Hello Dennis,
> No. Our beta-testing period for 7.1 was 3-4 x longer than for 7.0, and
> there was nothing even near to "abrupt cesation" of testing. There were 3
> public betas, and we did not receive any "critical bug reports" for the
> third one, so we had all the reason to beleive that 7.1 will be a good
> product (and it is).
> but none are really "show stoppers" (workarounds exist), and I still think
> that overal quality of 7.1 is miles better than 7.0, or any previous
> Mandrake release:
Well, as someone who had a little experience with 6.1, and recently did several
installs of 7.1 (never tried 7.0), I would beg to differ with you big time. There are
some significant bugs dealing mostly with the install that I have posted here, but no
one has responded. And yes, they will keep 7.1 from installing! Let me see if I can
recall these:
1. The CDROM bug: once you get to where it wants disk #2, the cdrom drive will not
eject a disk. No way whatsoever to change disks. (I did manage to change the disk by
powering down the CDROM drive, but then Linux wouldn't recognize it. Happened with
two out of four computers.
2. The way to start the install program from a DOS prompt is broken - doesn't work at
all.
3. The install program starts up running in high resolution, if it sees you have a
card that can do it. Unfortunately, it doesn't ask if your monitor can support it,
and thus my screen turned to hash, and I was unable to install the program.
(Thankfully I had a multisync monitor on another system that I robbed long enough to
do the install.) THis should default to 640x480, and ask / let you try higher rez if
you want.
4. Setup properly detected my 3com 509 network card, then set up the wrong drivers for
it! (Had to change from whatever it had to the 3com 509 driver, what a concept.)
5. Setup did not install the 75dpi or 100dpi fonts, which gave me all sorts of error
messages when X tried to start.
6. My monitor type and card must have been screwed up somewhere in the detection, as I
couldn't even get 256 colors at 640x480 working on one system. When I tried running
the XF86setup, it core dumps when you tell it to list devices.
7. "Automatic setup" is definitely not what anyone should use. It skips many
important steps. Also installs junk packages, and doesn't install ones that should be
installed by default (IMHO).
8. The KDE/X stuff looks like it was pre-configured for 1024x768 rez. WHen you're in
640x480, some things are off the screen, and other boxes are so large you can't even
get to an OK or CANCEL button! Even in Win95, it defaults to the lowest common
denominator, and every window is accessible.
I think that any of these things would cause a newbie to give up, if they didn't have
persistence. I am not a Win95 (or microsoft) fan, but for the average user, their
setup works a whole lot better. From reading the comments here, it seems that 7.0
didn't have some of the big nasty bugs that 7.1 has.
Bob
