FC2 doubtful quality?

[Keith Lofstrom]

This is a debate between the complainers and the excuse-makers.  

The complainers (which include me) want responsible behavior.  The
excuse-makers claim that the users who complain aren't worthy.

I have been using Redhat for years.  I still have RH9 on 3 machines.
I am using Fedora Core 1 on two machines, and Fedora Core 2 on another.
Like my fellow complainers, I am also considering replacing them all
with SUSE or Debian. 

I would dearly love for the fedora model to work;  there are some
excellent people contributing here.  But there are also those who
get their kicks by abusing newbies and playing power games.  They
make the whole fedora and linux community look bad.

Look at the fedora website - what it actually says, what it does
not actually say.  The website sales fluff is very inviting, and
does NOT actually describe what goes on with Fedora - the bugginess,
the hostility, the willful neglect of bugzilla reports, the scorn
for professional concerns (that is, customer-centric, quality-oriented,
and money-making).  Maybe, relative to other distros, Fedora is the
best of the bunch, and I will be disappointed by a change.  But
relative to my other, non-software professional concerns, FC2 and
the process that produced it are quite buggy and unreliable.

An honest description on the website of what to expect - especially
for test releases - would go a long way towards moving complainers
elsewhere.  This would leave the rest of the community alone to
pursue the bleeding edge - and beyond - in quiet, happy obscurity.

This is not what the excuse-makers want to hear.  They would like
their irresponsible behavior to actually work in the real world.
Well, here in the real world you must give 200%, suffer enormous
abuse, strain to the limit to satisfy your customers/users, and
even with all that effort you will still sometimes miss your target. 
If you don't even try, you will end up planting your flag in a
dungheap and calling it Mount Everest, and never understand why
other folks are complaining about the smell.

Complainers, if you were using Redhat because of the excellent
support, get over it.  Those days are gone.  That kind of support
is not available here.  It may not be available anywhere.  Too bad,
it is what could have made Linux a contender for the average desktop.

Fedora is not the evolutionary successor of Redhat;  it is a highly
experimental distro, and FC2 is just one more pre-beta test distro. 
There is a place for that, but it should not be advertised (read
the web page dammit) as anything suitable for average users and
day-to-day use. 

Yes, many average people can use Fedora day-to-day;  most smokers
don't die of lung cancer.  But until Fedora comes with warnings
("don't use FC2 if you have an ATI Rage 128 video card", "support
for this version disappears in 8 months" and the time honored "you
get what you pay for") so the average person can make an informed
choice, loading Fedora Core 2 is much like playing Russian roulette. 

FC2 is indeed "doubtful quality".  You should be very skeptical
before loading it.  That doesn't make it "bad", it just makes it
incompatable with the goals of many users.  FC2 is a race car, not
a BMW, and it should be advertised as the former and not the latter. 
Again, look at the website!

Fellow complainers, pay close attention to the excuse makers.  An
excuse is a promise to repeat the same behavior in the future.  If
you feel that the excuse-to-solution ratio is too high, perhaps it
is indeed time to look for more professional behavior elsewhere. 
I have a colo site with bandwidth.  Does anyone know how to set up
a mailing list?  We could call it "redhat-recovery" and focus on
techniques for moving on.  Then we could leave these other happy
folks to quietly enjoy their sandbox.

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom           keithl at ieee.org         Voice (503)-520-1993
KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon"
Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs