ATrpms Real Issues

[Temlakos]

Everyone (and more particularly I address this to Axel Thimm, the keeper
of the AT repository):

I do not intend to weigh on whether someone else on this list has
violated the rules of etiquette, or exaggerated, or whatever. I am not a
moderator.

What I *am*, is a dissatisfied former user of the AT repositories who
must recommend against them--unless Mr. Thimm can tell me how I was mis-
using them.

For the past several weeks, I noticed some problems with AT packages. I
was using the AT-stable, AT-good, and AT-testing branches. The problem:
As I installed AT versions of the RPM's, these would set up some other
dependencies that would actually require the *removal* of RPM's from
other repositories.

Then came the kicker. Earlier this week I ran an upgrade with Synaptic.
It broke my X setup, so that I could not log on to any of my accounts. I
had to rescue my data, reformat the machine, and reinstall Fedora. Now
as it happened, I decided then and there to install FC3 instead of 2, as
long as I had to make an unusable system usable again. I am happy that I
did this. FC3 handles USB drives almost as easily as it does optical
media (CD and DVD), and in many other respects is vastly superior to
FC2, so long as it's a fresh install.

But as I set up my apt/sources.list.d directory, I decided not to un-
comment the atrpms.list file. The AT repository--or at least the at-
testing and at-good and maybe even the at-stable repositories--are
incompatible with the Fedora Core and updates-released repository, and
with the Dag, Dries, FreshRPMs and NewRPMs repos. Something's wrong
somewhere. Getting defensive just because some other poster might, or
might not, have said something unmannerly or otherwise uncalled-for will
not solve the problem.

Fedora Core is as close as it has ever been to an OS that I could
recommend as a full replacement for Windows. It took a giant leap with
its handling of USB mass-storage devices. But if a routine upgrade can
break it, for any reason whatever, it's not ready. That's one of
Windows' problems--and since they are a unified corporation and not a
community of separate users, developers, and repository keepers, then
I'm not describing anything to which the open-source community is
uniquely vulnerable. But we all know that Linux has that rather nasty
reputation, so that's one thing that Linux *has to* fix--the notion that
separate developers can't cooperate with one another.

So let's put aside our differences and work to solve the few remaining
problems that stand in our way of being the complete Windows
replacement.
-- 
Temlakos <temlakos at gmail.com>