WTF? Inaccessible bug reports?

[James Hubbard]

On Nov 21, 2007 10:41 AM, Colin Walters <walters at redhat.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 2007-11-20 at 19:41 +0100, Olivier Galibert wrote:
>
> > At fedora core 5 times, Everything was lost.  Thankfully it is still
> > in kickstart, but it makes the initial testing phase more annoying.
>
> Can you explain why you want to actually install all software?  Wouldn't
> it be easier to maintain a list of things you do care about?

There are 80 machines in a cluster.  He has 30 boxes sitting on desks.
 There are potentially another 90 machines.  It sounds like a mixed
use environment in a location like a school.  He might know what
applications he wants, but it's doubtful that he can anticipate all of
the needs of his users.  It's easier to just install everything and
let them use what they want.  It minimizes the number of calls that he
has to field from his users requesting that something be installed.

The other issue is changing package names.  I don't know how stable
the names have been especially for the more obscure software. It looks
like there have not been many name changes to the packages from one
release to the next.  How about from 2 or 3 releases previously? It's
another area where time would have to be expended to check the names
of the packages on the list.

I personally don't like to install everything.  I know developers who
like to install all so they don't have to go track down packages later
when they need them.  This is especially true when you're in an
environment where you don't have high speed Internet access all of the
time.

An example of this is when FC5 came out I had to figure out which
packages were needed to compile a piece of software.  I knew that
openmotif was needed.  I addition to that xorg-xbitmaps and libXp were
needed.  It took a while before I was able to find everything that was
needed.  It was  PITA.

Carrying the original DVD doesn't work either.  What if something on
the DVD is needed but can't be installed because another package has
been updated and causes a conflict?

Some people have mentioned using RHEL 5.  I don't use it because it
doesn't have most of the things that I want.  If it does have
something I need, it's usually too out of date.  I understand the
reason why it is this way so you don't have to explain its purpose.

I know of at least 3 people that have or are in the process of moving
from Fedora to Ubuntu because their perception is that it "just
works".   This is related to the video card, wireless, and codecs for
web use.  Yes, I know why Fedora can't include these.

You probably don't care, but I just upgraded from FC6 to F7 so that my
wireless would work.  Why not F8?  When I read the emails that Sun's
JVM wouldn't work on F8, I stopped considering it due to my dependence
on a couple of Java apps.  I couldn't spend the time tracking down
bugs related to an incomplete runtime environment.  I know that it's
not anyone's fault on the list, but that's just the way that it is.

Just  my $0.01 for what it's worth.

-- 
James Hubbard
http://soweva.blogspot.com