Re: [Cooker] Mandrake way of life
Kmail and evolution are very good email agents , but for me when I use outlook it doesn't hang with 1 mail big problem of windows are stability and viruses ... big problem of linux have no good acceleration for video and is not yet stable, I think also that for laptop is very not at the level of windows since suspend , irda , incorporated mouse does not work well to not say at all... (Warning:I like a lot linux , and I saying this only for pointing on problems that I do not like to see in the future) Thanks for the very great disribution you've made , Meir Faraj - Original Message - From: Brook Humphrey [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, March 20, 2002 12:34 AM Subject: Re: [Cooker] Mandrake way of life On Monday 18 March 2002 04:48, you wrote: It's fine for me in Mozilla/Netscape. Brook Humphrey wrote: Could you please stop posting in multipart mthl encoded it's a real pain to deal with. Thats great I use kmail and his email client was really butchering the thing up. Nice to know mozilla handles it well but I haven't found anything that lets me deal with around 100,000 email accept for kmail. The others just stop working correctly with this amount of email's. You should see how bad outlook express is. It stops at around 10,000 email's. The thing just locks up. I have multiple folders with over 10,000 email's in many of them. I do most all my business and correspondence this way. -- -~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~` '~- Brook Humphrey Mobile PC Medic, 420 1st, Cheney, WA 99004, 509-235-9107 http://www.webmedic.net, [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Holiness unto the Lord -~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~` '~-
Re: [Cooker] Mandrake way of life
On Wednesday 20 March 2002 10:39, you wrote: Kmail and evolution are very good email agents , but for me when I use outlook it doesn't hang with 1 mail big problem of windows are stability and viruses ... big problem of linux have no good acceleration for video and is not yet stable, I think also that for laptop is very not at the level of windows since suspend , irda , incorporated mouse does not work well to not say at all... (Warning:I like a lot linux , and I saying this only for pointing on problems that I do not like to see in the future) Thanks for the very great disribution you've made , Meir Faraj - Original Message - snip I'd have to agree that laptop support is lacking yet in several areas, but 3d acceleration depends a lot on what card you have, and whether the manufacturer is willing to write drivers for Linux. My NVidia GeForce2 Ultra works great, I can watch dvds in Linux, and many apps, including OpenGL, run much smoother than win2k. Personally, even when I use win2k, I don't use outlook because of the huge security issues. And I stay behind a hardware firewall to keep the hackers out. Not that win2k is used much by me anymore, since I can now play many of my games in Linux with winex(thanks to transgaming). And as far as stability goes, I have had no problem running RC1 on my work system, running several days straight without a reboot is not a problem. No such luck with win2k, something eventually bogs it down and forces me to reboot. All in all, I can't wait for Linux to get a stronger hold on the desktop market. For my purposes, it's already there.
Re: [Cooker] Mandrake way of life
On Wed, Mar 20, 2002 at 06:39:28PM +0200, Faraj Meir wrote: I think also that for laptop is very not at the level of windows since suspend , irda , incorporated mouse does not work well to not say at all... On all of my laptops this works properly except one and that's an Apple. The only reason all of this works properly on Windows has nothing to do with the OS itself. It has to do with the fact that manufacturers are shipping it with windows and write the drivers themselves. If you don't buy a bleeding edge laptop or are patient. The kernel will get updated to support the laptop hardware. At any rate. I've never ever ever seen a laptop in which the built in mouse didn't work with Linux. Suspend yes. And frankly irda is pretty worthless anymore. -- Ben Reser [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://ben.reser.org What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy? - Ghandi
Re: [Cooker] Mandrake way of life
wyrmzr wrote: On Wednesday 20 March 2002 10:39, you wrote: Kmail and evolution are very good email agents , but for me when I use outlook it doesn't hang with 1 mail big problem of windows are stability and viruses ... big problem of linux have no good acceleration for video and is not yet stable, I think also that for laptop is very not at the level of windows since suspend , irda , incorporated mouse does not work well to not say at all... (Warning:I like a lot linux , and I saying this only for pointing on problems that I do not like to see in the future) Thanks for the very great disribution you've made , Meir Faraj - Original Message - snip I'd have to agree that laptop support is lacking yet in several areas, but 3d acceleration depends a lot on what card you have, and whether the manufacturer is willing to write drivers for Linux. My NVidia GeForce2 Ultra works great, I can watch dvds in Linux, and many apps, including OpenGL, run much smoother than win2k. Personally, even when I use win2k, I don't use outlook because of the huge security issues. And I stay behind a hardware firewall to keep the hackers out. Not that win2k is used much by me anymore, since I can now play many of my games in Linux with winex(thanks to transgaming). And as far as stability goes, I have had no problem running RC1 on my work system, running several days straight without a reboot is not a problem. No such luck with win2k, something eventually bogs it down and forces me to reboot. All in all, I can't wait for Linux to get a stronger hold on the desktop market. For my purposes, it's already there. For laptops, realize this: 1. To cram all that functionality in a small package, compromises are made with the accepted industry standards. 2. The hardware engineers do their best, then the software people take over and write customized windows drivers to make up for the deficiencies. 3. Linux generally supplies drivers built for the accepted standard. Specialized drivers are supplied if open-source. 4. Notebook support for linux will be adequate when notebook manufacturers start selling notebooks equipped with linux. Until then, it is a game of chance and tweaking. Civileme
