Red Hat Linux 7 Infested With Bugs 368
TBHiX writes "Apparently, according to reports on bugzilla and on linuxnewbie.internet.com, Red Hat 7.0 is being described by some people as one of the buggiest distros they've seen in recent history." Red Hat's point-oh releases have been historically been pretty bad over the years, so I the only thing that surprises me is that people didn't realize it before they downloaded it. The point release has typically been fine, but the bugzilla report lists over a thousand bugs: 200 appearing this week.
Take this as a warning folks: didn't 4.0, 5.0 and 6.0 teach you anything? *grin* But a DB with 2500 bugs in it doesn't necessarily mean a buggy distribution either.
ok..ok.. (Score:1)
I've run 4.2 on my servers and just patched the security stuff via the errata - #1 if it ain't broke don't fix it. 4.2 is rock solid. Uptimes w/ htpd, nntpd and a private ftp server on a lowly pent 90 w/ 64 megs and this baby just sits there and DOES ITS JOB!
I run 4.1 RedHat at home an dsee no reason to upgrade - call me old and non-bleeding edge, I don't care.
I haven't even LOOKED at a RedHat distro since 4.2, so I'm totally out of it re: what's the big deal - I still run Sun OS 4.1.4 on a production web server and it just sits there and runs (patches addedfor security and such.
WTF is the big deal? I run NT 4.0 at work, server and workstation, Win2kpro at home w/ cable modem, support win98 desktops at work...............
So, RedHat 7.0 comes out w/ mucho bugs........
So what. RH always posts errata which are easy as shit to install
RH doesn't hide the problems
RH releases stuff on the bleeding edge and lets the "community" look at the distro and code.
If you don'tneed to upgrade, don't and deal.
If you want to upgrade, do so and deal......
If you get disgusted at RH for the distro, you've got shitloads of others to choose fron - just check LWN...deal
This is getting too long. So, I'm gonna have another beer and watch Ms. Sommers and her newest ab developer and wait for 7.2
P.S. pardon my spelling - I'm wasted, not brain-challenged!
Windows 2000 SP1 (Score:1)
Umm... No. The list of bugs fixed in Service Pack 1 is here [microsoft.com], continued here [microsoft.com], and finished off here [microsoft.com]. That's more than one bug, and more than just compatability with old apps.
Re:Well, it's 2.4-ready... (Score:1)
Re:Anything new is going to have bugs (Score:1)
------
Re:Debian, Redhat.. Middle ground (Score:2)
Debian is hard to install.
But its administration is tops among linuxes. It is built almost entirely by volunteer system administrators. It is the only linux trivial to upgrade from one distribution to the next.
I recommend (Score:2)
Re:Wait, hold up (Score:3)
Bugs per line of code (LOC).
See Emphasizing Software Test Process Improvement [af.mil]... in it, they say:
So, If Windows 2000 was 30 million LOC, you can expect there to be, on average, between 120,000 and 180,000 bugs in the shipping code.
Let's be generous to MS, and say that they have an outstanding development process as decribed in the above paper. Because of this, they manage to reduce the number of bugs by a factor of 50%; so they're only shipping with 60,000 - 90,000 bugs.
Now, let's be even more generous, and assume that only 10% of the bugs actually present in a system is actually ever noticed and reported (BTW, a ridiculously low estimate, IMHO...) This means that W2K should have on the order of 6,000 to 9,000 reported bugs.
Now, contrast that with the latest Red Hat release; buggy as all git out, you know. 2000 reported bugs. You'd have to go back and compare LOC to get a comparable estimate, but I'm guessing that if you count all the various and sundry packages, Red Hat ships at least 30 million LOC in a distro... which would mean that their code, buggy as all sin and scorned by open source hackers everywhere, would contain about one-third of the bugs that W2K contains.
That's why you're buying Linux.
Re:Really? (Score:5)
<OSS_zealotry> .1? Fix 'em yourself.
Why wait for the
</OSS_zealotry>
post-release beta? (Score:2)
(Graeme et al can claim "it really was a beta" all they want.. but with no mention of it in the readme? c'mon...)
This is also much bigger than their last release (Score:2)
So? (Score:3)
Word to the wise: Don't upgrade if you want stability. However, for desktop users, you probably won't regret it.
(Yes, I know I should be using something other than RH on my desktop. It's just what I have used for quite a while, and I'm used to it.)
Re:So? (Score:2)
Now think about this: we all know that for the most part all of these packages undergo continual development. We all know that fixing one bug can create a new one, or uncover a bug that wasn't seen or previously known. So basically with continual development on these programs, rolling a distro is like hitting a moving target. The point is if we wait for every single included package to be perfect, we'll be waiting forever. Red Hat is just trying to put out a distro to bring stuff up to date (Xfree 4.0.1 being the one most interesting to me), and (hopefully) make a generally better distro. At some point, they have to decide to draw the line, and put out the next release, since they don't control development on most of the packages.
