FC2 doubtful quality?

[HaJo Schatz]

Hi List,

Long story, short question: Should I fall back to FC1 instead of using
FC2? I am somewhat very concerned about the release quality of FC2.
Here's what happened:

I just upgraded a laptop (Fujitsu-Siemens E2010) from RH9 to FC2. After
that, I couldn't log on to Gnome, after username/password, X just hung
without any error message, neither in the logs. Never mind, I did a
fresh install instead & immediately after updated all the packages. Then
the surprises really started:

- Service PCMCIA doesn't load the yento-sockets module. This is known @
bugzilla, one has to patch the pcmcia script by hand. Through this bug,
the PCMCIA subsystem is non-functional!
- Kernel 2.6.6-1.435 gives a "failed to bind key 255 to value..." every
time you log in at a console, whereas kernel -358 doesn't. This appeared
at bugzilla but was closed as "magically disappeared"
- Hotplug calls the script ide, which in turn calls /sbin/ide_info.
/sbin/ide_info simply doesn't exist! Had to copy it in from a FC1
install. Through this bug, you can't mount CF-Cards in a PCMCIA adapter.
Just found out that bugzilla also knows about this -- since FC2 test3!
- USB updfstab doesn't work. Devices get detected in the kernel, hotplug
@ updfstab gets executed, but /mnt & fstab entries are not created.
Trying to debug, I realized that the issue is somehow timing-related.
When I do some sleep at the "right" points in the updfstab scripts,
things work sometimes. Can't resolve the issue though and have to live
without using my Flash-Stick & Camera reliably.
- Kernel -435 sometimes segfaults when plugging USB devices in/out,
whereas -358 seems reliable here.
- My console-beep (emitted through the sound card) disappeared ever
since FC2. I don't seem to be able to find a pointer on how to trace
this...

This is the result after a few hours of FC2 experience and I really
start wondering about what level of testing this release experienced
before being released into the public -- even IMHO obvious things like
the PCMCIA subsystem doesn't work! Seems to me that FC1 was by far the
more reliable system. 

My question now is whether I should give up on FC2 (I'm really tempted)
and go back to FC1 or hang in there. 
- Will I experience more of these surprises with FC2?
- How fast will issues be attented to through updates? The PCMCIA issue
is known, so is the ide_info issue (since FC2 test3), but still no fix
today.
- Is this what we have to expect from a "community distro" in the long
run? As with RH9 the last consumer-distro is discontinued, my logical
conclusion would then be to leave RH behind and move on to another
packager, say Suse?

A bit disappointed,
HaJo