Re: [Cooker] Mandrake way of life
wyrmzr wrote: On Wednesday 20 March 2002 10:39, you wrote: Kmail and evolution are very good email agents , but for me when I use outlook it doesn't hang with 1 mail big problem of windows are stability and viruses ... big problem of linux have no good acceleration for video and is not yet stable, I think also that for laptop is very not at the level of windows since suspend , irda , incorporated mouse does not work well to not say at all... (Warning:I like a lot linux , and I saying this only for pointing on problems that I do not like to see in the future) Thanks for the very great disribution you've made , Meir Faraj - Original Message - snip I'd have to agree that laptop support is lacking yet in several areas, but 3d acceleration depends a lot on what card you have, and whether the manufacturer is willing to write drivers for Linux. My NVidia GeForce2 Ultra works great, I can watch dvds in Linux, and many apps, including OpenGL, run much smoother than win2k. Personally, even when I use win2k, I don't use outlook because of the huge security issues. And I stay behind a hardware firewall to keep the hackers out. Not that win2k is used much by me anymore, since I can now play many of my games in Linux with winex(thanks to transgaming). And as far as stability goes, I have had no problem running RC1 on my work system, running several days straight without a reboot is not a problem. No such luck with win2k, something eventually bogs it down and forces me to reboot. All in all, I can't wait for Linux to get a stronger hold on the desktop market. For my purposes, it's already there. I second it with some wishes: == greater apps/utilities integration in the KDE (i.e.: OpenOffice.org!) == real separation KDE from GNOME at installation (I do use KDE, but some GNOME packages are installed by default anyway! I did uninstall a bunch of them) == global cut and paste (do I miss here something?) == software firewall with GUI ( like many of them for Windows) for standalone computer. == troubleshooting guide (this can easy up the email servers :) for newbies: == updated HOWTO's (some are from 1996 or so. Aren't we in 2002?) and other documentation. The rest is great! At last on my standalone desktop. Irek
Re: [Cooker] Mandrake way of life
It's fine for me in Mozilla/Netscape. Brook Humphrey wrote: Could you please stop posting in multipart mthl encoded it's a real pain to deal with.
Re: [Cooker] Mandrake way of life
On Monday 18 March 2002 04:48, you wrote: It's fine for me in Mozilla/Netscape. Brook Humphrey wrote: Could you please stop posting in multipart mthl encoded it's a real pain to deal with. Thats great I use kmail and his email client was really butchering the thing up. Nice to know mozilla handles it well but I haven't found anything that lets me deal with around 100,000 email accept for kmail. The others just stop working correctly with this amount of email's. You should see how bad outlook express is. It stops at around 10,000 email's. The thing just locks up. I have multiple folders with over 10,000 email's in many of them. I do most all my business and correspondence this way. -- -~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~- Brook Humphrey Mobile PC Medic, 420 1st, Cheney, WA 99004, 509-235-9107 http://www.webmedic.net, [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Holiness unto the Lord -~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-
Re: [Cooker] Mandrake way of life
On Tuesday 19 March 2002 16:35, you wrote: Brook Humphrey wrote: On Monday 18 March 2002 04:48, you wrote: It's fine for me in Mozilla/Netscape. Brook Humphrey wrote: Could you please stop posting in multipart mthl encoded it's a real pain to deal with. Thats great I use kmail and his email client was really butchering the thing up. Nice to know mozilla handles it well but I haven't found anything that lets me deal with around 100,000 email accept for kmail. The others just stop working correctly with this amount of email's. You should see how bad outlook express is. It stops at around 10,000 email's. The thing just locks up. I have multiple folders with over 10,000 email's in many of them. I do most all my business and correspondence this way. FYI - Mozilla is gettting better. I have folders with 5,000 and my total count is over 40,000 and now have no problem. But thats really beside the point. A lot of folks are text based for whatever reason and it is really arrogant not to respect that. Its basically an attitude problem. No I have kmail set to handle html by default and I get many html email's but for whatever reason kmail didn't really like the way his email client was formating the messages. I should shows the output that I get It's even worse than an html email. -- -~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~- Brook Humphrey Mobile PC Medic, 420 1st, Cheney, WA 99004, 509-235-9107 http://www.webmedic.net, [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Holiness unto the Lord -~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-
Re: [Cooker] Mandrake way of life
On Sun, 17 Mar 2002, Matias Griese wrote: On Sun, 17 Mar 2002, Warly wrote: Mandrake Linux is based on a fixed date releasing due to market constraints (distributor/supplier schedules). As a consequence the release date was scheduled 3 months ago. On this date we have a very little margin of 2 or 3 days, but not more. There is nothing wrong in tight shedules. I am just hoping that on the next time you would tell the contributors/testers which are the days for freeze, release etc. As a contributor (Finnish translations) and tester I would like to know how much time I have for the task so that I could allocate the time for it. Yes, this is exactly what I want to say. (Czech translator). R.V.
