On Wed February 21 2007 6:02:29 pm M. Fioretti wrote: > * failure to maintain key repositories in a sane, consistent > state from which upgrades might actually be possible. > > * Adding another layer of complexity, bugs, and wretched > performance with yum Well, here's an immediate 'hot-off-the-press' report for you: For some reason, Smart has been having a problem on this particular machine for a couple to three weeks. I hadn't had time to really dig in - the symptoms were that it would take forever to refresh itself, there would be very long delays in the process, so many CPU cycles being used that screen re-draws were being inhibited, and so forth; Effectively, I haven't been able to complete an update with Smart for nearly 3 weeks. Today, I fired up Yumex and ran a system update - this hadn't been done in some 2-3 weeks due to the Smart problem; Yumex found 153 packages that needed updating, one of which was Smart, and went throught the process without a hitch in about 35-45 minutes. Generally, I upgrade my machines every day - I run four Fedora boxes right now. Apart from the above described issue, I almost never experience problems with yum or with repos except for the occasional delays in propagating to the mirrors. Now, I don't run the exact same mix of packages that ESR does, and so, his experience could be different - but, I would add that I'm one of those who fought for the "Everything" install option, and tend to run my machines with a lot of software installed - so, I'm not sure what he's talking about. Since today's update, Smart has now started working properly, again. I've also tried 40+ other distros and have several running right now. They all have issues. I tend to lean against the hard-nosed "only-free-software" position, but, I respect it and don't find it so difficult to work around. -- Claude Jones Brunswick, Md, USA