FC5 (lack of) quality

[Benjy Grogan]

On 4/14/06, Marius Andreiana <mandreiana.lists at gmail.com> wrote:
> Greetings,
>
> I've installed FC5 in the same week it was released (as usual), after
> using FC5test on one of my systems. After almost a month I'd like to
> share my impressions, not as a rant, but as sign of warning regarding
> release quality.
>
> There are a lot of regressions from FC4. First, the replicable ones:
> * webdav in nautilus is very slow, unusable for daily usage (made bug,
> no reply)
> * TV tuner no longer working (made bug, seems like udev issue after some
> research, no reply)

Not getting a reply has been my experience with Fedora Extras.  As
soon as I have time I'm going to see if I can help out with some of
the packages that I've found poorly maintained.  It's hard to tell if
a package is being poorly maintained, or if the maintainer has gone
into stealth mode to resurface at a later date with all kinds of work
done.  Question: How to find out if an Extras package is being worked
on, and if further work is being done on it (such as adding SELInux
policy, upgrading version, etc...)?

Benjy



> * totem subtitles no longer work properly (lots of "???" instead of
> letters)
> * on a 256mb RAM system GNOME it's hardly usable due to swapping with
> more than 2 applications opened (firefox and another small one, no ooo).
> Only minimal services (network, xfs..) are started automatically.
>
> These wouldn't have been much of a problem, but there are also several
> un-replicable issues:
> * window borders disappear sometimes and then all GNOME freezes. It's
> possible to go to console with alt+Fn and kill some processes, but no
> effect. X must be killed and restarted.
> * once any application trying to output sound (including play on command
> line) hanged (must use kill -9). Rebooting fixed it.
> * starting udev gives sometimes "wait timeout. Switching to background
> [failed]". Due to this, network start failed and bluetooth hanged.
> Rebooting fixed it.
> * mplayer complains sometimes that XVideo can't be opened. I know
> mplayer isn't part of fedora, but the problem is with X. Restarting X
> makes it work.
>
> To conclude, there are many issues impacting user productivity and also
> a worrying trend "reboot and it should work" (sounds familiar?) I know
> Fedora is very fast moving and we should expect bugs, but the FC5
> release feels like rawhide. Is this intended and daily users should
> better look to RHEL? (Lack of Fedora Extras for RHEL prevents me to
> switch right now, the licensing it's not an issue)
>
> Do you have any advices for developers? I don't see any real-world
> solutions (unlike "developers should be more careful when writing code"
> or make test cases for every function with every use case possible), but
> still, the number of bugs is growing.
>
> Anyway, thanks for FC5 and the important technical developments which
> were included :)
>
> --
> Marius Andreiana
>
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