[Cooker] Mandrake way of life
Mandrake Linux is based on a fixed date releasing due to market constraints (distributor/supplier schedules). As a consequence the release date was scheduled 3 months ago. On this date we have a very little margin of 2 or 3 days, but not more. So the datum is: release date is March the 15th. Now we need to do it in this timeframe (and we are the 17th), and we have no other choice. In a few days 8.2 updates will be released, and them you will have the real stable and polished distro you want. Debian has no real realease date, as a consequence doing a stable release is just a piece of cake, anybody can do it. Maybe our model is not good. Thinking of a better model, I am not sure what I could choose. No deadline means no hurry, and if the last moments didn't exist, nothing good would be done. Moreover if we wait too much, new versions of nearly all the tools in the distro will be released, and their respective authors will not care anymore fixing bugs in the old version we would have included. I do think that our model is not so bad, and that we are reaching a good compromise between cutting edge and stability, but /this/ compromise _is needed_. -- Warly
Re: [Cooker] Mandrake way of life
On Sun, 17 Mar 2002, Warly wrote: So the datum is: release date is March the 15th. Now we need to do it in this timeframe (and we are the 17th), and we have no other choice. In a few days 8.2 updates will be released, and them you will have the real stable and polished distro you want. Debian has no real realease date, as a consequence doing a stable release is just a piece of cake, anybody can do it. Maybe our model is not good. Debian's model has it's fault too. Recently one famous Debian hacker has left, because he thinks nobody is eager to stabilize woody. The current woody and sid works well, so nobody thinks an 'absolutely stable' distro is necessary. Thinking of a better model, I am not sure what I could choose. No deadline means no hurry, and if the last moments didn't exist, nothing good would be done. Moreover if we wait too much, new versions of nearly all the tools in the distro will be released, and their respective authors will not care anymore fixing bugs in the old version we would have included. I do think that our model is not so bad, and that we are reaching a good compromise between cutting edge and stability, but /this/ compromise _is needed_. An unrelated suggestion: I think it's better to let cooker subscribers here know more about the time frame, so that testers will know: OK, the time is near, we should do more testing or work harder to submit bug reports. Abel
Re: [Cooker] Mandrake way of life
What are the knows big problems in 8.2 final ? Thanks From: Warly [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Cooker] Mandrake way of life Date: Sun, 17 Mar 2002 10:12:46 +0100 Mandrake Linux is based on a fixed date releasing due to market constraints (distributor/supplier schedules). As a consequence the release date was scheduled 3 months ago. On this date we have a very little margin of 2 or 3 days, but not more. So the datum is: release date is March the 15th. Now we need to do it in this timeframe (and we are the 17th), and we have no other choice. In a few days 8.2 updates will be released, and them you will have the real stable and polished distro you want. Debian has no real realease date, as a consequence doing a stable release is just a piece of cake, anybody can do it. Maybe our model is not good. Thinking of a better model, I am not sure what I could choose. No deadline means no hurry, and if the last moments didn't exist, nothing good would be done. Moreover if we wait too much, new versions of nearly all the tools in the distro will be released, and their respective authors will not care anymore fixing bugs in the old version we would have included. I do think that our model is not so bad, and that we are reaching a good compromise between cutting edge and stability, but /this/ compromise _is needed_. -- Warly = _ Rejoignez le plus grand service de messagerie au monde avec MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com/fr
Re: [Cooker] Mandrake way of life
Warly, Thanks for clarifying this. It should have been blindingly obvious to anyone with any experience in software production (myself included) that distribution and so on depends on fixed dates communicated well in advance. In that regard, any development, open source or proprietary, has to deal with the realities of the market. Of course we need deadlines; and nobody (should) doubt the level of effort that's going into getting 8.2 out the door. Perhaps what ought to be looked at for 9.0 is not so much a reworking of the development model, but, rather, a more conspicuous and complete articulation of it. I suspect that many of the people commenting on various aspects of the distro have development experience limited to either commercial development or, at best, single, smaller Open Source projects that have greater immediate control over their own schedule. There is a level of assumption present, fed by comments from the public face of Mandrake (you) like "No final until all bugs are squashed ;)" -- that leads people to lose sight of the fact that Mandrake is, in fact, a commercial venture that has to ship product (8.2) on or very closely about a fixed date in order to keep food on the table. When the schedule is fixed, stakeholders (e.g., Cooker folk, testers) need to know. When outside people are testing, it helps to have some idea what priorities are, and those are expected to get tighter as we progress from Beta 1 through Beta N to RC1 to RC M. It is my impression that what has raised a lot of people's blood pressure on the list is not konwing what the real priorities and selection criteria are. If we do indeed have a fixed date, a (relatively) fixed amount of resources that we can allocate to fixing problems, and a non-fixed feature/defect matrix, it's obvious that features are not going to ship and/or defects are not going to get fixed before the ship date. That's life in commercial development; anybody who says "But WhizBang-0.9.9 just shipped - can we include that too?" - is cordially invited to patch the distro with WB, build and fully regression-test the entire distro, and describe what other changes ripple out - without affecting others' work or delivery schedules. It can't be done, folks - what CAN be done is better communication. Ship dates should be articulated. Defect-classification and -prioritization should be communicated, probably through this list and/or Mandrake Expert. It would be nice to see basic statistics like defect open and close counts and rates, mean time to repair for various categories and priorities of defects, and so on. There's no obvious communication of prioritization or severity at all in Mandrake Expert - THAT needs to be fixed for 9.0, and all this is basic statistics that any self-respecting defect- or problem-reporting system should handle out of the box. Mandrake has a great resource here - the great volunteer army of testers and users willing to test and poke and prod the software on a far greater variety of systems and configurations than Mandrake could ever have direct control of; but it will take some improvements in communication and process to make truly effective use of them. If we are to make Linux a more credible alternative to Windows - and Mandrake the preeminent Linux on the desktop. How can we help? Jeff DickeySeven Sigma Software and Services Phone: +1 661 588 2917Phone: +1 425 885 6280Pager: +1 800 931 4233Email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (preferred)Email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Home page (with résumé): http://www.seven-sigma.com/ PGP key fingerprint: 6BAC 8806 2480 BC1B 0388 2521 CB5B 552F ---Original Message--- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Sunday, March 17, 2002 01:12:46 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Cooker] Mandrake way of life Mandrake Linux is based on a fixed date releasing due to marketconstraints (distributor/supplier schedules). As a consequence therelease date was scheduled 3 months ago. On this date we have a very little margin of 2 or 3 days, but not more.So the datum is: "release date is March the 15th".Now we need to do it in this timeframe (and we are the 17th), andwe have no other choice.In a few days 8.2 updates will be released, and them you will havethe real stable and polished distro you want.Debian has no real realease date, as a consequence doing a stablerelease is just a piece of cake, any
Re: [Cooker] Mandrake way of life
On Sun, 17 Mar 2002 10:12:46 +0100, Warly [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Mandrake Linux is based on a fixed date releasing due to market constraints (distributor/supplier schedules). As a consequence the release date was scheduled 3 months ago. On this date we have a very little margin of 2 or 3 days, but not more. So the datum is: release date is March the 15th. Now we need to do it in this timeframe (and we are the 17th), and we have no other choice. In a few days 8.2 updates will be released, and them you will have the real stable and polished distro you want. Debian has no real realease date, as a consequence doing a stable release is just a piece of cake, anybody can do it. Maybe our model is not good. Thinking of a better model, I am not sure what I could choose. No deadline means no hurry, and if the last moments didn't exist, nothing good would be done. Moreover if we wait too much, new versions of nearly all the tools in the distro will be released, and their respective authors will not care anymore fixing bugs in the old version we would have included. I do think that our model is not so bad, and that we are reaching a good compromise between cutting edge and stability, but /this/ compromise _is needed_. -- Warly Warly, I see what you mean, and I sympathise. However, there are a lot of people who do not know about this behind-the-scenes wrangling. These are the people who are going to bitch and whine to no end when they find even a tiny bug in the distro. I suggest that when Mandrake 8.2 is released, you post your comments on mandrakeforum.com so that the user community can know about the situation. -- Sridhar Dhanapalan Anyone who says you can have a lot of widely dispersed people hack away on a complicated piece of code and avoid total anarchy has never managed a software project. -- Andrew S. Tanenbaum, 1992, writing to Linus Torvalds.
Re: [Cooker] Mandrake way of life
Well said - and I agree whole heartedly! Here, here! Thx, R.Fox On Sun, 2002-03-17 at 11:20, Jeff Dickey wrote: Warly, Thanks for clarifying this. It should have been blindingly obvious to anyone with any experience in software production (myself included) that distribution and so on depends on fixed dates communicated well in advance. In that regard, any development, open source or proprietary, has to deal with the realities of the market. Of course we need deadlines; and nobody (should) doubt the level of effort that's going into getting 8.2 out the door. Perhaps what ought to be looked at for 9.0 is not so much a reworking of the development model, but, rather, a more conspicuous and complete articulation of it. I suspect that many of the people commenting on various aspects of the distro have development experience limited to either commercial development or, at best, single, smaller Open Source projects that have greater immediate control over their own schedule. There is a level of assumption present, fed by comments from the public face of Mandrake (you) like No final until all bugs are squashed ;) -- that leads people to lose sight of the fact that Mandrake is, in fact a commercial venture that has to ship product (8.2) on or very closely about a fixed date in order to keep food on the table. When the schedule is fixed, stakeholders (e.g., Cooker folk, testers) need to know. When outside people are testing, it helps to have some idea what priorities are, and those are expected to get tighter as we progress from Beta 1 through Beta N to RC1 to RC M. It is my impression