Now I'm not saying that I'm completely happy about Red Hat. Fortunately I was able to upgrade 2 workstations without having them getting hosed up (woohoo!). Everything has been working fine for the last week. The installer was even nice enough to not replace my 2.2.18pre10 kernel as the default for lilo. But the thing that really pissed me off, was the 2.96 GCC compiler. This is the one thing that I think that Red Hat should have stayed with a nice mature compiler version. (It took me a while to figure out why I couldn't compile a kernel)
The bottom line: its not as bad as you think. If you want to have a distro as close to 'perfect' as possible, go to debian.
As for me, I'm 2 for 2, and everything is all happy on my boxes (except for the silly 2.96 gcc), and I'm happy with how its working.
Should I file a bug for "Great Product"? (Score:3)
Just because the number of bug reports goes up doesn't mean that quality of product has gone down. If a product gets 1 bug report and has 1 user, does that show its quality? No.
But with the RH7.0 release, how many hundreds of thousands tried the product? And we're looking at maybe 255 bugs? Probably less than 50 of which are genuine bugs.
It's easy to hear those who are having problems because they shout the loudest. It's the people who it works for that aren't heard. All the success stories are silent. I'm one of the success stories. I've installed RH7.0 on 4 servers now. (one 486, a P133, one P-3 850, and a big phat $15k dual zeon 550). My installs have been flawless; better than any distro previous (including 6.2). If everyone shouted their successes as loudly as the minority shouts their failures, then RedHat would be overwhelmed with positives (and deaf).
I give a standing ovation for the RH 7.0 release.
Re:Folks, the story is WRONG. (Score:5)
The original "bug" is equivalent to someone replying to "I'm having (some problem) with Linux" with "I upgraded my Linux to Windows 2000 and the problem went away," here. I can't believe this was posted as a story; it's ridiculous.
We Don't Know! (Score:2)
Cost of the six MS CD's that do the same thing, until you try to upgrade MS Explorer, Oh hundreds of dollars. OS $100, web server "pro edition" you tell me, Visual Studio who cares, spreadsheet editors, mail servers, DNS.... Way too much money. The days you spend installing it will never be recovered. Documentation, source, not available ever. How many bugs will you find? Tell me when you get to the bottom of your wallet. I had far fewer problems with Red Hat 6.0 and Debian 2.2 than I've ever had with any of MS's pathetic bloatware BSoD producer. Whip! get back on that upgrade treadmill.
You could get a mac or even a sun.
Where are all of these MicroTurds comming from? Has something shifted in the ORedmond Cloud, sending a storm of them down on our heads? What have we done to deserve such posts? Surely the low sales of Win2k were not intedned to disturb the rest of the computing universe?
Why am I responding to such a troll? Because I'm supposed to be doing my homework and it is boring!
Gee, I guess it's not just Microsoft eh ? (Score:2)
For reference, I'm a FreeBSD guy, not a big MCSE Microsoft whore. I just don't like all the fscking hyprocricy. Critisize Microsoft for something they alone are guilty for. If you make fun of something because it has bugs, and you don't understand that the bigger the project, the more the bugs, then you're exposing yourself as someone who doesn't know shit about programming.
Moderate this down if you must, I know it could be considered flame-bait, but consider what I've said here. I'm not trolling, I am challenging the Linux community to respond the same way to Red Hat as it did to Microsoft when Windows 2000 came out.
Annoyed, But Calm (Score:5)
Now, some very hard choices were made for this release, things like i18n support were desperately needed, and so we have a gcc snapshot as the complier. Somehow this makes us evil, whatever. People want 2.4.x asap, and It will likely land before the next release, so we linked against 2.4 headers, so that it can droped in later. Again, evil, I know, how could we even try to make upgrade easier?
Of course, an older gcc is provided as 'kgcc' so that you can compile your kernels.
Okay, what, exactly, do we ship from Red Hat? Why, we ship 2.5 GIGS worth of community developed software in Red Hat Linux 7. THe bugs we track, for the most part, for the OVERWHELMING part, are not in Red Hat written code, they are in community code. I say this with confidence, because most of the software is community code.
Let me ask you, how many times have you heard about a bug in 'screen'? The number is not small, and every one we know about goes into bugzilla, and gets closed when it is decided that either a) it is fixed, or b) we can't fix it. Now, screen is one of many hundreds of packages.
I am very upset with this style of journalism: "Red Hat 7 Infested With Bugs", honestly, is this a tabloid? Anyone who has ever used a bug tracking system KNOWS how this sort of thing goes, and most of those bugs are in everyone else's distros as well, the only differance is that people are shouting about our counting them. So ask yourself, what does it accomplish by posting a story with a title like this, knowing that CmdrTaco understands everything I've just said?
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
Re:Its been causing me grief (Score:3)
You need to edit the kernel Makefile and add the line CC=kgcc (making sure that kgcc is installed on your system). kernel compilations will then proceed without problems.
