On Tue, Jul 24, 2001 at 11:15:07AM -0700, Harry wrote:
> While I gladly use Mandrake, and have found it to have grown into a very
> effective distribution, I do have a slight problem how older distributions
> are being more or less ignored in favor of the next big distribution.
>
> What do I mean?
>
> When mdk8 was released, updates and upgrades for mdk7 pretty much stopped
> showing up. In terms of similar things happening, while there are always
> updates for security updates for mdk8, lots of effort is being expended on
> the next (8.1) release, but very little, if next to nothing is being
> provided to current 8.0 users.
>
[see below]
> As an example, Apache and PHP. While current versions are Apache 1.3.20 and
> PHP 4.06, there are no applicable 'real' upgrades existing for users that
> seek to stay up-to-date. Granted, I can use MandrakeUpdate to install
> 'cooker' quality updates, but 'cooker' is pre-beta, at best, and not the
> most reliable code to place on production servers. In addition, just
> selecting 'apache' results in rpminst downloading and installing a plethora
> of associated 'dependencies', which, unfortunately, leave the PHP system in
> an unusable state (because of the lack of php_mysql in cooker -- brilliant!)
>
While I like the Latest And Greatest releases, but ...
When the stable is in freeze, we mean it. That means, no updates unless
there is a show-stopper / security bug. While we can provide updates to the
Latest And Greatest Features (tm), it may break things. It will definitely
not be intended but you'll never know.
We have a problem with php-mysql because of an Obsoletes tag I think. I've
already talked with Vincent about it, I'm not sure if it's fixed yet.
> I think it is safe to assume that Apache and associated files (PHP,
> mod_gzip, mod_php, mod_perl, etc...) are the most used application for a
> Linux system - as such, I believe strongly that Mandrake should expend some
> energy in providing such updates to the users of at least two versions back
> of their installations.
>
> Not everyone needs or wants, or even can install a brand new distribution
> every six months - especially given the historical issues of stability and
> quality of first releases by mandrake during the last three such releases.
> Providing such critical updates as a service to your existing users should
> not cost much additional resources, but can potentially create much
> good-will, and much stronger brand loyalty from users who use Mandrake for
> production class hosting.
>
It does require a lot of workload.
Anyway, is Mandrake 7.2 / 8.0 that unusable without the Latest And Greatest?
But if there is a security-related bug or if a program segfaults badly which
prevents you from doing any real work, feel free to let us know. ;-)
--
Geoffrey Lee <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
李長風
http://www.wychk.org/~glee
$ /usr/games/fortune
Anything that can go wrong will go
Segmentation fault (core dumped)
$