that what has raised a lot of people's blood pressure on the list is not konwing what the real priorities and selection criteria are. If we do indeed have a fixed date, a (relatively) fixed amount of resources that we can allocate to fixing problems, and a non-fixed feature/defect matrix, it's obvious that features are not going to ship and/or defects are not going to get fixed before the ship date. That's life in commercial development; anybody who says But WhizBang-0.9.9 just shipped - can we include that too? - is cordially invited to patch the distro with WB, build and fully regression-test the entire distro, and describe what other changes ripple out - without affecting others' work or delivery schedules. It can't be done, folks - what CAN be done is better communication. Ship dates should be articulated. Defect-classification and -prioritization should be communicated, probably through this list and/or Mandrake Expert. It would be nice to see basic statistics like defect open and close counts and rates, mean time to repair for various categories and priorities of defects, and so on. There's no obvious communication of prioritization or severity at all in Mandrake Expert - THAT needs to be fixed for 9.0, and all this is basic statistics that any self-respecting defect- or problem-reporting system should handle out of the box. Mandrake has a great resource here - the great volunteer army of testers and users willing to test and poke and prod the software on a far greater variety of systems and configurations than Mandrake could ever have direct control of; but it will take some improvements in communication and process to make truly effective use of them. If we are to make Linux a more credible alternative to Windows - and Mandrake the preeminent Linux on the desktop. How can we help? Jeff Dickey Seven Sigma Software and Services Phone: +1 661 588 2917 Phone: +1 425 885 6280 Pager: +1 800 931 4233 Email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (preferred) Email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Home page (with résumé): http://www.seven-sigma.com/ PGP key fingerprint: 6BAC 8806 2480 BC1B 0388 2521 CB5B 552F ---Original Message--- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Sunday, March 17, 2002 01:12:46 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Cooker] Mandrake way of life Mandrake Linux is based on a fixed date releasing due to market constraints (distributor/supplier schedules). As a consequence the release date was scheduled 3 months ago. On this date we have a very little margin of 2 or 3 days, but not more. So the datum is: release date is March the 15th. Now we need to do it in this timeframe (and we are the 17th), and we have no other choice. In a few days 8.2 updates will be released, and them you will have the real stable and polished distro you want. Debian has no real realease date, as a consequence doing a stable release is just a piece of cake, anybody can do it. Maybe our model is not good. Thinking of a better model, I am not sure what I could choose. No deadline means no hurry, and if the last moments didn't exist, nothing good would be done. Moreover if we wait too much, new versions of nearly all the tools in the distro will be released, and their respective authors will not care anymore fixing bugs in the old version
Re: [Cooker] Mandrake way of life
On Sun, 17 Mar 2002, Warly wrote: Mandrake Linux is based on a fixed date releasing due to market constraints (distributor/supplier schedules). As a consequence the release date was scheduled 3 months ago. On this date we have a very little margin of 2 or 3 days, but not more. There is nothing wrong in tight shedules. I am just hoping that on the next time you would tell the contributors/testers which are the days for freeze, release etc. As a contributor (Finnish translations) and tester I would like to know how much time I have for the task so that I could allocate the time for it. Now we need to do it in this timeframe (and we are the 17th), and we have no other choice. I'm sorry that I haven't tested the distribution earlier (exept for a few installations). I just heven't got the time to do it. But regardless of the few bugs I have submitted so far I have to say that this is the best release ever. Good work! Debian has no real realease date, as a consequence doing a stable release is just a piece of cake, anybody can do it. I use both Mandrake and Debian and I like more of the Mandrake even if everything is not so stable. The only two things which has been bugging me is your attitude for the security and lack of communication. The direction is right but not quite there yet. For example in beta2 the default security level for internet connected computer was low. So you could set no root password while the ssh server was installed with PermitRootLogin yes. Oops..:( I do think that our model is not so bad, and that we are reaching a good compromise between cutting edge and stability, but /this/ compromise _is needed_. I agree. This is the reason why I like more Mandrake than Debian. Regards, Matias
Re: [Cooker] Mandrake way of life
On Sundayen den 17 March 2002 10.12, Warly wrote: I do think that our model is not so bad, and that we are reaching a good compromise between cutting edge and stability, but /this/ compromise _is needed_. Agreed. I think the Mandrake way is quite balanced, don't worry, be happy! -- Regards // Oden Eriksson
Re: [Cooker] Mandrake way of life
