Some thoughts about yum and repositories

[Timothy Murphy]

Robin Laing wrote:

>> The kernel in RH-9.0 did not run on my SCSI-only machine,
>> and neither has any Fedora version since.
>> 
>> X11 has always worked for me on all my machines, until Fedora-2,
>> when the change to Xorg meant it no longer ran on my Sony Picturebooks.
>> (I had to re-compile X after applying patches in the Xorg bugzilla,
>> which for some reason were completely ignored for 6 months.)

> My experiences are that it is improving over RH 8 in alot of ways.
> The tools are what makes the difference.  RH 6 worked well on my older
>   (P90) computer.  RH 7 was slower and I stopped there on that machine.

I'm only talking about whether a distribution does or does not work.

Another example: I haven't been able to install or upgrade
any Redhat or Fedora distribution on my Sony Picturebooks by CD
since Redhat-8.0.
They simply don't have drivers for this standard Sony CD reader.
I've had to upgrade by bringing the ISO files over by WiFi,
and installing from the hard disk.

My impression is that the Fedora team are just not that interested
in ensuring that their CDs install on as many machines as possible.
They give more time and attention to other issues.

Knoppix seems much better at this than Fedora.

The old system, where you had a choice of floppies to start from,
had a lot to recommend it.

Of course this isn't the only thing that matters,
or even the most important.
But I still think that things have got worse, not better,
as far as installation is concerned.



-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
ge, Dublin 2, Ireland