, and you're
>  > generating just as many messages to the groups with the negative reply. If
>  > you don't want to answer, write nothing.
>  
>  Most often you remember the answer is in the archives, but don't have
>  a pointer handy.  Are you suggesting I should have to do more effort
>  to find the exact location of the answer, instead of just letting the
>  person know where it is?  I.e., give them the fish instead of teaching
>  them to fish? 
Good point.  Has anyone seen a good howto/tutorial on searching mail
archives, aside from various posts in the archive with bits/pieces?  It
is a bit of an art, the redhat tool is brain-dead, gmane is marginally
better, and google is between tricky and drinking-from-a-firehose.

Phil

Helpful signatures?

[James Wilkinson]

Jonathan Rawle wrote:
>  Also, I do wish people would stop replying to messages telling people
> to
>  search the archive rather than answering questions. In the time you've
>  written than, you could in many cases answer the question, and you're
>  generating just as many messages to the groups with the negative reply. If
>  you don't want to answer, write nothing. 
If this is supposed to be a community-supported distribution, and this
list is one of the visible signs of community ...

... what can we do to make the archive and the other resources more
visible?

I know we have the "To unsubscribe" link at the bottom, but people
obviously aren't finding the archives. Would there be any mileage in
those that conveniently can [1] changing their signatures for this list
to point at the relevant resources? Maybe something like this?

-- 
Solve common Fedora problems at   http://example.com
Unofficial Fedora FAQ at          http://fedorafaq.org/
Search the fedora-list archive at http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/
or http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=fedora-list&r=1&w=2

Lisa (melgil88(a)optonline.com), is there any possibility that you can
put your "Current Fedora Core 2 Problems & Solutions/Helpful Links" on
the web somewhere so we can link to it?

What do people think?

James.

[1] For mutt, you can investigate folder-hooks.
-- 
E-mail address: james@ | "We completely deny the allegations, and we're
westexe.demon.co.uk    | trying to identify the alligators."

Helpful signatures?

[Jim Cornette]

James Wilkinson wrote:

> Jonathan Rawle wrote:
>   
>
> >Also, I do wish people would stop replying to messages telling people to
> >search the archive rather than answering questions. In the time you've
> >written than, you could in many cases answer the question, and you're
> >generating just as many messages to the groups with the negative reply. If
> >you don't want to answer, write nothing.
> >    
> >
>
>   
>  
This is a very true statement. I think that unless the search the 
archives postings were removed from the list, the relevent hits would be 
lower than the actual clues, fixes or helpful data.

> If this is supposed to be a community-supported distribution, and
> this
> list is one of the visible signs of community ...
>
> .... what can we do to make the archive and the other resources more
> visible?
>   
>  
I think the link on the bottom of each messages should actually state 
where to find previously posted message online.

> I know we have the "To unsubscribe" link at the bottom, but
> people
> obviously aren't finding the archives. Would there be any mileage in
> those that conveniently can [1] changing their signatures for this list
> to point at the relevant resources? Maybe something like this?
>
>   
>  
I'll have to search the archives for "search the archives" sometime
for 
a test.

Jim

-- 
Abandon the search for Truth; settle for a good fantasy.

[Alexandre Oliva]

On Jun 22, 2004, "Robert P. J. Day" <rpjday(a)mindspring.com&gt; wrote:

>  On Tue, 22 Jun 2004, Dexter Ang wrote:
> > HaJo Schatz wrote: 
> >> Long story, short question: Should I fall back to FC1 instead
> of
> >> using FC2? I am somewhat very concerned about the release quality
> >> of FC2.  Here's what happened: 
> > It is all your choice. No one is forcing you to use FC2. 
>  to those folks who habitually respond to critisicm of FC 1/2 with
>  this annoying, circle-the-wagons, defensive mentality, a piece of
>  advice: grow up. 
Err...  Let's make it a bit different:

- Should I have cereal or eggs this morning?

- Dunno, it's really your choice.

What's there of annoying, circle-the-wagons or defensive mentality in
the advice above?  Isn't it the only possible answer that doesn't try
to be an `I know better than you, so I'll make choices and decisions
that you should actually be making yourself'?'

