In thread starting with http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/users/2010-March/367987.html I stated a skewer of bugs. Geeks answered it was normal to have bugs like, for at least 2 years now, "New Files" entering the clipboard every time a new file is created. It would also be normal to have no option to be advised of files being sent to Trash in Nautilus before they join the 1000 ones already there, because they don't want to be bothered with unchecking an option. They have no problem with clipboard managers never working perfectly well, soon as they have a sleuth of them: glipper, klipper, clipman, whatever. And so on. I tell them audio doesn't get to my TV through HDMI. I tell them the only BIOS option I have is setting the password. They don't have a solution. I ask if I'm being hacked, they answer that all this is normal. I tell them that this bug mania is preventing Fedora/Linux from getting a user base and, hence, more support, maybe collaboration, from mobo/video cards manufacturers, they answer Linux is not McDonald and I should fill bug reports. Can developers possibly not notice for two years that "New File" enters the clipboard and, with a strict minimum of brains, shouldn't they come to the conclusion that trashing without asking is the road to disaster. They don't answer. After 2 days in a complete mess, updates were provided clean today. I checked if this would fix my mobo and sound problems. It didn't. Last time I checked, Rahul Sundaram, a Red Hat employee, had himself a bug that wasn't fixed for something like 6 months. Despite all assurances that this is the way Linux doesn't work, I can't help but getting nervous. Recently, I was watching a video at YouTube and despite the modem light flashing, the video stopped playing. Knowing how Flash security leaves to be desired, I jumped on the modem switch. Then, I ran a speed test and saw there was a problem with my connection: I was down to 20 kBps. And this would be the buggy version of Fedora that RHEL Linux could be based on? Says Distrowatch: "At the time it seemed Red Hat was timing its Enterprise releases to match every third Fedora release. If we look at Red Hat Linux 9 as being Fedora Core 0, the schedule looked like this: 1. FC 0 -> RHEL 3 2. FC 3 -> RHEL 4 3. FC 6 -> RHEL 5 It starts to look like a simple pattern matching test, doesn't it? Obviously, following the pattern, we would expect Fedora 9 to herald in RHEL 6. But it didn't. Instead of getting version 6, we got a series of 5.x releases. Which is all well and good, but it doesn't get the blood pumping. So what happened? I think Fedora 9 had more issues than a prairie farm has gopher holes and Red Hat wisely decided to wait until Fedora stabilized. Their Enterprise Linux 5 series was doing the job and there wasn't any need to rush. Since then, we've seen a steady improvement in the stability and polish of the Fedora releases and I suspect RHEL 6 will be based either on Fedora 12 or 13, the latter comes out in May. Red Hat has a summit coming up in June and that strikes me as being a good time to demo a RHEL 6 beta." http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20100308#qa ================== I didn't follow Red Hat/Fedora development closely enough to be sure that this makes sense but, with Fedora 12 working as it does now, I say there definitely is a problem with the development model. Unless, of course, Red Hat keeps all solutions up its sleeve or intends to refer all its customers to bugzilla, at $80/year for unlimited calls, they're going to go bankrupt with the release of RHEL 6... This certainly would be a concern if Red Hat was facing only yesterday's competitors, Canonical and Novell but, in hardly more than year, yesterday's majors seem to have been pushed back to the minor leagues. As Wikipedia puts it: "Google developers began coding the operating system (Chromw OS) in 2009, inspired by the growing popularity and lower-power consumption of netbooks, and the realization that these small laptops had gotten their name from their primary use: accessing the Internet. (...) Unlike Chromium OS, Chrome OS will be automatically updated to the latest version.[11] InformationWeek reviewer Serdar Yegulalp wrote that Chrome OS will be a product, developed to "a level of polish and a degree of integration with its host hardware that Chromium OS does not have by default," http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChromeOS#cite_note-15 IOW, they saw the little netbook and thought: "What a nice little toy to bring the people to our servers!" Not only Google now has a cellphone, it seems they also intend on having their netbook/tablet and push it, just as their partners, to a degree of integration never seen before. This thing won't be any harder to operate than your TV! As there is still, maybe, a year of development to go, the product looks already interesting. See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANMrzw7JFzA About security: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9WVmNfgjtQ&feature=channel> Seeing this train on a fast track, Intel decided it was not to do like the cows and watch it go by. They began building Moblin. But Moblin was only for their processors and Google was also developing ARM CPUs. No doubt they thought that they'd be better offering an equivalent product and they joined forces with Nokia. Moblin + Naemo became Meego. This project doesn't seem as advanced as Chrome OS, but these people believe in getting market share like you just wouldn't believe. They'll move fast, though, against Google, it's going to be a harsh fight. You see, not only Google will give away its OS, which shouldn't need much support, they apparently have plans to subsidize the hardware on 2 years subscriptions... Hey, that's better then free beer, it's like getting paid to drink beer! Of course, I'm not too sure most people on this list would entrust their data to Google, even if it was just as a principle. But most people won't care about this and it does seem to me that Chrome OS and, maybe, Meego will soon define the paradigms of the industry. Of course, you'll say this won't affect Red Hat much. Well, it remains to be seen. Also, what will be Google's next move? I believe they have some experience with servers that are more than mere toys. They have get subsidized by states and countries, locations near cheap electricity and cooling sources. And that's more than just experience with an OS. Then, there is Oracle. I believe they have some experience with databases, no? They tried to offer support for Red Hat products but it seems industry prefers to deal with the people who get their hands dirty building the OS :) But now,got its hands on Solaris. If they license it so that developers get interested, it might work. If it's done fast. All this to say that the scenery has changed a lot recently. Though, compared to Canonical and Novell, Red Hat is certainly in a better competitive position, it does seem to me a new strategy will have to be developed, including a new development model where bugs will be addressed more quickly. When some people here say that it doesn't matter if Fedora has that many bugs that never get addressed and that a vast user base would be nothing but a nightmare, that Fedora is much better off cathering only to geeks, and that Fedora representatives on this group play dead on the sideline as if they were afraid of getting involved in a brawl, to me, this silence is deafening. Fortunately, we know that "Do no evil" is Google's motto. At others companies, employees wake up in the morning wondering "What evil shall I do today?" Not so at Google's. Google only has plans. For instance, China being a very large and promising market, they want to conquer it. The Chinese army is hacking their servers to identify dissidents? They protest and say they'll move out if ever.... whatever. But they stay and while they pretend they're making representations to the Chinese government, the Chinese governement says it has never heard from them and Google plays by their rules. Of course, here, we live in a democracy and it's absolutely impossible that the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, the RCMP, the CSIS and so on, will ever attempt to get information from Google. Still, I would kinda like to have an alternative. And, to tell you the truth, I ponder if there ever will be one. As for Red Had, I'm wondering if they're not just eating their laurels, watching the train go by. Now, I do understand that some pople here will see this last stance as an attack. It seems that, just in the Slackware and Debian groups, the staunchest RH/Fedora advocates here are the ones who pretend the development model is absolutely perfect, bugs are normal and nothing should change. Honestly, I never thought that I'd find this kind of communist planned economy reasoning within the advocates of a company listed on the NYSE. Of course, I'm not a geek, not even a suit, so I know nothing. But, if you really get infuriated reading this, maybe you should wonder if there's not some truth to my opinion. -- users mailing list users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