Although this is surprising to many users, it's actually a good idea. The linux kernel stresses a compiler in ways that a regular program (even something like all of gnome) just can't do. Kernel compilation demands correctness of inlined functions, or preprocessor command parsing, of lock orders. Basically, the kernel uses C as a convenient macro language for assembly much of the time. The compiler's job is to faithfully translate.
Given all of that, the compiler that you want for general purpose compilation is not necessarily the compiler that compiles the kernel best. The kernel and compilers co-evolve. If you follow either the linux-kernel list or any of the gcc or libc lists, you will see that when bugs turn up with kernel compilation, it is as often the case that there is a libc or a gcc bug as a kernel bug. These bugs frequently only turn up in the context of a kernel compile (because who the hell else would do something like that?!?)
Finally, on the subject of the redhat release: RedHat did some dubious things (calling their gcc gcc 2.96 when 2.96 just doesn't exist, thereby forcing the gcc project to renumber their release to 2.97 just to catch any RedHat bugs, eg.). However, I'm steadily impressed by Redhat as a distro (flame me if you want, I don't care). Redhat is a commercial distribution but they release *all* the software they develop as gpl open source (and have set the tone among other distributors to do the same), and have struck a good balance between novelty and stability.
Anyway, that's how to solve your kernel compiling problem (among lots of other stuff).
Its been causing me grief (Score:2)
It was working great. I wanted to update it, so I redirected mail traffic to the NT mailserver (which I use when my exim one isn't up), and tried to do an update using an over-the-lan FTP install from another machine which had everything downloaded. (thats the only real way to get files to this box, its got no cdrom, I don't have a burner, etc)
Oops.
That rather happily trashed my existing install and made it unbootable by mysteriously dying halfway through. Couldn't get things to come back properly after that.
No big deal, its a testbed box really. So I trashed it, and did a clean install.
Got things back up and running smoothly. Got OpenSSH running again smoothly. Gotta say I like Sawfish. Tried to compile a 2.2.17 kernel to get rid of a lot of the crap that comes by default with RH that I just don't want.
With all kinds of wacky warnings and errors, that failed.
No biggie, figuring something was just wacky, I went back to 2.2.16 that had been working so well for me in RH6.2.
That will compile, but when I do "make modules", there is some other wacky "pasting token" errors, and it fails.
By now I'm starting to get a bit frustrated. Not being a programmer, I don't really know what to do. It just worked before, and now it just doesn't.
So how does this get filed? If there is a bug, I have no idea just where it is. Maybe its in the new version of GCC, maybe its somewhere else. I don't know, and I don't know how to find out. But somewhere, something is wrong, since it worked flawlessly on 6.2 not three hours earlier. I don't think its anything I did, since I did a clean install this system is very much a stock install and not like the ragtag wacky mix of stuff that my 6.2 install had become.
So I dunno, I'm finding it to be a nice release with this one very nagging issue. Everything else has been flawless (well, OpenSSH doesn't like public key encryption if strictmode is on, but I think I'm doing something wrong there).
Tomorrow, I'll go over the bug reports and see if there is something about this happening to somebody else.
I will say that aside from compiling stuff, I'm really liking RH7.0.
(tomorrow I'm also going to see if I can compile exim, if I can't do that, then I'll probabl have to drop back down to RH6.2 until this can be figured out, because I really prefer exim over the NT mailserver I've got working right now.)
sorry about the rambling nature, its late.
Oh please... (Score:3)
Do a smaller install, or remove the unwanted stuff.
The reason it takes up more space is for instance that the SQL-part has been expanded with MySQL, as it has been made GPL. There are A LOT of new multimedia-applications etc.
If you installed without regard to this fact, you ended up with BOTH PostgreSQL AND MySQL, and this duplication in most other areas as well.
Please try to do a more minimal install before you scream "bloat".
not quite... (Score:2)
Not quite. Debian unstable is too fast-paced for my taste. I've run it for a couple years, so I know what I'm talking about. It's mostly solid, but with ocassional glitches which can be very annoying. The problem is that it essentially encourages yous to upgrade everything, even the very basic OS stuff, every few days.
The middle ground I think would be FreeBSD (which I just started running on a new machine). The separation between the base system and the ports really makes sense; the ports are being upgraded constantly, while the base system is on a slower release schedule (but ages faster than Debian stable). Some time ago on the debian-devel list suggested splitting Debian into several independently managed collections to speed things up, which happens to be similar to what FreeBSD has in place.
But still, people should keep an eye on the Debian experimental testing distribution [debian.org], which aims to be intermediate between stable and unstable. The page doesn't seem to have been updated in a while, though.
Re:Use your intelligence or use Windows (Score:2)
Why do people keep saying this? It is indeed currently true for many programs, but it should not be. I am continually amazed by the number of people that just accept "never use x.0 versions, because they're going to be buggy". Software should be tested extensively before a x.0 release, and the new major version number only applied when the program is ready.
</rant>
Now, I've never used Redhat, so I'm not really qualified to comment on it, but I like the way Debian releases. When they put out a new "stable" release, it has gone through extensive public testing. There are still things that fixed subsequently--nobody is ever going to be perfect--but the problems are very few.