--- Warly [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Mandrake Linux is based on a fixed date releasing due to market constraints (distributor/supplier schedules). As a consequence the release date was scheduled 3 months ago. On this date we have a very little margin of 2 or 3 days, but not more. So the datum is: release date is March the 15th. Now we need to do it in this timeframe (and we are the 17th), and we have no other choice. My probem is not as much the release of software that is not polished, as much as the fact that it never gets there after release either. If work continued on 8.2, squashing bugs, fixing annoyances, until it truly does reach stable... then by the time 8.3 came around (or 9.0), administrators could feel comfortable installing 8.2. Unfortunately, I keep getting drawn to cooker because it often runs more stable that the released version. It keeps going from broken to fixed a lot but at least there is always hope there I have had to abandon 8.1 several times in the past in favor of cooker because I found the annoyances and bugs in 8.1 a bit too much to take. In a few days 8.2 updates will be released, and them you will have the real stable and polished distro you want. As a laptop user, I am still a bit frustrated over the kernel. The last kernel that I could use where I could use the features of the laptop (such as suspend/resume) was 2.4.17-16mdk. On that one, if I disabled APIC and rebuilt the kernel, everything worked just fine. It still is that way. Our office has been migrating to the Dell laptops, and since we are using Windows terminal server, the potential is there for us to migrate away from windows desktop os. But, unfortunately, I can't. It is very frustrating since there are so many things that I like that Mandrake does, that is why I have been working so hard at trying to catch and report bugs. There are other annoyances and bugs that are also quite major, such as draksync copying over a newer local file with an older remote file when syning using copy most recent files. Can you imagine the chaos that bug can create in the enterprise? You have worked all night on a file on your laptop it and you draksync it with your office, only to find out all of your work is gone? Not a good thing. I know management gives a hard date, and I understand the need for deadlines so that projects can reach conclusions, however most people who might become curious about Mandrake through an article, that downloads and installs, will quickly lose interest if the amount of bugs and annoyances out of the box reach past a certain level. I recently had this problem with a co-administrator who is a big Microsoft proponent. Because of the Microsoft licensing issues, he got enthusiastic about Linux and tried to install it. He tried SUSE and Mandrake, 8.1 and cooker... and he gave up on it since he could not get even the basics working properly. Those being a graphic interface (he had an nvidia card on his Dell Inspiron 8100), suspend/resume and other things he expected to work out of the box. Even though he had me available as a resource and I could have fixed most of his problems, he chose to try it himself, quickly became disillusioned, and now it is sooo much harder to get him to try again. I feel there is a window of opportunity out there right now, but windows do close. I feel Mandrake is the closest distro out there that I can recommend on the desktop, but yet I don't feel comfortable recommending it yet. = SI Reasoning [EMAIL PROTECTED] A requirement of creativity is that it contributes to change. Creativity keeps the creator alive. -FRANK HERBERT, unpublished notes __ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Sports - live college hoops coverage http://sports.yahoo.com/
Re: [Cooker] Mandrake way of life
On Sun, 17 Mar 2002, Jeff Dickey wrote: Mandrake has a great resource here - the great volunteer army of testers and users willing to test and poke and prod the software on a far greater variety of systems and configurations than Mandrake could ever have direct control of; but it will take some improvements in communication and process to make truly effective use of them. If we are to make Linux a more credible alternative to Windows - and Mandrake the preeminent Linux on the desktop. Yes, I agree. I think your words the preeminent Linux on the desktop are very interesting. Because a nice working desktop is Mandrake's trademark. I think one of the common pit-falls for Linux distributors is trying to do it all best. The possible uses of Linux have become so many and so diverse that unless you have an unlimited amount of developers you need to focus. If you don't focus the chances are you will end up with a distribution that has flaws in many different areas and fails to do anything a 100%. This affects how we work here in the Cooker mailing list. Because if the primary goal is to have a flawless desktop some bug reports that before were considered minor could actually become major. One example: fonts. One could look upon font issues as being pretty negligible, but not so if the goal is to be the preeminent Linux on the desktop. Regards, Mattias
Re: [Cooker] Mandrake way of life
Could you please stop posting in multipart mthl encoded it's a real pain to deal with. -- -~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~- Brook Humphrey Mobile PC Medic, 420 1st, Cheney, WA 99004, 509-235-9107 http://www.webmedic.net, [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Holiness unto the Lord -~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-
Re: [Cooker] Mandrake way of life
On Sunday 17 March 2002 03:12 am, Warly wrote: I do think that our model is not so bad, and that we are reaching a good compromise between cutting edge and stability, but /this/ compromise _is needed_. I also agree, and yesterday sent a $30 donation to http://www.linux-mandrake.com/donations/ You guys are doing great work. I don't want you worrying about money for the next six months. During that time, not only will KDE 3.0 final be out, but probably KDE 3.1 also. Adding software like that to the dramatically more stable distribution that Mandrake 8.2 is should be awesome. John
Re: [Cooker] Mandrake way of life
All of this boils down to 1 which bugs get fixed on a STOP THE PRESSES basis and which ones get fixed on a next freq basis and which bugs get fixed on a wash the dog/let the maintaner do it basis 2 Mandrake needs a on every street corner distribution ie in the US if anybody could pick up a cd set at RadioShack (and then pick up the freq/bug fix disc later) then if package X has say a zlib problem it becomes oh the next freq disc will have the patches RS will have the cds on .
