Well, RC1 is out and RC2 is probably coming soon. What is a Release Candidate as opposed to a Beta?
The Beta comes out for the purpose of debugging and ironing out problems with new features. The release candidate (RC) hits the mirrors when features have been frozen. Every cycle we have a number of people who are saying "hold for this feature, or that new release of GNOME, or KDE or AfterSTEP or ..." This request falls on deaf ears because Mandrakesoft has to make the release date. It is negotiated into contracts for pressing CDs, for example, and a day's slippage may cause a month's delay and extensive penalties. That is one of the realities of making this software. The only thing that would stop the release date is a showstopper bug that keeps the product from working on a significant number of computers (that does not mean failure to support the newest and cheapest Promise Controller). But the ideas always appear when the RC pops up. There are announcements of the schedule on cooker list, but every release date approaching seems to stimulate creativity. So I suggest, if you want MandrakeLinux to be the best product possible, save the idea, but write it down, and use some of your calendaring software to remind yourself to transmit it in 40 days, when it will hit the folks as they are planning the major features for the next release. You could send new feature ideas now, but if you do, they may be lost in the noise of flying bugfixes and testing results as the release is rounded and polished as best as can be within their very limited resources. Civileme
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