"Stephen F. Bosch" wrote:
>
> "Brian T. Schellenberger" wrote:
>
> > "Stephen F. Bosch" wrote:
> > >
> > > It's just that I have a different conception of "bug" than you do.
> > >
> > > To me, a bug is bum code. Code with errors in it. Most of what you're
> > > complaining about are plain-jane configuration issues -- stuff not
> > > installed, stuff not configured.
> > >
> > > Linux does not configure itself, no matter what distro you use. Granted,
> > > there have been great leaps forward with respect to things "configuring"
> > > themselves, but still, it's up to the user in the end.
> >
> > That's preposterous. What do we have distributions *for* if not to get
> > things like file permissions right? Why bother with things like RPM
> > files at all?
>
> We have distributions to get everything in one place and not have to
> spend days and weeks locating source and compiling it so it will run.
> Along the way there are a lot of other nice things we can get out of a
> distribution, but a differently configured distribution is not
> automatically "buggy."
No, but a distribution so configured that its own packages can't be used
without the user having to do additional fiddling is, in my opinion,
buggy. That's the whole point of RPMs as opposed to simple .tgz files:
the RPMs can contain after- and before-scripts that can patch things up
as required for the package to actually *run*.
More to the point, Mandrake is promoting itself as a "newbie" / "easy to
use" distribution. If they want to stop doing that, and promote
themselves (as Slackware and, to a lesser extent, Suse and Debian seem
to) as "hacker" distributions, then they would have less of an
obligation to get it right.
A bug, basically, is a failure to deliver what you promise. Classicly
this is where the code doesn't match the doc, but more generally it's
where the software doesn't do what it promises.
> Take Debian -- have you installed Debian? It's a distribution. It leaves
> a lot more to the user.
Yes, but it doesn't promise otherwise. (Not that I've used it; I'm an
old Unix and Linux hand, but I still prefer to do less work rather than
more.)
> Even when file permissions are "right" as you put it, they're not right
> for every situation, and it falls to the operator to adjust accordingly.
Again, I thought that was the whole point of RPMs . . .
> Also -
>
> > There PRECISELY the sorts of things that constitute bugs in the
> > distribution. The individual applications are ultimately the
> > responsibility of the application maintainers, though the distributor
> > has an obligation not to ship a "very broken" version.
>
> ... can you honestly say that Mandrake 7 is a "very broken" distro? I
> beg to differ.
Heavens, no! I didn't say that at all. The only package which Mandrake
7 shipped broken, as far as I personally am aware, was mkisofs.
All of the other Mandrake problems (and there *are* a number of them)
are configuration/installation problems. But what I was *trying* to say
above was that in my opinion these are *precisely* the sorts of problems
for which distributors are primarily responsible. The defects in the
individual packages are primarily the responsibility of the developers
of those applications.
> > As to the people complaining about Alen yelling, well . . .
> >
> > You know, sometimes somebody else says something *so* stupid that it's
> > hard to come up with a really calm, rational response. I think this
> > applies here.
>
> Well, my response was calm and rational. You don't have to agree with
> me.
I think that responses (and he got some; I'm not sure if they were from
you) that suggest that Mandrake shouldn't even try to address
configuration issues, or that it need not make the software work without
a lot of twiddling, are quite unreasonable. I can see why he would be
mad about that. If I followed him correctly he'd previously reported at
least some of these through "proper channels" and they had been
apparently ignored. I don't blame him for getting upset about that.
But he was the one who lost his temper first, I'll grant you that.
--
"Brian, the man from babble-on" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Brian T. Schellenberger http://www.babbleon.org
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