--Phil (I'm going to have to install Redhat one of these days, just so I can compare it to Debian.)
Re:Broken Links In News Item Again? (Score:2)
Debian, Redhat.. Middle ground (Score:3)
Haven't noticed any on my end (Score:2)
Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate
Re:I've been doing fine... (Score:2)
Same here. I downloaded the 2 iso's from ibiblio.org, did a clean install of the old Dell workstation at work, and couldn't be happier. I'm actually installing it on an old HP Vectra 486/25NI upgraded with a Pentium OverDrive chip, with 3 NIC's. Why would I do such a thing? Download the latest 2.4.0-test kernel, get the user space iptables code, and go to town.
As for the servers at work, yes, they will not be upgraded to 7.0 for at least a little while. Each .0 release, IMO, has gotten better by a factor of 10.
As for the number of bugs, all I'm concerned about are 1. the showstoppers, and 2. the security bugs. So far, I haven't seen any (doesn't mean they aren't there, but I haven't been bitten by one yet).
Re:Double oh Red Hat. Kernel 2.4.0 and XFree86 4.0 (Score:2)
Re:Should I file a bug for "Great Product"? (Score:2)
Obviously you did not try to configure your Samba server after you installed Red Hat 7.0 (from scratch, after giving up on the upgrade) and found that a) the Samba configurator has disappeared from Linuxconf, and b) the Samba configurator menu item on the 'foot' menu starts up a Netscape browser pointed at http://home.netscape.com rather than doing anything sensible.
'Nuff said. I'm disappointed.
-E
Re:Debian, Redhat.. Middle ground (Score:4)
When the final for Debian came out last month, I had to upgrade exactly one package on my system from the unstable tree.
The bugginess of x.0 releases needs to be explicit (Score:2)
- Joe
Re:I've been doing fine... (Score:2)
I suspect the real reason this story exists is because Rob and co are known Debian bigots, but Slashdot conspiracy theories are so tiresome
A better compromise still (Score:2)
--
Article Category (Score:2)
Re:Debian, Redhat.. Middle ground (Score:2)
Half the functionality of the API? Hang on - how many languages, API's, etc are available right now, for free on Linux, and most of them are on the distro disks! And we have more and more RAD platforms being ported every year. I'll leave C# to you lot.
XFree86, I'll admit, is not perfect (yet), but it works for me, and seems as if it will get better (ie antialising, alpha etc, hopefully more stable). At least I can run apps on remote machines without having to get hold of PCAnywhere (which has caused innumerable headaches for remote s/w testers where I work). And we do have GUIs, thanks - lots of them. Diversity is the key here.
QNX is a totally different kettle of fish. It's not really designed to be a new Windows or Linux. Heck, it can't even do D'n'D. It's more for developing RT stuff and is focussed on being slimline. Win2K is still a hulk when it comes to booting. Even running Gnome I can be at a desktop long before my friend's 2K system.
We will get there on all fronts. 2K is the best from MS yet, but I've not been tempted back.
Extra Extra...Bugs crawl up RedHat's Ass (Score:3)
"Today, a newbie, in an experiment gone bad, allowed bugs to escape from bugzilla. They quickly escaped via the internet only to find a new host in RedHat."
Well, doesn't that suck. Sounds like something right out of one of the tabloids. A newbie pulls a bogus figure of his ass and gives it to RedHat.
Yesterday, I was comptemplating ugrading to 7.0 from 6.1 (which has run flawlessly for me). Then, I read some BS about 2500 bugs and instead decided to wait with my upgrade until 7.1. This morning, revised figures are posted by people that understand the process a wee bit more. Those new numbers come in around under 200 bugs.
200 bugs in a release as large as RH 7? Wow. If only most commercial software shipped with as few bugs. Take into consideration that most of these bugs are probably in community written code rather than RedHat written code. These are mostly bugs we've come to live with and are probably being patched as I write this.
What's a shame is that the original story will probably be picked up by MSNBC, CNN or some other news agency and the revised figures will not. Thus, people who may have upgraded or purchaced 7.0 may not do so now. Instead, they may continue to view Linux, in general, as buggy software that can not be trusted. Articles like this only perpetuate this myth.
I only hope that before posting potentially damaging material, that somebody actually check the figures before they are posted to the public. It strikes me as poor journalism, a disservice to the community and utter criminal negligience to do otherwise.
BTW...I'm going to upgrade to 7.0 today.
RD
Correct Links (Score:3)
RedHat released to soon (Score:2)
Mistake...
It seems to me this was bottom up made to be a 2.4 system all ready to go. It's shipped before the pacages it relys on are ready.
I understand why RedHat 7 was made this way what I don't understand is why they released it NOW...
If this is a race... then declare RedHat disqualifyed for jumpping the gun...
Re:Which 2500 bugs ? (Score:2)
Grr - so that's why I had to fix two things in the Blackbox source to get it to compile? Oh whell.