>  when someone takes the time to document a number of legitimate
>  concerns and obvious flaws in an *official* release (after three,
>  count 'em, *three* test releases), 
Documenting?  The right place to document such flaws is bugzilla.
And, guess what, most of them were already there (good search job,
HaJo!), and those that weren't should be.  Posting duplicates of
what's in bugzilla to the list is pretty much just noise.

>  and also legitimately asks whether he should be concerned about its
>  quality, he deserves a better and more mature answer than "No one is
>  forcing you to use FC2." 
Every release has its share of bugs, and it won't be perfect for
everybody.  It's up to every user to try the release on his/her use
pattern and decide which one to stick with.  You have choice.  That's
what Dexter's answer was all about.  At least I read it like that.

>  whenever someone posts perfectly reasonable criticism of some
> aspect,
>  there's a sudden surge of, "hey, if you don't like it, don't use it,
>  ok?" 
Agreed.  The right approach would be `hey, if you don't like this one,
help us make the next one better, ok?'  How's that?

> >> - Service PCMCIA doesn't load the yento-sockets module.
> This is known @
> >> bugzilla, one has to patch the pcmcia script by hand. Through this bug,
> >> the PCMCIA subsystem is non-functional! 
> > This seems to be system specific. My IBM Thinkpad T30's
> PCMCIA works
> > without any problems. 
>      well, good for you.  and the fact that it works for you means
>  ... what? that it doesn't qualify as a real problem? 
You're reading too much between the lines, IMHO.  It fails for me.  I
suspect it's timing related, but I never had time to try to figure out
exactly what's going wrong.  In my wife's laptop, that has this
problem, if the network card is inserted in one of the two pcmcia
slots, it works very reliably; if it's inserted in the other slot, it
will only come up after a reboot sometimes, even though I have a
work-around patch in place.  Yeah, it's a pain.  Yeah, there's an
easily available work-around, but it's an ugly one.  Should we put it
in to get people to live on with the bug, or leave it broken such that
more people are aware of the problem and hopefully someone with time
and enough of a clue to try to fix it has more motivation to do so?
For those who don't, bugzilla has an easily-available work around, and
there are dozens of postings here that point to it.  Maybe this is not
right approach; maybe it's not even a conscious approach.  But it's
what is there.  What are *you* doing to improve this?

>  heck, i recall submitting a bug report on that file as far back as
>  april of 2003: 
>  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=88054 
Wow, so you *knew* I was going to ask the question above, eh? :-) :-)

Cool, thanks for the cooperation.  Hopefully the maintainer of the
pcmcia package will look into this bug report and integrate your
patch.  Hmm, according to bugzilla, the bug was already fixed.  No
wonder nobody acted on it any more.  If you knew it was still broken
(or broken again?), the bug should have remained open.  I've checked
that it is indeed still broken in FC2, and reopened it.

> >> - My console-beep (emitted through the sound card)
> disappeared ever
> >> since FC2. I don't seem to be able to find a pointer on how to trace
> >> this... 
> > You must load the pcspkr module. It's been discussed and is
> in the archives. 
>  which doesn't dismiss the original poster's contention that
> it's still a
>  mildly-annoying bug, and one which didn't exist in FC1. 
You assume too much.  You assume it's a bug.  For some, it's a fix.
Personally, I don't care too much either way, but logging into the
text console and getting loud beeps for bash TAB completion before the
audio mixer modules were loaded was quite annoying.

>  i don't think it's unreasonable for folks to gripe when
> things which
>  once worked in FC1 suddenly stopped working in FC2. 
Well, things change, otherwise what's the point of having a new
release?  Most often they change for better, but sometimes you'll find
you'll disagree with some of the changes.

>  oh, man, you *so* did not want to go there.  working from memory
> here
>  so i hope i'm remembering correctly, i'm pretty sure there have been
>  at least a couple folks who pointed out that they *did* put in time
>  running the test releases, that they *did* identify and report obvious
>  bugs way back when and yet, when FC2 hit the streets, those bugs were
>  still there. 
Well...  It's not reasonable to expect all bugs to get fixed.  Many of
them are, some aren't.  Spending time not only reporting the bug, but
also investigating the root causes, and even posting patches, tends to
increase the likelihood that a fix will make it to the release, but
it's never a guarantee.

