Giving up on Linux...

[xyzzy at hotpop.com]

On Sunday 22 February 2004 2:20 pm, Paul wrote:
> Hi,
>
> > > Have you ever thought that people don't complain about MS products for
> > > two reasons - the first is they know it gets sent to /dev/null and
> > > secondly they don't know who to send reports to?
> >
> > I'll agree with this up to a point.  M$ DOES listen in its own fashion,
> > otherwise there wouldn't be any updates.
>
> The updates come from them being embarressed into doing them by the
> likes of the bods who go fishing for vulnerabilities. Do you honestly
> think they would have fixed that lovely huge 8 month old hole if the
> press hadn't made such a fuss. The hole which caused havoc because of
> MSBlast had been in there from Win95. The phishing fiasco really did
> show how little they cared. I know for a fact that the bug had existed
> from IE4 - I reported the damned thing.
>
> I repeat, updates are only made by MS when they are forced to do it.
>
> > > The big advantage with open source is that the developers listen.
> >
> > Ok, they listen.  Where are the fixes for the latest hardware?
>
> Development versions of the kernel. As another poster has said, a lot of
> the time the problem is that companies are scared senseless of MS and so
> don't release information on how their boards operate. SiS are a classic
> example of that. If it wasn't for an insider and a devoted bunch of
> crackers reverse engineering the code, anything SiS would not work
> properly.
>
> > > If they didn't care, do you think that those of us using the test
> > > version would take the time to report the problems?
> >
> > Again, where are the fixes?
>
> download.fedora.redhat.com mainly in the development directory. Gets
> updated daily. Also lots of feedback via bugzilla (my feedback directory
> has well over 400 messages in since FC1 went into testing)
>
> As you know (being a kernel hacker) and as I know (being one part of the
> Scribus team) debugging is not that simple a task. The problem may be
> with another application not working correctly rather than anything in
> your own application/code.

I have seen the same bugs (SMP system lockup, lockup on shutdown) lie dormant 
since November aside from "me too" posters.

>
> > > It is sadder that people think WinXP offers anything more than constant
> > > headaches, broken software and an uncaring despot on the throan.
> >
> > Religious propaganda aside, the pragmatic bottom line is that for my
> > hardware, WinXP DOES offer a working system out of the box.  Linux is
> > what is giving me headaches and broken software.  As for uncaring
> > despots, again, where are the fixes?  Where are the lines in Bugzilla
> > that say "Fixed in kernel version such and such"??
>
> Until someone files, in Bugzilla, a bug, how are the bods at Fedora
> supposed to fix a problem? As I frequently say, if you don't tell anyone
> something, nothing gets done. In all my time using Redhat and Fedora,
> I've only ever known the crew at RH to be fast at fixing problems, but
> only when it's in Bugzilla.
>
> MS have no such reporting facility. It's not religeous propganda or
> anything like that, it's a plain fact.
>
> > What I am trying to say here is THIS is the stranglehold that M$ has on
> > the desktop market; i.e., they are able to come out with an O/S that
> > boots off of the install CD, installs, and WORKS (however lousily).
>
> Not always. I have plenty of systems at work which will only work with
> Linux and will not work with any version of Win except 98 - and the
> hardware is less than 6 months old.
>
> > Until these problems
> > are addressed and Linux is able to work like this and to react with
> > alacrity to state-of-the-art hardware, it will remain a desktop
> > hobbyist/hacker toy and server software that runs on year-old hardware.
>
> Had to disappoint you on this. The three new servers I purchased were
> all dual Opteron systems using Pink Tie 9. That was before MS even
> properly had XP64 running. Now if you think that's NOT state of the art,
> I don't know what is.

Again, Linux is, at the moment, optimized to get the most performance out of 
servers, so it would make sense that the servers would work, even cutting 
edge.

Have you tried running X-Windows on those servers and using it for any length 
of time?

>
> There is also nothing wrong with year old hardware.

I didn't say there was.  Even though a year is a VERY long time in the 
computer industry.  Year old hardware will do the job.  However, if I wanted 
to upgrade myself to the latest hot motherboard and processor, based on the 
experience I have had trying to get Fedora to run, I would be out of luck.

>
> As an aside, but related, I always laugh at hardware with that stupid
> sticker on which says "Designed for WindowsXP". That's like saying we've
> built this car to fit around this fuel which only Esso produce. Normally
> you make a car which can use any fuel as long as it has the correct RON
> rating - not the other way around.
>
> TTFN
>
> Paul