[Fwd: Re: [Wylug-help] Which Version of Linux?]

[Anne Wilson]

On Monday 24 Oct 2005 23:14, Philip Wyett wrote:
> On Mon, 2005-10-24 at 21:38 +0100, Anne Wilson wrote:
> > On Monday 24 Oct 2005 20:23, Philip Wyett wrote:
> > > I am not doing down Mandrake/Mandriva totally as it has it's
> > > merits, but when it comes to issues they seem to be head of the
> > > queue. My all time favourite is the Mandrake 9.2 install
> > > Lucky/Goldstar (LG) drive killer and the blaming of LG for not
> > > testing their drives against Mandrake, but no taking
> > > responsibility for a lack of Quality Control.
> >
> > I have no problem with your choosing another distro, but you
> > certainly have your facts wrong.  The LG problem had nothing to do
> > with not testing against Mandrake - and incidentally, Mandrake were
> > the first distro to be caught by this, but not the only one.  The
> > incident was down to LG manufacturing some drives which used a
> > standard call in a way that is totally non-standard.  If I recall
> > correctly, a call to flush the buffer caused it to erase the eprom.
>
> As I recall the problem was MandrakeSoft at that time merging a non
> standard packet writing kernel patch that issued the FLUSH_CACHE
> command (only valid on recorders) unconditionally that ended up
> hosing drives. True, LG really should have issued firmware for
> readers that ignored the command, but the kernel patch should have
> included the necessary checks and been checked extensively being a
> non standard patch. 

That is not correct.  As I said, the problem was not exclusive to 
Mandrake.  It is impossible for any distro to be checked against every 
mode of every make of hardware.  No-one inside or outside of 
MandrakeSoft actually knew that this problem existed before Mandrake 
discovered it the hard way - and it was only with certain models of LG 
drives.  Please consider, also, that LG would not have got a firmware 
patch onto the Internet, not to say speedily, had it been a distro 
problem.

> I stand by my reference to Quality Control 
> especially with patches.
>
You are entitled to your opinion.

> > Other issues?  Of course in the first few weeks after the
> > Club/Community release more and more bugs are found and fixed. 
> > It's too late for the pressed disks, but if you read anything at
> > all about linux in general and Mandriva in particular you would
> > know that you should head out to an update repository immediately
> > after installaton.  How else will you stay secure?
>
> I never mentioned post release day patching for this particular
> issue. In one of my previous mails in this thread I stated about post
> release day updates and my opinion it is better to give a new release
> some time before installing to get those. The paragraph is going off
> topic/personally insulting and I'm not even going to go there.
>
It was not intended to be insulting, merely a statement that regular 
linux users know this.  I agree that newbiew may not.

> > > Another issue with Mandriva is the mass of variants, club this
> > > and update that. Not great in aiding any newcomer who is looking
> > > for clarity.
> >
> > Again, you are completely misled.  Club members get early access to
> > some newly released packages, acting, in a way, as late beta
> > testers.  There is no way that club versions are separate.  Other
> > distros have similar arrangements.  Debian have had an unstable
> > release for quite some considerable time before the recent full
> > upgrade - apologies to Debian users if I have over-simplified this.
> >  There's nothing surprising and nothing sinister about this
> > arrangement.
>
> To be misled would indicate being led astray by another and that
> ain't the kind of person I am. I am merely referring to a large array
> of separate products i.e. Corporate Server, Mandriva 2006, Discovery
> LX, Powerpack and Powerpack+. Then we get into the club and more
> membership levels than you can throw a stick at. This is what I was
> describing as a mass of variants and it's ability to be confusing to
> the newcomer.
>
OK, for clarity, let's look at some of those.  First, though, there is 
on the Mandriva website a complete description of the differences.

Corporate Server is a less than bleeding edge version that avoids 
potential issues with the latest developments.  It is intended for 
mission critical systems and enjoys a 5-year (IIRC) support contract.  
Other distros do something similar, I believe.

2006 is the newest main version, which is still at club/community level.  
As I said, it is not yet the fully stable version.  2005LE is still the 
official stable version.  In a few weeks that will change to 2006.

Discovery is an attempt to put out a cut-down version with less options, 
intended to cut out some of the confusion for newbies.  The vast arena 
of choices that is a strength of linux can be difficult for newbies.  I 
have not tried this version, so I don't know how well it meets the 
need.

Club membership is an entirely different thing.  This has nothing to do 
with different versions of the distro.  Club members are helping 
finance Mandriva's activities, and get a range of 'benefits' in terms 
of early access, and discounts on things purchased, in line with the 
amount of financial contribution they are able to make.  Note that this 
is 'early access', often to still-buggy packages.  Once any problems 
are ironed out the same software is available to all, at no cost.  In 
effect, we pay to be bug-testers :-)  That is entirely voluntary.

> Sorry, Debian is nothing like Mandriva in this regard and above I
> think illustrates that. Other distributions have a similar spread of
> offerings but not really to the extent of Mandriva.
>
I only intended to say that other distros do have an 'unstable' branch 
before releasing the stable one.  No other implication should be 
understood.

> If you choose to reply, could you do it to the list please.
>
Apologies.  It was a mistake.  I often forget that this folder in kmail 
contains two wylug lists, so that my usual method of ensuring list 
replies cannot work.

Anne
-- 
Registered Linux User No.293302 (http://counter.li.org/)
Mandriva hints & tips: http://twiki.mdklinuxfaq.org
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