Re:Debian, Redhat.. Middle ground (Score:4)
Microsoft investors are as thick-skinned as their users. Their precious good software company can't fail them. It's their hardware causing the daily BSOD.
Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate
My Experience w/RedHat 7.0 on 2 Computers (Score:3)
Computer 1: It's a Pentium III 550 HP NetServer.
SCSI 2 w/512 megs Ram.
I spent the whole of last night trying to get it installed over the network (didn't work). Would hang in the final process of the installation. I finally waited for the ISO to download and then tried to re-install the system w/the CD.
Everything seemed to work fine. I went through the installation process and when it came time to reboot the machine it FROZE SOLID on the 'Initializing Swap Space' message in init level 1.
I then went through and re-installed it again w/different partition settings , etc . 3 times total when I finally gave up.
I re-installed the machine with RedHat 6.2 and it worked fine. So much for my daring attempt at a x.0 release
...
I have a home machine that I use as a development server and it is a Athlon 750 w/512 megs of ram. Not a SCSI system but a UDMA/66 IDE System.
The machine was able to install correctly, but the interesting thing is durring times of VERY heavy stress to the system.. (Seti@Home or 3D Screen Saver) the machine hard locks. I have been running Mandrake 7.0 on this machine for 4 months and have never had a lockup.
I am guessing that there is a problem somewhere in the kernel that they provided or one of the libraries that they have compiled in that is causing some of these problems.
I have read as well in the kernel mailing list that there is a bit of hoop-da-la about the version of the compiler that RedHat uses.
Now, they are trying to get support in for the 2.4.x kernel as why I am trying to be brave in installing the system as a x.0 release. I believe as it is a bit of a moving target for redhat, there should be a bit of patience and support for them.
I do expect to see a lot of problems and issues as the 2.4 kernel roles out and everyone makes the necesary transitions to make everything run very smooth.
My opinion is simple. If you want rock solid, no bugs.. or at least worked out stable distro's.. don't go with a release that is not only a x.0 release, but a 1 week old release.
Use soemthing that is tried and tested.. such as Debian X (I am not a debian user, but they are a bit slower to release and tend to be more reliable (from what I hear))
The nice thing about RH 7.0 is you can help them out. You can install it yourself (assuming it boots.. (see case 1)) and re-install packages, recompile the kernel.. etc.
It is nice having all the latest and greatest libraries and such installed. It seems that the unfortunatley my RH 6.2 servers are going to be running RH 6.2 much longer than I anticipated based on my initial reaction though. (I will wait for the 7.1 version for any more non-private use..)
Be easy on RH as they do contribute a lot to the comunity. I don't believe that they should be lynched for taking chances on new technologies.
--------------------
Re:Agreed! (Score:2)
Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate
I refer you to ... (Score:2)
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
Gah, bad slashdot ... (Score:2)
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
Re:Oh please... (Score:2)
Yup, a full RH install installs a crapload of stuff, some of them are quite big and most people don't use 'em. I always remove the latex stuff first for example, it's pretty big and I don't use it.
But I think a general problem is knowing what to delete. There are so many packages, half the time I'm not sure what something is, so I just leave it. And I'm fairly experienced with Linux. I'd hate to be a Linux newbie wondering around the package manager.
Re:Debian, Redhat.. Middle ground (Score:2)
Re:Haven't noticed any on my end (Score:2)
Red Hat 7.0: A fine release (Score:3)
* I expected the first XFree86 4.0 release to be a little wonky, but it works well! Handled both my Permedia and Voodoo3 cards just fine with no user intervention (though, it's annoying that my monitor was not recognized, but it never was under the older X either).
* They've adopted a SysV/Solaris-like set of symlinks for the rc files. I like this. They still use the Red Hat style of
* Disk labels in
* Just the right balance of new vs old software. The kernel is 2.2 (wise, even though 2.4.0-test is pretty darn stable as far as I can tell); I hear gcc is a snapshot release, but I have compiled a whole hell of a lot with it so far; latest GNOME goodies are nice (not quite Helixcode nice)
* No problems yet. I've installed on two systems. One was having problems under both Windows and Linux, and the upgrade did not help, but did not hurt. The other was a test system, where I wanted to play with squid, and all worked just fine.
Things that scare me overall:
* Big distribution for Red Hat
* Semi-graphical LILO ala Corel
* xntp becomes ntp, which breaks a lot of scripts, and it's not on disk1
Looks good for a
What Would ESR Do? (Score:2)
What would Eric S. Raymond do, if he were here right now?
You can bet he'd write a flame or two, that's what Eric S. Raymond'd do.
When Eric S. Raymond was in the Cathedral, writing proprietary code
He learned how much big business sucks, and wrote the GPL
When Eric S. Raymond was in the Congo, hunting killer apes
He used his magical flaming pen and trashed the KDE
When Eric S. Raymond traveled through time, to the year 3010
He fought and stopped the ghost of Bill Gates
Monopolizing the planet again.