>  Salesman: "Yes, sir, Mr. Smith, this van has the horsepower you
> need
>  for pulling your boat, loads of cargo space and foldout seats for the
>  kids, optional 6-way sound system since you like music." 
>  Mr. Smith: "Yup, it's almost perfect, but I'm not sure
> if my current
>  roof rack is compatible with the roof mounts ..." 
>  Salesman: "HEY!  No one's *forcing* you to buy this thing,
> OK?  You
>  got a problem with it?!  There's lots of other dealers out there, all
>  right?!" 
Here's a joke along the same lines

Flight attendant on the coach: Would you like lunch, sir?

Frequent flier, first time on that airline: What are the options?

Flight attendant: Yes or no.


You have a choice.  Nobody is forcing you to have the meal.  Here's
another related with software I just came up with:

Begger knocks on door: I'm hungry and broke.  Would you have some food
to share?

Home owner: Yeah, we have some chicken soup left.  Would you like
some?

Begger: Fsck, I hate chicken soup.  But heck, I'm hungry.  Yes, please.

Home owner goes in, and returns with empty hands: I'm sorry, but
a bug fell in the soup.  I figured you wouldn't want it like that, so
I threw it all away.


Mind you, I'm not comparing you or anyone with any of the characters
in the stories above.  I just found them barely related.  But if the
hat fits... :-) :-)

-- 
Alexandre Oliva             http://www.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
Red Hat Compiler Engineer   aoliva(a){redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org}
Free Software Evangelist  oliva(a){lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}

[Ernie McCracken]

On Tue, Jun 22, 2004 at 10:50:56AM -0300, Alexandre Oliva wrote:
>  
>  >> It is all your choice. No one is forcing you to use FC2.
>  
>  > to those folks who habitually respond to critisicm of FC 1/2 with
>  > this annoying, circle-the-wagons, defensive mentality, a piece of
>  > advice: grow up.
>  
>  Err...  Let's make it a bit different:
>  
>  - Should I have cereal or eggs this morning?
>  
>  - Dunno, it's really your choice.
>  
>  What's there of annoying, circle-the-wagons or defensive mentality in
>  the advice above?  Isn't it the only possible answer that doesn't try
>  to be an `I know better than you, so I'll make choices and decisions
>  that you should actually be making yourself'?' 
The "cereal or eggs" question is not really analogous here.

Let's say a cereal manufacturer provided you with some free cereal.  The
cereal was not satisfactory to you.  You write to the cereal
manufacturer saying, "Your cereal just didn't work out for me due to x,
y, and z."  Fill in x, y, and z as appropriate. :-)

The cereal manufacturer could say, "Well, eating our cereal is your
choice.  No one is forcing you to eat it."

That would be an acceptable response from them.  After all, it is true;
you have the ability to choose another breakfast food.

However, a better response from the manufacturer might be: "Thanks for
pointing this out to us.  Let's work on recifying x, y, and z.  Oh, by
the way, here's the recipe to our cereal, so if you have the know-how,
you can help us fix it."

Even though it has been spearheaded by RedHat, Fedora Core a community
effort.  Let's work on making it better.



PS. In my experience, the cereal has been very tasty. :-)

[Steffen Kluge]

On Wed, 2004-06-23 at 00:16, Lee-Win Tai wrote:
>  Let's say a cereal manufacturer provided you with some free
> cereal.  The
>  cereal was not satisfactory to you.  You write to the cereal
>  manufacturer saying, "Your cereal just didn't work out for me due to x,
>  y, and z."  Fill in x, y, and z as appropriate. :-) 
Your analogy has a flaw, too: nobody in this thread is criticising
people for filing too many bugzilla reports ("talking to the
manufacturer"). The point of critique is people using their fellow
Fedora users (this list) as a wailing wall.

>  The cereal manufacturer could say, "Well, eating our cereal is
> your
>  choice.  No one is forcing you to eat it." 
That's what the wailing wall would respond.

>  However, a better response from the manufacturer might be:
> "Thanks for
>  pointing this out to us.  Let's work on recifying x, y, and z.  Oh, by
>  the way, here's the recipe to our cereal, so if you have the know-how,
>  you can help us fix it." 
That's the response you would get by filing a proper bug report. It's
just a matter of time, sometimes :)

Cheers
Steffen.