Re: [Cooker] Mandrake way of life
On Sunday 17 March 2002 04:12 am, you wrote: Maybe our model is not good I believe that the problem is that Mandrake is having difficulty balancing the desire to have the _very_ latest software along with a bug-free release. This is complicated by the fact that much of the software we rely on to make up any Linux distro is still under development and plagued by bugs. May I suggest that Mandrake institute a feature freeze earlier and allow more time for testing and bug-fixing. Contract with someone like CheapBytes to supply a subscrition service for weekly cooker iso's during the testing process so participation is not essentially limited to those with high-speed connections. If a major update comes for an app during the freeze, that decision should be made on a case by case basis, not excluded by a general rule nor included by default. In any event, a release candidate iso should be distributed widely. Mandrake also neeeds to further streamline and clarify its cooker testing policies and proceedures and communicate them effectively to the testers. Much of the unpleasantness on this list seems rooted in a communication problem rather than a problem of fact. -- Hoyt
Re: [Cooker] Mandrake way of life
Just my 2 eurocent: From: Warly [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mandrake Linux is based on a fixed date releasing due to market constraints (distributor/supplier schedules). As a consequence the release date was scheduled 3 months ago. On this date we have a very little margin of 2 or 3 days, but not more. So the datum is: release date is March the 15th. In a few days 8.2 updates will be released, and them you will have the real stable and polished distro you want. Debian has no real realease date, as a consequence doing a stable release is just a piece of cake, anybody can do it. Maybe our model is not good. Well, it has taken you so far as we are today, where Mandrake is one of the most popular distros in the world, and rising. Not bad! I actually think the free beta-testing is something that can improve the quality of the product. Of cause most things can be improved, and this probably also applies to Mandrake. I do think that our model is not so bad, and that we are reaching a good compromise between cutting edge and stability, but /this/ compromise _is needed_. Yes, some compromises needs to be made. But what are the goals? I see some of the goals as: 1. a distro filled with features 2. a distro easy to install and use 3. a distro for the world market 4. a distro without (many) errors I think MDK is doing well on 1. and 2. Some ideas: 1. MDK could have newer features available via the net, afther the distri is burned in stone. (This also goes for error corrections) rpmdrake goes a long way for this, but I think there is some room for improvement (or maybe it is just me not knowing what rpmdrake can do) Specifically I would like it to be easy to get to the contributed sections, I did not find it easily documented in 8.2. It could be that all the cds be intitally available in the distro, and that you then can chose multiple sources for each of the cds, and also the contrib which is not on cds. Getting access to all of what suse is providing on its dvd, but most via the net, some via the cds. This could be integrated already in the install process, given that most have internet access nowadays, although many only with a 56 kbit modem. With 256 kbit adsl it becomes feasible to do quite a lot of the installation via the net. Eg just having one cd and then the rest available via the net could be a quite attractive installation method for ADSL users. 2. I would like DrakX and rpmdrake to be better integrated, or with more common code. Basically you should be able to do drakx in multiuser mode, and another idea: do drakx in multiuser and then generate a new clean boot file system. Then I could do some other work on my machine while installing, and I could even maybe have automated my installs of betas. Given that testing is critical and one of MDKs perceived shortcomings (wrt RedHat) this could improve time available for testing, and probably also help other people. 3. A distro for the world market - My background here is that I have done a lot of translations to Danish for Mandrake. And I have done quite some translations for GNU, gnome, kde etc. I would like a scheme where we had as little as possible missing in translations, and there is a problem here. At some time, something like one or two months before release date, mandrakesoft choses a text base for gnome, kde, gnu etc. And there is no way to improve the translations, although that does not change features. So even if translations improve in the gnome, kde, gnu trees these are not brought over to the distro. In this way we will never be able to get a distro with fully translated versions. We need to rethink this strategy, possibly with translation updates quite late in the beta process, or a specific translation tree for the distro for kde, gnome etc, or maybe specific arrangements with each maintainer of the gnome/kde packets to generate a specific branch for the Mandrake distro that is feature frozen. (of cause this could be limited to the packages that Mandrakesoft find strategic or needed or whatever criteria you may have. 4. I would like to do more hybrid installation processes as described a little above. But this could also imply that there be a development version (cooker, mandrakefreq) and then a stable mandrake, and that stable mandrake is being worked on as a feature frozen distro, but easy to get at with all bug fixes and translation fixes. That is, rpmdrake could check whether there are fixes for translations available via the net and then install these fixes if the user approves. 5. Also thinking a little of business models, you can think of all the businesses and public services installing MDK which are saving a bundle, and ways to get them to contribute. Financially and also by doing work. One way was to ask them under the installation process about such things and making them want to contribute. Maybe somebody cleverer than me can think of which arguments to use, and which services to offer like support and such, and MDK
Re: [Cooker] Mandrake way of life