What would Eric S. Raymond do if he were here right now?
You can bet he'd kick an ass or two, that's what Eric S. Raymond'd do.
Steven
Broken Links In News Item Again? (Score:3)
Someone forgot to insert the leading http:// protocol identifiers for the links in the story, and MSIE 5.5 (here) is generating goofy URLs by inserting http://slashdot.org/ in front of them there links!
Proper URLs:
Re:2500 bugs? (Score:2)
Re:Annoyed, But Calm (Score:2)
Be that as it may, 'Red Hat Linux' is treated and will be treated as a platform. Saying the bug is in "community software" so it's not your problem is ridiculous since the whole point of commercial distributions is adding value, so that the whole is much greater than the sum of its parts. You can't say "look how awesome our distro is" when things are good and then say "oh, that bug is not our problem" when things go bad.
If a distro is not adding value (by adding stability, ease of use, tech support, etc...) the distro is worthless.
Re:This is also much bigger than their last releas (Score:3)
Sure they should be held accountable, if they've truly released a horribly buggy sytem. But it doesn't sound like they have. Alan Cox, in his diary [linux.org.uk] says:
We're on an all nighter here, and RH7 aint helping (Score:2)
Argh.... oh well, we found a win box to use instead.
Still love you Red Hat... just a little frustrated right now.
OK: Adobe Photodelux 1.0 is good (Score:2)
All generalizations are false
Re:Should I file a bug for "Great Product"? (Score:2)
As for upgrading to a .0, my system at home is deliberately configured so I can blow away the root partition, install a new distribution, and be back up and running with minimal hassle. So I'll upgrade or re-install or whatever I want to do, thank you, and if it doesn't work, I'll blow it away and install something that does. Heck, I occasionally even blow Linux away and run FreeBSD (gasp, agh, hack!).
-E
One of those bugs bit me. (Score:2)
<O
( \
XPlay Tetris On Drugs [8m.com]!
Use your intelligence or use Windows (Score:2)
Using an X.0 release of just about anything for any mission critical, potentially embarassing and market image damaging application is just poor judgement, unless you're an absolute wiz at debugging code on the fly while the clock is ticking and customers are getting upset. There would have to be someing in 7.0 that's not in 6.2 to justify the risk of using unproven code on a production machine. How long did people use Win 3.0? Win95-nonOSR2? Win98-nonSE? NT-noSP's? With that number of bugs there must be lots of neat new stuff, but we never make pretentions of being so bloody good nobody should use anything else. As a professional I'd stick with 6.2 for serious work and test 7.0 in the lab untill enough eyeballs have enough time to scrutinize the code. This IS open source, release early, release often.
1) Cheap
2) Good
3) Fast - choose any two.
4. Nested DPMI programs limited to 2 (Score:2)
<O
( \
XPlay Tetris On Drugs [8m.com]!
Re:Goddam apologists (Score:2)
Ever feel like you're wrestling a rhinocerous by posting comments like this?
Re:Debian, Redhat.. Middle ground (Score:2)
RedHat comes out with an OS with over 2,000 documented bugs by the public. Why should anyone get Linux if it has more bugs than Windows? The whole point why I originally tried Linux was stability. I don't care about "free" software, either in the "beer" or "freedom" way - I'll pay for a different OS if it's better.
I LOVE how you downplay this (Score:2)
Well you know what they say... (Score:2)
worse is better. [ttp]
"Free your mind and your ass will follow"
Re:Anything new is going to have bugs (Score:2)
Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate
Release early. Release often. (Score:2)
Yes, Red Hat should have done a better job at clearing out the bugs from the 7.0 distro before they released it but the fact of the matter is is that the open source community thrives on the "Release early, Release often" philosophy. They deserve our ire if they are not able to respond to the bugs and get us a clean 7.1 sometime soon but not for putting together a whole new version of their distro and the bugs that come with that.
As for people who slapped 7.0 on production servers before giving the new version a few weeks to season or be tested, you get what you deserve. Now everyone do your part and beat on your favorite distros releases right after they are released and at very least submit bug reports and at very worse offer a patch. It's the community effort that makes us strong.
Re:W2k? Good? What are you smoking? (Score:2)
If you're a programmer, you'd welcome some of the things they fixed from NT4.
Re:4. Nested DPMI programs limited to 2 (Score:2)
Now go and buy Visual C++ like uncle Bill tells you to do.
Re:Wait, hold up (Score:2)
Why am I buying Linux?
Because Linux is good.
Why are you buying Mandrake / SuSE / Debian / whatever? Because Red Hat 7.0 is bad.
My mom is not a Karma whore!
Re:Hear hear! (Score:2)
Heh. I'm capped at 50 -- can we talk?
Re:We Don't Know! (Score:2)
techmag.org is fun, if you want slashdot in French. They post some fine stories, but don't have many posters.
By the way, what's up with mod points? I got a box that says "No Score +1 Bonus". While it's flattering and I do try, I hardly think everything I say is "informative." Oh well.
