FC2 doubtful quality?

Steffen Kluge kluge at fujitsu.com.au
Wed Jun 23 12:27:14 UTC 2004


On Tue, 2004-06-22 at 22:05, Timothy Murphy wrote:
> As far as I can see, 
> FC2 was released when there were known unresolved bugs in the test releases.
> In my view, it should have been delayed until these were fixed.
> It seems to have been released because a release date 
> had been fixed in advance.
> That is a silly way to organise distributions.
> I hope it will be changed.


I hope it won't. Please keep releasing early and often. That is the only
way a large and complex beast like a Linux distro can mature quickly. As
soon as the developers and packagers feel that it maybe of use and value
to a sizable user community they should kick it out of the door and let
the real QA begin.

Linux is designed to work on a huge variety of hardware. Exposing it to
as large a test group as possible is the only hope of having at least
the more common of all the countless possible combinations of hardware
put to test.

As for FC1 vs FC2, FC2 is special in many respects. I see FC1 as the
debut release meant to introduce the project to a wider audience, but it
was quite conservative, and not really that much different from RH9.

FC2 is groundbreaking: it uses a new generation kernel (as one of the
first mainstream distros), a new GNOME, a new Xserver (sort of), and
whatnot. You couldn't possibly wait for all known unresolved bugs in
this to be fixed before you release the lot. It would never get
released. It would stew in its own juices for decades (like Hurd)
without getting any closer to completion. Btw, have you ever checked how
many thousand known bugs every new Mozilla release carries over?

Speaking of the kernel, remember 2.4? Is wasn't really fit for
mainstream consumption before 2.4.10 or thereabouts. Chances are the 2.6
kernel will mature quicker, partly to its bigger exposure by mainstream
distros (assuming a lot of people actually give them a go).

I don't believe various posters on this thread are out to excuse bugs,
and neither am I. We are just annoyed at the small bunch of people that
grab of lot of air time bitching and ranting and scaring people away
from FC2, rather than encouraging them to participate. Bring on your bug
reports, preferably with bugzilla ID, and everybody who can will be glad
to discuss them. But chanting the same horror tales like a broken record
over and over, and questioning QA, release strategy and state of mind of
those people at RedHat isn't going to help the project along.

Alright, that'll be enough soapbox for a while...

Cheers
Steffen.


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