[CentOS] Re: Demonizing generic Linux issues as Fedora Core-only issues -- WAS: Hi, Bryan

On Wed, 2005-05-25 at 09:43, Bryan J. Smith  wrote:
> From: Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com>
> > I'm still wondering about that... If anyone except Linus himself
> > even suggested that changing kernel interfaces in a way that would
> > break device drivers was a good thing, I can't imagine the reaction.
> > I could see that the changes through 2.4 were improving things, but
> > is there anything that is measurably better in 2.6 (at least compared
> > to the RH-patched 2.4)?  I've been too busy trying to make some
> > firewire drives work as well as they did on FC1 to notice any other
> > changes.
> 
> Agreed.  But even Red Hat stands on the shoulders of Linus and the
> kernel developers.  No matter how many people Red Hat puts on the
> kernel, there are still things outside of Red Hat's control.

Yes, but... whose choice was it to ship 2.6 with lots of broken
and omitted stuff when 2.4 works better for many things?  Just
because a developer writes some code and tacks on a higher
version number doesn't mean it's ready for prime time.

> Once again, I will remind people that several people here _are_ indeed
> complaining about what doesn't come with RHEL, and not aware that
> it _does_:  
> A)  Not work in Fedora Core, and failure after failure keeps it out
> B)  And is, subsequently, not going into RHEL where SLAs are involved
> C)  Does _not_ come with pretty much _all_ other, similar distros

Well, an occasional rant is therapeutic - or at least cheaper than
smashing the equipment that no longer works after you upgrade the
software.

> You are complaining about CentOS not coming with things standard, and
> then assinging blame for that to Red Hat, because you believe they are
> supposedly paid and should have more features.  I can only label this as
> "ignorance" of how RHEL (as well as SLES) is developed, because anyone
> can go out to Bugzilla and see the detail of why something is not included.

I'm questioning the sensibility of shipping a kernel in what should be
an upgrade with many things that don't work at all that worked in
the previous version.  As you point out, these aren't surprises.
While I hate to complain about free software, I think that user's
experiences are relevant and should be reported even if they are
painful.  

> If you want the most features, then Fedora Core + { FE+Lorg, DAG, etc...}
> is your baby, maybe CentOS + additives if you don't mind waiting a year later.
> I think it's great that CentOS is trying to be the best of both worlds:  SLA-
> quality with added features.  But it really is "demonizing" when all I see is
> people making complaint after complaint about RHEL not having something
> when many, many, _many_ Fedora Development manhours were made trying
> to get exactly what you wanted working.

I'm not sure I believe that in the case of CIPE, since the 1.6 version
specifically addresses the changes in the 2.6 kernel and was available
well before FC3 or RHEL4 releases which did not include it again. If
I were to speculate about intentions as you suggest above, I'd guess
that someone at RedHat read the one negative review published about
CIPE, decided it was no longer a selling point, and walked away from
the integration they had done before.  But of course I wouldn't
speculate about something like that...

> I just find it humorous that several people who use CentOS, a free
> redistribution of RHEL (where Red Hat doesn't see a dime), are not
> complaining about Linus & co. for the kernel, not complaining about
> the CIPE team and their lack of movement on kernel 2.6, not
> volunteering to even look at the Bugzilla reports to find out what
> issues were blantantly repeatable, let alone other distros that have
> the same issues ...

It's a complicated system, and it isn't immediately obvious that other
distros have exactly the same problems.   If you follow
www.distrowatch.com for a few months you'll see that they each
keep trying to improve things in different ways. 

> But blaming solely Red Hat for this issue (and this is just one example).

Switching distros should always be an option - that's one of the
big reasons for using open source.  But, in spite of what I consider
an occasional bad choice, Fedora/RH seem to be among the best and
I do give the fact that they've been responsible for getting buggy
software in front of a vast number of people credit for it eventually
being fixed.  If you remember the state of free software before
RH 4.0 was released you will know what I mean.  I do sometimes wonder
how things would have turned out if someone had built an equally
easy to install CD based on freebsd first, though.  

> But I expect that because some people just blame Microsoft for things
> outside of their control too. 

Hmmm, just who would you blame for WindowsME?

> Sometimes the only person to blame is
> the lack of interest by anyone.
> 
> If that isn't ignorance, I don't know what is.

Who would you blame for the upgrade that made interfaces not
start if the hardware address in the configs didn't match
the NIC?  That was bad news for my remote machines where all
the drives had been cloned and the IP addresses set before
shipping.  I'm not positive about this, but I think it happened
at about the same time across Fedora/RH/Centos updates instead
of following the scenario you mentioned for testing things that
are supposed to change behavior.

-- 
  Les Mikesell
   lesmikesell at gmail.com