FC2 doubtful quality?

[Alexandre Oliva]

On Jun 22, 2004, "Robert P. J. Day" <rpjday at mindspring.com> wrote:

> On Tue, 22 Jun 2004, Dexter Ang wrote:
>> HaJo Schatz wrote:

>>> 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:

>> It is all your choice. No one is forcing you to use FC2.

> to those folks who habitually respond to critisicm of FC 1/2 with
> this annoying, circle-the-wagons, defensive mentality, a piece of
> advice: grow up.

Err...  Let's make it a bit different:

- Should I have cereal or eggs this morning?

- Dunno, it's really your choice.

What's there of annoying, circle-the-wagons or defensive mentality in
the advice above?  Isn't it the only possible answer that doesn't try
to be an `I know better than you, so I'll make choices and decisions
that you should actually be making yourself'?'

> when someone takes the time to document a number of legitimate
> concerns and obvious flaws in an *official* release (after three,
> count 'em, *three* test releases),

Documenting?  The right place to document such flaws is bugzilla.
And, guess what, most of them were already there (good search job,
HaJo!), and those that weren't should be.  Posting duplicates of
what's in bugzilla to the list is pretty much just noise.

> and also legitimately asks whether he should be concerned about its
> quality, he deserves a better and more mature answer than "No one is
> forcing you to use FC2."

Every release has its share of bugs, and it won't be perfect for
everybody.  It's up to every user to try the release on his/her use
pattern and decide which one to stick with.  You have choice.  That's
what Dexter's answer was all about.  At least I read it like that.

> whenever someone posts perfectly reasonable criticism of some aspect,
> there's a sudden surge of, "hey, if you don't like it, don't use it,
> ok?"

Agreed.  The right approach would be `hey, if you don't like this one,
help us make the next one better, ok?'  How's that?

>>> - 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!

>> This seems to be system specific. My IBM Thinkpad T30's PCMCIA works
>> without any problems.

>     well, good for you.  and the fact that it works for you means
> ... what? that it doesn't qualify as a real problem?

You're reading too much between the lines, IMHO.  It fails for me.  I
suspect it's timing related, but I never had time to try to figure out
exactly what's going wrong.  In my wife's laptop, that has this
problem, if the network card is inserted in one of the two pcmcia
slots, it works very reliably; if it's inserted in the other slot, it
will only come up after a reboot sometimes, even though I have a
work-around patch in place.  Yeah, it's a pain.  Yeah, there's an
easily available work-around, but it's an ugly one.  Should we put it
in to get people to live on with the bug, or leave it broken such that
more people are aware of the problem and hopefully someone with time
and enough of a clue to try to fix it has more motivation to do so?
For those who don't, bugzilla has an easily-available work around, and
there are dozens of postings here that point to it.  Maybe this is not
right approach; maybe it's not even a conscious approach.  But it's
what is there.  What are *you* doing to improve this?

> heck, i recall submitting a bug report on that file as far back as
> april of 2003:

> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=88054

Wow, so you *knew* I was going to ask the question above, eh? :-) :-)

Cool, thanks for the cooperation.  Hopefully the maintainer of the
pcmcia package will look into this bug report and integrate your
patch.  Hmm, according to bugzilla, the bug was already fixed.  No
wonder nobody acted on it any more.  If you knew it was still broken
(or broken again?), the bug should have remained open.  I've checked
that it is indeed still broken in FC2, and reopened it.

>>> - 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...

>> You must load the pcspkr module. It's been discussed and is in the archives.

> which doesn't dismiss the original poster's contention that it's still a
> mildly-annoying bug, and one which didn't exist in FC1.

You assume too much.  You assume it's a bug.  For some, it's a fix.
Personally, I don't care too much either way, but logging into the
text console and getting loud beeps for bash TAB completion before the
audio mixer modules were loaded was quite annoying.

> i don't think it's unreasonable for folks to gripe when things which
> once worked in FC1 suddenly stopped working in FC2.

Well, things change, otherwise what's the point of having a new
release?  Most often they change for better, but sometimes you'll find
you'll disagree with some of the changes.

> oh, man, you *so* did not want to go there.  working from memory here
> so i hope i'm remembering correctly, i'm pretty sure there have been
> at least a couple folks who pointed out that they *did* put in time
> running the test releases, that they *did* identify and report obvious
> bugs way back when and yet, when FC2 hit the streets, those bugs were
> still there.

Well...  It's not reasonable to expect all bugs to get fixed.  Many of
them are, some aren't.  Spending time not only reporting the bug, but
also investigating the root causes, and even posting patches, tends to
increase the likelihood that a fix will make it to the release, but
it's never a guarantee.

> Salesman: "Yes, sir, Mr. Smith, this van has the horsepower you need
> for pulling your boat, loads of cargo space and foldout seats for the
> kids, optional 6-way sound system since you like music."

> Mr. Smith: "Yup, it's almost perfect, but I'm not sure if my current
> roof rack is compatible with the roof mounts ..."

> Salesman: "HEY!  No one's *forcing* you to buy this thing, OK?  You
> got a problem with it?!  There's lots of other dealers out there, all
> right?!"

Here's a joke along the same lines

Flight attendant on the coach: Would you like lunch, sir?

Frequent flier, first time on that airline: What are the options?

Flight attendant: Yes or no.


You have a choice.  Nobody is forcing you to have the meal.  Here's
another related with software I just came up with:

Begger knocks on door: I'm hungry and broke.  Would you have some food
to share?

Home owner: Yeah, we have some chicken soup left.  Would you like
some?

Begger: Fsck, I hate chicken soup.  But heck, I'm hungry.  Yes, please.

Home owner goes in, and returns with empty hands: I'm sorry, but
a bug fell in the soup.  I figured you wouldn't want it like that, so
I threw it all away.


Mind you, I'm not comparing you or anyone with any of the characters
in the stories above.  I just found them barely related.  But if the
hat fits... :-) :-)

-- 
Alexandre Oliva             http://www.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
Red Hat Compiler Engineer   aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org}
Free Software Evangelist  oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}