fedora 11 worst then ever release

[stan]

On Sat, 25 Jul 2009 18:40:58 -0700
Markus Kesaromous <remotestar at live.com> wrote:
> 
> I have watched this thread for a couple of days, and finally decided
> to throw in my $.02's worth.
> 1. I had absolutely NO problems with F11's installation. 
> 2. I did have a problem with the fact that the Kernel does not enable
> support the Ralink 28xx chipset. I had to recompile the source and
> enabled it myself. However, even eith latest kernel,
> 2.6.29.6-213.fc11.i586, it is still not enabled, and had to repeat
> the process of rebuilding it from source. That is a huge drag!
> 3. Audio in 2.6.29.6-213.fc11.i586 stopped working. I had no problems
> with the audio in kernel 2.6.29.5-191.fc11.i586. What the hell did
> they do to break the audio in this latest kernel update?
> 4. Oh yes... rebuilding from source:
>    My laptop is an AMD Athlon64 (2.2 GHz, 2GB Ram) and 6GB of swap.
>    Building the kernel from source    takes HOURES!!!
>    I started the build at almost 1 pm, and now it is 5:39 pm, and it
> still has a long way to go:
>    $ ps -ef | grep 'make all'
>    mk        1889 30589  0 12:57 pts/3    00:00:00 make all modules
> 
>    This is the last line I just grabbed from the build window:
> 
>    CC [M]  sound/core/seq/seq_fifo.o
> 
>    I have never experienced kernel building that took so many hours.

I followed the instructions at the link below, and with a system
that is probably 80% as fast as yours the full default kernel took 3 to
4 hours. After pruning and tuning the .config, it is taking
approximately 30 to 45 minutes. I wonder if your laptop is overheating
the CPU, and so is slowing down the cpu to protect it. That would have
a big impact on compilation speed.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Building_a_custom_kernel

I'm not familiar with the Ralink 28xx chipset, but can you compile it
as a module or does it have to be built into the kernel?  At the link
above there are instructions to compile individual modules.  It would
be much faster if you could do it that way.  I haven't used those
instructions for that purpose, so can't comment on how well they work.

> 
>    How many needdless and unneccessary subsystems/modules are
> configured by to be built default??

The default kernel compiles for a broad cross section of the community,
because it has to work for everyone with a given architecture insofar
as it can.  e.g. I don't have exabit(10 Gigabit?) ethernet, but someone
might.

>    I saw so many other posts of user's problems with audio, video,
> and other issues, which are never resolved from release to the next
> release. It seems that the fedora dev team is more interested in
> testing new features on the guinea pig user community. Perhaps that
> is exactly whet fedora is all about.
> 
> MK

I think this is mostly a matter of resources.  Linux is a
volunteer effort, and if there aren't enough people, things don't get
done.  It is even worse than that, they have to have expertise in the
area with the bug, and usually the hardware as well.  Sort of like blood
donors. An Rh -ve can't donate to an Rh +ve.  

With sound and video, there can be specific tweaks required that only
someone who has the card or knows it well could recommend.

My opinion is that linux is getting to a level of complexity that is
going to require a sytem reorganization if it isn't going to break
down.  We're reaching the limits of the current method, so the model
will have to change. But that *is* just an opinion.