For everyone who missed by rant (I'm sure you care 8) )
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [Alug] Version Numbers Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 10:57:49 +0100 From: Michael Lincoln mclinc@essex.ac.uk To: Neill Newman neill@entora.co.uk References: 01071717262800.01024@localhost.localdomain 87k817rxfr.fsf@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk 3B55456B.F23C81F3@entora.co.uk
Neill Newman wrote:
MJ Ray wrote:
John Seago john.seago@btinternet.com writes:
system as the kernel numbering, is 7.1 a development version of 7?
With RedHat, no, as far as I know.
nope, the numbers are just that.. the devel version of redhat is called rawhide, and lives on several mirror archives if you want to have aplay with it...
If so would I be better off getting hold of issue seven, as some applications seem to crash, (this is most likely due to my blundering than any inherent fault).
I've heard the criticism of RedHat that they have done a "if it compiles, ship it" strategy with 7.1 rather a lot recently. Can any of our RedHat users confirm or deny that?
I can deny that, While I am sure that there are bugs with various pieces of RedHat that have shipped, there are also a comparable number of bug and security releases with other distro's. I have been using redhat for about 5 years now, and in my experience they do a 6 month ship cycle, and three months after the last release they freeze versions and work on getting the bugs out (unless a security alert is made on a package).. imho they don';t just ship it if it compiles...I've used all versions since 3.0.3, and 7.1 is definatly more stable/more features than any other release (ok, I acknowledge the gcc argument, but i'm not going to get drawn into it again ;)...
hth Sz
I can conferm this! Redhat have realy f**ked up on more that one occation by shipping software that is broken, when there where perfectly good alternatives. They are always shipping development versions of libc. Sure they are driving the technology forwards very quickly by geting this software tested by millions of people, but persionaly I'd rather It wasn't me that was forced into the testing. I have no problems running beta software. My X-server was complied weekly out of CVS for about a year, but I do like to have a choise. I want a distro thats broken *after* I've been at it, not before 8). (hence I dont use redhat)
Did you actualy use RH 5.0 ? Please, dont use the word "stable" near it!
Sure redhat has more features than something like slackware, but it's _nothing like_ as stable.
For me SuSE is a happy medium. Simple out of the box installs that do everything & more than I need, and relatively well built cf. Redhat.
I installed SuSE 7.1 the otherday and its the best I've seen from SuSE yet. Almost everything worked out of the box. USB mouse/keyboard/printer, WinTV card, SCSI, ethernet, my visor, even theres even an RPM for the temperature sensor on my motherboard! - every bit of hardware I have. It comes with 2.4.2 +patches kernel. You can download XF 4.1.0 rpms from there ftp site and these work with H/W accel. openGL with no hacking. I droped in kernel 2.4.6, no need to upgrade anything. Hit the online autoupdate button on yast2 and it applied all the updates. Yast1 configured LVM form me. Infact to get the (desktop) system to a useable state all I had to hand edit was the conf.modules file to get the kernel drivers for my sound blaster working. (alsa has never liked my SB16 for some reasion).
Oh yes, and they mannage to release security fixes too.
I suspect they also have a feature freeze *before* they release, like anyone without a death wish 9).
Having used both SuSE and RedHat for extened periods of time I'd have to recommend SuSE to anyone. There is simply no reasion to use RedHat anymore. Even the comercial support argument has gone. SuSE has 38% of the Americal market share OTTOMH
Anyway rant over, must do some work...
Mike
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