Warly wrote: Mandrake Linux is based on a fixed date releasing due to market constraints (distributor/supplier schedules). As a consequence the release date was scheduled 3 months ago. On this date we have a very little margin of 2 or 3 days, but not more. So the datum is: release date is March the 15th. Now we need to do it in this timeframe (and we are the 17th), and we have no other choice. In a few days 8.2 updates will be released, and them you will have the real stable and polished distro you want. Debian has no real realease date, as a consequence doing a stable release is just a piece of cake, anybody can do it. Maybe our model is not good. Thinking of a better model, I am not sure what I could choose. No deadline means no hurry, and if the last moments didn't exist, nothing good would be done. Moreover if we wait too much, new versions of nearly all the tools in the distro will be released, and their respective authors will not care anymore fixing bugs in the old version we would have included. I do think that our model is not so bad, and that we are reaching a good compromise between cutting edge and stability, but /this/ compromise _is needed_. There is an alternative model, but it requires a high initial investment. Bugs in packaging are usually monor but some of those can cause significant problems in Mandrake tools... An improper script to set up dotfiles for defaults in the security script, or a change in the rpm tool and how it treats the formation of such files under update, scould render the Mandtrake Upgrade tool useless from distro to distro. In this area, a bot that recognizes such scripts in the packagoing, and someone that examines the results as a duty could help a lot. Testing, per se, is not a solution to better quality. Microsoft throws much money at it, shadows every programmer with a designated tester. They even have scholarly types who move pins on maps from alpha to beta to gamma and pigeonhole all the test categories. Their results should speak for themselves. The real effort needs to go into planning tools and programs, not just the generalities, but the details. This needs to be done by developers who are trained to interact constructively. The training alone is a killer. I am talking about a bill of 3 weeks with no production, just training. And that is only half the bill. The other half is putting the training to use. It would mean that bug-barriers and unanticipated cases count would drop dramatically. As other posters suggest, that requires communication, and that means internal communication, among developers, using the best conference tools available, since even Mandrake developers are scattered a bit. Obviously, any such model will have to wait until Mandrake turns the corner on profitability, but this model is far less expensive that the Microsoft one or the lockstep of alpha, beta releases. Basically the release schema would look like this: Developers Training--Input Objectives for Next release-Developers confer to design tools to meet objectibves- --First programming on _new_ tools with no GUI work \ \ \- Testers input on hardware and software unanticipated cases for tools -- Developers work on other projects while reports collect, probably other tools or GUI-ing tools that seem to work well \ \ \-Testers ask for other packages to test, seeming to have found most of the cases --Developers work on fixes and release the secondary projects they were working on \ \ \-Continue the case mismatch stuff -Release second round of non-GUI scratch editions of tools \ \ \-Offer brainstorming ideas about making it user-friendly and setting up the GUI (no arguing--no bad ideas-go for quantity of ideas collect and group them later) (do not discuss ideas or comment on them--building on them is OK) - Conference by best tools available with testers and sort out the current best ideas for the design. \ \ \-Finish testing second round, review the product specifications/goals from the Brainstorming/multivote process to get a good idea what to test for on the GUI -Finish on minor bugs on the non-GUI versions of the tools--Go for first-edition GUI \ \ \-Test with brainlessness and abandon... Do everything wrong that can be imagined for a total newbie or a windows convert. (Even include installing to hdc and then removing it and moving hdc to hda and see how the software handles it) Don't laugh. There is an actual support case where that happened. -Release some tools and continue work on others. Continue conferences on each tool and make sure that internally the knowledge of all is shared in making these tools. Now I know there is some loss in time and effort with coding the action separately from the interface or in fact coding a text as well as a graphic interface,
Mea culpa re message format [was: Re: [Cooker] Mandrake way of life]
Yes, I'm sorry for that - this email client I'm locked into at present isn't good about that; it says it's in plain-text mode when it isn't. If I don't remember to turn off plain-text and then turn it back on for each and every message I send, it goes MIME. If anybody knows a good mail scavenger utility, let me know; I'm desperate enough to start hacking IncrediMail's COM interfaces - I want my half-gig of messages back! Jeff Dickey Seven Sigma Software and Services Phone: +1 661 588 2917 Phone: +1 425 885 6280 Pager: +1 800 931 4233 Email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (preferred) Email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Home page (with résumé): http://www.seven-sigma.com/ PGP key fingerprint: 6BAC 8806 2480 BC1B 0388 2521 CB5B 552F ---Original Message--- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Sunday, March 17, 2002 05:10:07 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Cooker] Mandrake way of life Could you please stop posting in multipart mthl encoded it's a real pain to deal with. -- -~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~- Brook Humphrey Mobile PC Medic, 420 1st, Cheney, WA 99004, 509-235-9107 http://www.webmedic.net, [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Holiness unto the Lord -~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-~`'~-
Re: [Cooker] Mandrake way of life (agree)
On Sunday 17 March 2002 17:12, Warly wrote: Thinking of a better model, I am not sure what I could choose. No deadline means no hurry, and if the last moments didn't exist, nothing good would be done. Kinda-sorta. Debian sees to get by without much of a rush. Perhaps it would be good to have a 3-stage semi-automatic commit into Cooker (ie Cooker-new, becomes Cooker-not-obviously-broken if no bugs for a week in package or dependencies, becomes Cooker-stable after another 3 weeks), much like the Debian system, up until maybe two weeks before crunch time. Moreover if we wait too much, new versions of nearly all the tools in the distro will be released, and their respective authors will not care anymore fixing bugs in the old version we would have included. True in most cases. But authors who know will be delighted the filtered reporting (often including suggested fix) which gets through Mandrake to them, and a fix for an old version often applies to a new version as well. I think holding off on shipping Gnome 2, KDE 3 and even Mozilla 9.9 (you seem to be shipping `Mozilla 9.88' or something like that) is a great idea from a stability POV. Mandrake has seen very little bad press for stuff that wasn't bleeding edge enough, and a significant amount (notably in 8.1) for stuff that was a little too bleeding-edge, and did in fact bleed. I do think that our model is not so bad, and that we are reaching a good compromise between cutting edge and stability, but /this/ compromise _is needed_. Agree. Let's see how 8.2 goes. When exactly (GMT please) will ISOs be available? (-: Cheers; Leon
Re: Mea culpa re message format [was: Re: [Cooker] Mandrake way of life]
On Monday 18 March 2002 07:47, Jeff Dickey wrote: Yes, I'm sorry for that - this email client I'm locked into at present isn't good about that; it says it's in plain-text mode when it isn't. KMail isn't the fastest or the most feature-laden, but it does work well. Even if you're stuck on Windows, consider using it on a Linux server through CygWin's port of XFree86 (or in a pinch WeirdX in a browser window) plus an ssh cient like PuTTY. Cheers; Leon