[Sean]

On Tue, 22 Jun 2004 07:35:30 -0400 (EDT)
"Robert P. J. Day" <rpjday(a)mindspring.com&gt; wrote:

>      to those folks who habitually respond to critisicm of FC 1/2 with
> this 
>  annoying, circle-the-wagons, defensive mentality, a piece of advice: grow 
>  up. 
Nice advice, now try to use it yourself.

>      when someone takes the time to document a number of legitimate
> concerns 
>  and obvious flaws in an *official* release (after three, count 'em, 
>  *three* test releases), and also legitimately asks whether he should be 
>  concerned about its quality, he deserves a better and more mature answer 
>  than "No one is forcing you to use FC2." 
Nobody ever criticized anyone for listing legitimate concerns.

>      it's become really tedious to watch the growing trend of
> promoting 
>  fedora core, talking about making it just a terrific distro, how it has a 
>  dynamic user community behind it ... yadda yadda yadda ... but whenever  
Typical straw-man arguments.  Instead of addressing specific issues
when they happen you group everything together later so you don't 
have to argue in context.  Lets stick to the current post ok?

>  someone posts perfectly reasonable criticism of some aspect,
> there's a 
>  sudden surge of, "hey, if you don't like it, don't use it, ok?"  i
> suspect 
>  it's not the quality of FC2 that might drive people off, it's the 
>  closed-minded and dismissive attitude of its alleged supporters. 
Personally haven't seen anybody respond to reasonable criticism that 
way, only to excessive hand wringing, or lack of responsibility or gross
misunderstanding.   But would be easier if we were discussing this 
in context.   

If someone makes a criticism, then its fair to help them understand the 
context in which they're complaining.   There seem to be a lot of chicken
littles out there running around freaking out because the sky is falling...   
Pretty sure we're doing the right thing by telling them everything is going 
to be okay and temper the shrill complaints.

>      well, good for you.  and the fact that it works for you means ...
> what? 
>  that it doesn't qualify as a real problem?  fact is, the 
>  /etc/init.d/pcmcia file has historically been a bit of a mess -- heck, i 
>  recall submitting a bug report on that file as far back as april of 2003: 
Nobody said it wasn't a problem.   Why did you jump on the respondent
because he tried to set the problem in context demonstrating the scope 
of the problem to the OP.   Yes there is a problem, but the developers don't 
have  every piece of hardware out there.   There are only so many 
developer-hours in each day and lots of bugs to be solved.   If your pet
bug doesn't happen to be a priority for one of the developers you'll
have to wait a while.

>  
>  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=88054
>  
>  it's depressing that it's still broken, and in such a blatant way. 
Take a pill, see a shrink, hell you could even try to help solve the
problem, but this is no defense for list-spew.

>  which doesn't dismiss the original poster's contention that
> it's still a
>  mildly-annoying bug, and one which didn't exist in FC1.  i don't think 
>  it's unreasonable for folks to gripe when things which once worked in FC1 
>  suddenly stopped working in FC2. 
Take it to slashdot.   Griping doesn't help anything.   File a bug report,
and/or help fix things.   Open source works because people who care about
a problem take the time to go fix it.   Until someone cares enough to go
fix it..  it will stay broken.

>  oh, man, you *so* did not want to go there.  working from memory here
> so i 
>  hope i'm remembering correctly, i'm pretty sure there have been at least a 
>  couple folks who pointed out that they *did* put in time running the test 
>  releases, that they *did* identify and report obvious bugs way back when 
>  and yet, when FC2 hit the streets, those bugs were still there. 
Nobody said every bug would be handled before the release.   It is after all 
a time based release methodology.   The implications of which you had better 
understand before you choose Fedora for your system.   However, the testing 
work is still useful and will help with ongoing releases.   Most post-release bugs 
with FC2 have been solved by helpful people who have supplied work-arounds.

