OT: A note to the person in the next cubicle

[Bruno Wolff III]

On Fri, Jul 03, 2009 at 13:06:40 -0400,
  William Case <billlinux at rogers.com> wrote:
> 
> #1  Upgrade vs LiveCD fresh install 
> 
> My hesitation on choosing to upgrade is that by just upgrading I might
> not get some of the fixes I am hoping for.  In particular, in F10 to get
> my TV tuner working I had to install new firmware and modprobe the
> 'tuner' module.  I never did get the sound working.  From this list and
> others, I have come to understand that the kernel in F11 has all the
> modules I need compiled in and that PulseAudio can now handle the sound.
> I will leave further details for a separate post if the TV is still not
> working.
> 
> I just want reassurance that by upgrading I will get the same fixes as
> by a virgin install.

How about test with a livecd and then do an upgrade if you like how things
work?

> #2 A Bug vs a Nitpick
> 
> With each new release there are an expected number of bugs that show up.
> I am not complaining, that is part of the deal when using Fedora and I
> am happy to file a bug report whenever I can.  But sometimes there are
> things that are wrong that are, to me, more of a Nitpick than a bug.  I
> am often reticent to use bugzilla for something that is minor and has
> more to do with look and feel or smooth operation or a manuals
> usefulness than being broken.  I don't want to be a PIA by constantly
> nitpicking, but on the other hand I would think that developers would
> like help in getting it exactly right.  Any thoughts?

Err on filing too many bugs.

> #3 Finding bug citations
> 
> I have noticed that when experienced users respond to a question/problem
> on the users list their response often contains a link to the
> appropriate bug.  When I google to find a solution to something google
> never (seldom) returns a bug link.  Are people doing something (using
> special search criteria) to search the bug database at the same time as
> a general google search or are they doing a separate search in RedHat
> bugzilla or do they just recognize the problem and give the link to the
> bug covering it?

There is an advanced search feature on the bugzilla page. And if you are
familiar enough with things to know what component is likely to be the
one with the bug, just searching on the component name in the regular
bugzilla search is likely to work.

> #4 Giving back help on the users list
> 
> I often recognize problems brought up on the Fedora users mailing list,
> and have the sure-fire solution while others respond with solutions that
> are terribly wrong.  However, I am often reticent to help because too
> often I have seen that my 'sure-fire solutions' are wrong or
> unprofessional and too many of the 'terribly wrong' answers have, of
> course, been right.

Well you need to estimate how likely you are to help vs cause problems
giving help. If you think you are likely to help and especially if there
hasn't been any response to a question after a day, then try to help.

> #5 Fedora 11 LAN installation
> 
> I have a two computer (sometimes three computer) LAN in my house.  Both
> are F10 to be F11.  In the past, to keep it simple, I have installed the
> newest Fedora version on each machine by burning the .iso to disk(s) and
> then doing two separate installs.  I was thinking that this time -- just
> for the hell of it -- I would do something fancier like install F11 on
> the second machine using the LAN.

I run a local mirror on my systems. But I do lots of livecd-creator runs
and install lots of packages just to see what kinds of issues I run
across. If you don't install a lot of packages this probably isn't the
best solution for you. There have been other threads discussing how to
share yum cache across machines and other related solutions.