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> If I may make an observation based on my experiences to date. Every single > release, as it gets closer to release time, someone makes a post like this > and then everybody piles on. Indeed, they do. There is good reason for it. For example, I almosted cringed recommending 9.0 because I was afraid the person I recommended it to might run into some of the many critical bugs. If I recommended it to a Windows user and it didn't work at all, I knew that might mean it could be a LONG time before I could get them to try GNU/Linux again. Every time recently, Mandrake seems to rush to release, everytime users say "slow down," and at least the last two releases, the release went out with MAJOR problems. > You'll notice that none of the Mandrakians or > core contributors ever take part in it. Which is very sad. > Why, because they are busy trying > to find the bugs and squash them before the release has to go gold. My Well, but you can only squash so many. Introducing Galaxy-kde on Feb 20, IIRC, and expecting to make it the default style and go gold in less than a month is just really a bad idea (just an example). It would have been far better to spend the next six months developing it for 9.2. > understanding is that there are contractual requirements for hitting the > release date. From the publisher of the boxes, to the retailer and > wholsalers that ordered boxes. Not to mention this time, the financial > issues that present themselves this year. Right. And releasing a distribution with the current errata, or even half the current errata will likely make the financial situation all the gloomier. I don't usually put to much emphasis on it here, but I'm a member of the press. When we released a 9.0 review it was somewhat negative and we got attacked for that. However, some of the bugs were just inexecusable. I love Mandrake's design and community. However, Mandrake is quickly becoming a joke in many Linux-knowledgable quarters because every release it has several show stopper bugs, beyond the severity of most other distros, that prevent a small but sizable minority of users and may even prevent them from using the distribution. Several friends of mine won't even try Mandrake any more because of the serious problems they had in previous releases A friend of mine had MDK 9 installs completely FAIL on four different computers! In his testing, the one-man show known as Knoppix has a better track record, and this is coming from someone who was really impressed with 8.2. Now back to the press. If Mandrake 9.1 comes out with bugs like the Galaxy-kde ones which haven't really been improving at a very fast clip (understandably -- widget styles don't get built over night!), I will -- if I do my duty to be honest to my readers -- be forced to give Mandrake 9.1 a serious thumbs down. Not that I want to. The reason I take this so seriously is that I personally don't want to be in the position where I have to tell my readers again "Mandrake 9.1 just isn't a good choice for the desktop, stick with 8.2 or go somewhere else." The amount of serious bugs indicates that the deadline for final is far too soon. Either Mandrake needs to start the beta process SOONER (i.e. maybe two or three months earlier) or make it go on for longer (rather than releasing in March, release in April or May). I'm not so sure if Mandrake execs told the publishers "If we are forced to follow this deadline we'll end up with a distro that gets bad reviews and won't sell as well" that they couldn't work something out. Mandrake 9.1 is shaping up great. But it isn't *really* even in the release candidate stage, let alone the final release candidate. If Microsoft's late *betas* had this many problems, they'd get bad press all over the place. I don't say this to be harsh. I say this to note that Mandrake 9.1 has a lot of pontential but it just isn't going to make good use of it with one more week of development. Lets consider the KDE developers. KDE 3.1 was suppose to come out in early November. But the developers kept finding serious bugs and eventually, security bugs. They realized that KDE 3.1 has lots of cool features but they would be overshadowed by the problems if they rushed it out on time. Likewise, I hope Mandrake realizes that the serious bugs still unresolved may very well overshadow all of its great new features if it releases everything in the current state. I mean, MCC keeps having serious issues, the mouse doesn't even detect right, its easy to mess up scannerdrake and make it unusable, there are no easy ways to get to removable media in KDE anymore for an unexplained reason, Galaxy-kde makes KDE look weird and breaks Konqueror... the list goes on. I think Mandrake is a great distro, but I think releasing Mandrake with out at least several more weeks of serious bug testing is a good way to kill off the distribution or at least hurt its potential. Is it worth the gamble? I mean for a stable distro, there should be at least three weeks of bug testing after features have been fully implemented. Really, it should be several months -- just like KDE and GNOME do, but I understand that is not possible. It'll only have been two weeks since Galaxy-KDE's release tomorrow. On the other hand 8.2 was an extremely responsible release. As much as I myself complained, the developers refused to try to get KDE 3 included because they couldn't adaquately bug test it in time for release. But now, we have a version of XFree that was only released last week and a widget style that still has bugs all over the place. 8.2 was hailed as Mandrake's crowning achievement by many. 9.0 was not, and my fear is that 9.1 might not be either. > I think the distro would be much better served all of use that are testers, > to test the hell out of this thing, not just by saying something does not > work, but by really going the extra mile and trying to figure out why > something does not work. For instance, if the network does not work, > install it a couple of times trying different settings, note how the > contents of the config files change. I do all of that. I can just see all of my bug report data can't even be fully perused in the mass of bug reports made in just nine days. It just won't happen, unless MDK teams are working 24x7 until then. > And all this criticism over something that cannot really be controlled is > fruitless and makes the people working 7day/80hour weeks feel negative and > prevents high levels of productivity. Help them, don't hurt them. I'm trying. Sometimes, though, the truth isn't always pleasant. Once 9.1 is released, it will be six months until Mandrake has another chance to try to win people over again. Assuming Mandrake survives that time, it can make a lot of new disenchanted Mandrake and/or Linux users in that time period. -Tim - -- - ---------------------------------------------------------------- Timothy R. Butler [EMAIL PROTECTED] Universal Networks http://www.uninet.info Christian Portal and Search Tool: http://www.faithtree.com Enterprise Open Source Journal: http://www.ofb.biz ================================================================ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.7 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE+Zr9xK37Cns9gJ0gRAvj0AJ9Y9IhvZt0cRZdvA8wWOT5wxUXE2gCfWPlo yOv6QHVcHsTUtzPQVvt3RrY= =Kc4x -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