>  <snip> 
>  and again, this is a really childish response.  one has to wonder,
> just 
>  what do you do for a living?  i can just imagine, say, a car salesman with 
>  this kind of "don't you dare criticize me and my product" attitude:
>  
>  Salesman: "Yes, sir, Mr. Smith, this van has the horsepower you need for 
>  pulling your boat, loads of cargo space and foldout seats for the kids, 
>  optional 6-way sound system since you like music."
>  
>  Mr. Smith: "Yup, it's almost perfect, but I'm not sure if my current roof 
>  rack is compatible with the roof mounts ..."
>  
>  Salesman: "HEY!  No one's *forcing* you to buy this thing, OK?  You got a 
>  problem with it?!  There's lots of other dealers out there, all right?!" 
That's exactly right.  Buyer beware.   If you buy a tractor, you better not
come complaining when it won't do 160 on the highway.   You had better
understand what you're "buying" when you choose Fedora.   It's not that

a tractor is inferior, its just that it has a different intent and isn't meant 
for everyone.   RedHat has the integrity to make it perfectly clear, so nobody 
should be fooled.   On top of all that, we're not talking about a product where 
any money has changed hands..  so the analogy is a bit of stretch anyway.

>  hey, good idea, dude.  there's nothing that placates an
> unsatisfied user 
>  more than suggesting they take their talents elsewhere.  *that'll* help 
>  the cause, fer shure. 
> From what I read, the respondent was trying to help the OP understand
the Fedora project and give honest direction to stay with FC1/RH9 or pick
another distribution if FC2 wasn't an appropriate choice.   This seems
like useful help instead of sticking yer head in the sand and pretending
Fedora is for everyone.   In fact, it looks like a direct answer to a direct
question.  (Even though the original question looked more like a thinly 
veiled troll)

Does this mean anybody wants bugs and is happy about it?  NO.   Just
leave the whining, misunderstanding and sense of entitlement on 
slashdot where it belongs.

>  once again, see above.  ("... or just switch to something that
> works." 
>  now *there's* some great testimonial.) 
Don't buy a steam shovel if you need a crane.   It's about helping people
understand the nature, intent, philosophy, intended audience and release
methodology of Fedora.   FC2 was a huge leap forward and therefore
there are going to be additional teething problem.   Perhaps the testing 
phase should have been a bit longer, but there is a price to pay for that 
decision too.

>  and if it isn't, well, those whiners can take their complaints
> elsewhere, 
>  can't they? 
So, your argument comes down to.. "whining is a good thing"?    There are 
already enough forums out there for the whiners.  Lets use this one to 
help people make the best choice for themselves and solve problems for
those who choose Fedora.

Cheers,
Sean

[Peter Boy]

Am Di, den 22.06.2004 schrieb HaJo Schatz um 08:54:
>  Long story, short question: Should I fall back to FC1 instead of
> using
>  FC2? I am somewhat very concerned about the release quality of FC2. 
According to my *impression*, FC2, although a little bit less mature and
less stable as FC1, is not specifically unstable or of substandard
quality. There were some big differences to the previous release, esp.
kernel 2.6 and x.org. If I remember correctly even in former Red Hat
Linux releases there was an increased instability level in a comparable
situation.

I for myself decided to stay with FC1 on my laptop which is my main
working machine and must not be compromised. I use FC2 on my desktop
where the situation is a bit less critical.

If you have some problems with FC2 on your machine, use FC1 and install
FC2 in parallel (perhaps using the same /home and other data). So you
can contribute bug reports, check the progress in stability and you may
switch, when the situtation fits to your needs.


>  - Is this what we have to expect from a "community distro"
> in the long
>  run? As with RH9 the last consumer-distro is discontinued, my logical
>  conclusion would then be to leave RH behind and move on to another
>  packager, say Suse? 
Switching to another distro, SuSE, Mandrake or whatever, might not be
the solution you will enjoy in the long term. Each distro, although
basically beeing compiled from the same software basis, has its own
characteristics, is own weaknesses, its own strong features, ... SuSE,
for example, if they make a kernel update, they automatically delete
your current, running kernel and its configuration. If you have problems
booting the updated kernel of if you depend on additional kernel modules
(nvidia as an example) you will have a hard time.

If you enjoy the long term characteristics of Red Hat / Fedora, stay
with it, help to fix the problems (bugzilla! Even comments to existing
reports might be helpful). FC2 and its specific problems are a
*temporary* inconvenience.



Peter