Re:Well you know what they say... (Score:3)
Oops. I meant to slashdot jwz [jwz.org] :)
"Free your mind and your ass will follow"
2500 bugs? (Score:3)
Seriously guys, at least check your numbers
-------------
Re:Wait, hold up (Score:2)
Bullshit. You simply can't release an operating system with just one user-visible bug, no matter how good your quality control is. You just can't test every possible combination of hardware and software out there that might be used.
A link that works correctly (Score:2)
Thanks you slashcode for borking the previous link and cutting off 40 bugs.
-------------
Well, it's 2.4-ready... (Score:2)
Re:Goddam apologists (Score:2)
No QA? Not! (Score:3)
A lot of work went into this release. I was on the beta team for this release, and there were a bunch of people working on a lot of different things to get this as ready as possible. I'm still running one beta version on a laptop and another on my desktop at home, and both are working just fine with everything I do with only two exceptions:
Are there bugs? Yep. Has there ever been a bug free OS release? Nope.
Apple and Oranges (Score:2)
Re:Debian, Redhat.. Middle ground (Score:2)
And I can't use the 98/NT drivers either, without the system utterly shitting itself. (Safe mode not enough, I'm talking boot disk and ripping the driver files right out). Likewise with my SonicVortex 2 - which had some godawful beta install process (i.e. it wasn't a process, required you to hand delete files from Windows DLL cache etc, and still wasn't evenly remotely fully featured) - before Aureal went bankrupt and Videologic told everyone they were discontinuing driver development. Goddamn it.
Re:Goddam apologists (Score:3)
The Open Source movement - if you are to be believed, in its 'infancy' since the 60's - has plenty of both.
Re:OK, We are sincere. so... (Score:2)
Contrary to your analogy regarding the weekly flavor of Windows 98, the frequency of fixes from RedHat come a much slower pace but the response time to a known problem is significantly faster.
While that may sound like a contadiction, the fact remains that RedHat has shown a perpensity to fix problems in their distributions in a timely manner. Unlike Windows updates, these fixes are highly publicized and easy to obtain.
Then, there is the question that if the problems are not in their code but rather in Open Sourced code, do they really have the obligation to fix it or is it merely a courtesy to fix it? Should they be held responsible for fixing every bug in somebody elses code? I would think not.
Knowledgable users should be aware of issues in any program they run. Hell, there are plenty of places to see what problems exists for most programs. Right?
With any software venture, there are always bound to be issues. When you have a commerical product were timelines and profits come into play, products may be released before they are 100% perfect. Perfection has always been the luxury of researchers and hobbiests.
So, I'll stand with RedHat on this one. Where I don't agree with them is on the glibc controversy.
RD
RH 7.0 == Bloatware (Score:2)
Just kinda found this funny ... (Score:2)
then a guy from redhat replied ...
Enjoy [slashdot.org]
Re:Goddam apologists (Score:2)
Not sure why I'm into rhino wrestling these days, but your description is apt.
Re:Wait, hold up (Score:3)
I've been doing fine... (Score:5)
By contrast, I've seen significantly more problems with Mandrake 7.1, which was frighteningly down towards the Windows end of the quality-o-meter. That was a big let down, since Mandrake 7.0 had given our LUG such a smooth installfest last year. At least with Red Hat 5 and 6, the progression from "buggy" to "rock-solid" was steadily upward.
Re:2500?? I get 254! (Score:2)
That's because those dirty sneaky nogoodniks down at RedHat are commiting the heretical sin of *gasp* trying to make money. We all know from reading the sacred gospel according to St. Richard and St. Eric that information wants to be FREE, damnit! How DARE they attempt to charge people for their product! Those capitalist pigs and their evil corporation are sell-outs who are betraying the entire blessed Free Software Movement!
"The axiom 'An honest man has nothing to fear from the police'
Re:This is also much bigger than their last releas (Score:2)
In many ways, I think that the .0 releases are rather akin to Microsoft's 'public beta' releases (but with fewer bugs than M$'s final releases). There probably wouldn't be much of an issue to make of it if RH wasn't stamping out disks and selling them as a commercial distributions.
`ø,,ø`ø,,ø!
How many people have actually tried it? (Score:2)
However, there have been a few minor glitches that I wonder about. I tried using LinuxConf to set my static IP address, and it wouldn't find the DNS servers (but incoming traffic was fine). Finally I went back to the old Control Panel and used Network config and it worked fine.
I think bugs are to be expected by now in a
I had high hopes that maybe RH would break the trend and not have a buggy
Still the network configuration problem and a few other oddities definitely are starting to make me consider trying something else, like debian perhaps.
Spyky
Pot calling the kettle (Score:2)
So, just who's full of "Creepy crawly slimey, icky stickey, ucky yucky BUGS ?
`ø,,ø`ø,,ø!
Re:Haven't noticed any on my end (Score:2)
When I want an OS by a monopolistic company that has APIs that are piles of steaming horse dung and wants to lock me into using their system forever, I'll use Windows.
