Fedora Users — Re: FC4 good new tech, bad legacy support

Scot L. Harris wrote:

[snip]

I like and want to use Linux, not spend hours working out problems in 
getting it to work.  BAD!  BAD!!  It's like buying a hydrogen powered 
car.  Sure, it's new, clean, and neato-keen with all the nerds out 
there, but your screwed being to actually fill it with fuel.  Shame on 
you if you live outside of Seattle or San Francisco (Fanboy capitals of  
the continent).  Your new, bitchin' car is a brick.  The same goes using 
FC4 outside it's core software, your PC is a brick as well.

Understand that FC is a test bed.  Red Hat is using it as a rapid
development platform.  They will take the things that work and
incorporate them into RHEL.  FC is a time based release, it will have
problems, guaranteed.  It says this on the main fedora web site.

If you want a Red Hat like system that is more stable you should try
Centos.  It is a rebuilt version of the latest RHEL.  Currently it is
roughly equivalent to FC3 at the moment.

What part of "test bed" did you not understand?  You even said it
yourself.  I tested it and found flaws.  What?  Could it be you don't
want to know about these issues?  How good is testing if you can't
handle it when someone finds something wrong?  Think my friend.  This
is me testing FC4 and finding what I consider problems.  Learn from
these problems and understand the word "test" more thoroughly.  When
you "test" you are looking for problems.  When a problem is found, it
is a good idea to fix it.

I must have missed the part where you said you were testing things.  I
read your statement above "I like and want to use Linux, not spend hours
working out problems in getting it to work." to mean that you wanted a
stable release to run your software on.  I recommended Centos as a
viable option to that end.

If I'm using a test-bed OS, then consider that I can offer test feedback, no matter what my intentions on using it are.

Because FC4 is a test bed for many bleeding edge changes there will be
lots of problems that have to be sorted out.

Problems can't be sorted unless they are known. Fair enough?

If you are testing FC4 and find problems the proper thing to do is file
a bug report so the maintainers of the various packages can verify and
fix such problems.  Reporting the problems on the list will not
necessarily get the problem report in front of the programmer
responsible for that program or module.

The problem of bug reports is that being able to file a bug report at least requires a basic idea where the bug is. Unfortunately a lot of the troubles I mentioned did not specifically point to a single area, except that gcc4 was probably the root.

If you understood the nature of FC4 then you should understand there
will be a certain amount of time that you will "spend hours working out
problems in getting it to work."  It is the nature of the beast.  :)

Hmm, I thought that was part of the pre-release process. Otherwise why bother having the wait for the release? There is a terrible flaw in that reasoning.

And if you have specific problems or questions there are many many
people on the list that are willing to try and help.  You just have to
ask. :)

I did ask, quite nicely in fact, and was summarily ignored. I didn't dare ask again for fear a still living with his mother, single-handed (typer), never been outside or on a date before fanboy, might indignantly accuse me of committing a "social" faux pas for submitting the same question twice. I'm sure you can understand my frustration.

What may be a better approach is to just address the problems as they are brought up, by either asistance in tracing it down or by offering steps to fix it. Just playing the "broken record" of the "intentions of the OS" is a waste of effort and counterproductive to the OS' improvement, and seems more like a cop-out than following the original intentions of the project in the first place. I don't expect sunshine to be blown up my backside, but I do expect at least a minimum functionality for a release. It's only logical, and I pointed those criteria out.

Thanks for the reply nevertheless.

Rich