ATI video comes out of the closet

Les Mikesell lesmikesell at gmail.com
Sat Sep 8 17:00:40 UTC 2007


Frank Cox wrote:

>> We have a lot of windows machines on all the same hardware as has broken 
>> with fedora, and keep them all updated.  I can't recall any of them ever 
>> failing to boot after an update, at least in the post win2ksp2 era which 
>> would be pretty close to the entire lifespan of fedora. 
> 
> You know, Les, I'm really starting to wonder if you came in the wrong door
> somehow by mistake.
> 
> This is the Fedora mailing list.  Fedora is a distribution of a Linux operating
> system which is by no means perfect, but is substantially more perfect than any
> version of MS Windows has ever been or will be in the future (short of a
> complete re-architecture and re-write that probably won't ever happen).

Beg your pardon, but I don't believe you would say that if you had 
actually tried to keep any large number of machines running in 
production over the last decade.  Windows does have problems, but there 
are well known ways to avoid them.  There is no way to predictably keep 
a fedora machine running and up to date with security updates for even a 
few years.

> This
> is due in large part to a different security model and different priorities
> than what are found in MS Windows development.

Linux inherits a reasonable security model by following the unix design 
but that's not really the point.  A machine has to boot up and run 
before the security model matters much.  After some fedora updates, some 
machines  don't boot up.

> As you apparently have less problems with MS Windows (though I don't see how
> that's possible in the real world)

The way it is possible is to run 3rd party anti-virus software and 
strictly control the applications that are installed.  The problems are 
not in the core OS or device drivers.  Personally, I'd prefer _not_ to 
run Windows on these machines or ever give Microsoft any money again, 
but the fact is that they work, have been working for years, and Linux 
can't do what they do any better.

> and you use a Mac for your personal
> computer, you may be a lot happier and find more like-minded people on a
> mailing list devoted to either MS Windows or Mac.

I don't like everything about the Mac either, but again their binary 
device drivers 'just work' and have never been an issue.  Unlike fedora, 
I can depend on it to always reboot after an update and it's firewire 
drivers have always worked, again unlike fedora.  So when does the value 
of having the linux firewire driver under the GPL kick in?

> Again, this is the Fedora mailing list.
> 
> Are you sure you're in the right place?

Yes, I try to use the right tools for the right jobs and thus need to 
keep track of what is available and usable.  The right job for fedora 
seems only to be to try to get some idea of what will be included in the 
next stable RHEL/Centos versions - which I think is unfortunate.  But, 
as not entirely unrelated side effect of that, FC3 and FC6 were very 
stable and usable for a large part of their supported lives - FC6 still 
is if you ignore a recent but quicky fixed scsi issue.   That makes me 
believe that that fedora developers understand the issue and are capable 
of delivering stability when it matches their agenda.  So, I keep hoping 
they will someday use the same approach all the time.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com







More information about the users mailing list