As for RH 7.0's bugginess, I'm rather apalled. I may switch distributions over this. At least I have a choice.
this indicates growth in the eyeball market (Score:2)
This is open source. Help fix bugs. Stop bitching.
Re:Goddam apologists (Score:2)
I see a correlation! (Score:2)
Re:Debian, Redhat.. Middle ground (Score:5)
The actual number on bugzilla is more like 200 (sloppy slashdot journalism again) and most of those are classified as duplicates or nota (Not a Bug). In addition you have to realize that RedHat is FAR more than a Windows release - it includes hundreds of packages utilities applications and so on tha would cost you many thousands of dollars to duplicate (if you could) on a Windows box. This additional functionality on will of course increase the complexity of delivering a bug pree integrartion.
Buggy Distros Undermine Linux Advocacy. (Score:2)
Indeed. While I'll admit, I haven't tried out RH7, I'm familiar with RH6.
A little too familiar.
When I first tried out Linux a few months ago, I'd been told that it was stable and easy to get running. It would install as easily as Windows 95, it would never crash, and I figured with my previous UNIX user experience, it'd be no big deal. I've never been scared by a shell prompt.
I was given a copy of RH6 by a friend. Now, you'll note, I'm a little more savvy than the balding accountant grabbing the impulse-buy at Fry's. I knew 6.0 wouldn't be as stable as the then-current 6.1, but I also didn't have a CD burner at the time, nor did I have high-speed Internet access with which to download RH6.1.
I'm glad it was Red Hat. Its apparent popularity makes it easy to find information and support; it seems every Linux usr knows RH. And since this machine was my first root prompt, it was nice to have friendly and helpful people to help me out through the newsgroups and stuff.
But I can't believe the absolute crap I went through making RH6 work! The worst part of it had to be getting two Allied Telesyn AT-1500 ISA cards to work in the same machine. I did everything that the How-tos told me to do; everything worked great when I tossed a HD with Windows onto the system. Nothing worked under RH6. I finally gave up and got two PCI adapters which worked first shot.
Interestingly enough, when I upgraded that machine to RH6.2, I tossed in my old Allied Telesyns. They worked instantly.
How about having PCMCIA slot services crash your VESA bus 486 desktop (even though the installer specifically asked if you wanted PCMCIA services installed, and you said NO)? How about the damned LILO >1,024 cylinder bug? How about an installer that figures out that you've got a monochrome VGA monitor and accordingly changes the color scheme such that the text and the background are the same color?
I recognize that Red Hat has to please investors. But all the Linux advocacy in the world isn't going to help users, less persistent than I am, who pick up Linux, give it a whirl, and discover that it's as flaky as a Microsoft product. (Remember, a new user knows only "Linux", and probably won't much grasp the concept of the different distributions.)
While I remain satisfied with their product (from the perspective of a relatively new Linux user who still needs spoon-feeding occasionally), Red Hat simply *has* to be more careful.
If 7.0 sucks as badly as Hedwig, they could alienate a lot of people and literally undermine the whole Linux community.
Which 2500 bugs ? (Score:2)
Many install bugs, most of them due to *bad* CDs (and not yet closed)
Many minor bugs (kind of log of crond is redirected to
Few missing drivers bugs (eata seems a major one, here)
Few non-distro related bugs (ie: gnome bugs, etc, etc)
Some related to the upgrade of gcc, which now refuses to compile some bad c++ code.
Sure, there are problem, there are people that cannot install, but nothing huge.
Btw, the guy that is linked from the slashdot story appear on several bug reports doing some finger-pointing. Strange, isnt'it ?
Cheers,
--fred
Oh, come on... (Score:2)
Bullshit. You can't release an operating system of that size and scope with only one bug visible "in practice."
Nitpicking sucks. Don't do it.
Re:Wait, hold up (Score:2)
Software engineering methodology isn't really my forte, but your argument still sounds fishy to me.
When people describe bugs in terms of LOC, they're usually doing post-mortem analysis on the bugs. In other words, they find a problem in a line of code, fix it, add a notch to their count, and move on.
I don't know how they're reporting the bugs for RedHat, but I'd be very surprised if they were using the same methodology. If they were, the implication would be that bugs get fixed way faster than they're likely to in the real world. More likely, the bugs they're counting are those that manifest themselves in tangible ways for users.
In other words, the behavior of a particular tool might be wacky in a given situation, I could count that as being one bug (for the weird condition under which the tool breaks), or as several bugs if the behavior could be traced back to several lines of code.
However, I'm really tired and only speaking from casual experience. Ingest with several grains of NaCl.
Re:This is also much bigger than their last releas (Score:2)
Folks, the story is WRONG. (Score:5)
If someone pulled that number out of bugzilla, they must not have known how to use it. If not, then they just pulled the number out of thin air.
I'm not saying that 149 possible bugs is "good", but it is more in line with what you might expect a week after a major release.