Deafening silence

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In thread starting with

http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/users/2010-March/367987.html

I stated a skewer of bugs. Geeks answered it was normal to have bugs
like, for at least 2 years now, "New Files" entering the clipboard
every time a new file is created. It would also be normal to have no
option to be advised of files being sent to Trash in Nautilus before
they join the 1000 ones already there, because they don't want to be
bothered with unchecking an option. They have no problem with
clipboard managers never working perfectly well, soon as they have a
sleuth of them: glipper, klipper, clipman, whatever. And so on.

I tell them audio doesn't get to my TV through HDMI. I tell them the
only BIOS option I have is setting the password. They don't have a
solution.

I ask if I'm being hacked, they answer that all this is normal. I tell
them that this bug mania is preventing Fedora/Linux from getting a
user base and, hence, more support, maybe collaboration, from
mobo/video cards manufacturers, they answer Linux is not McDonald and
I should fill bug reports.

Can developers possibly not notice for two years that "New File"
enters the clipboard and, with a strict minimum of brains, shouldn't
they come to the conclusion that trashing without asking is the road
to disaster.

They don't answer.

After 2 days in a complete mess, updates were provided clean today. I
checked if this would fix my mobo and sound problems. It didn't.

Last time I checked, Rahul Sundaram, a Red Hat employee, had himself a
bug that wasn't fixed for something like 6 months.

Despite all assurances that this is the way Linux doesn't work, I
can't help but getting nervous. Recently, I was watching a video at
YouTube and despite the modem light flashing, the video stopped
playing. Knowing how Flash security leaves to be desired, I jumped on
the modem switch. Then, I ran a speed test and saw there was a problem
with my connection: I was down to 20 kBps.

And this would be the buggy version of Fedora that RHEL Linux could be based on?

Says Distrowatch:

"At the time it seemed Red Hat was timing its Enterprise releases to
match every third Fedora release. If we look at Red Hat Linux 9 as
being Fedora Core 0, the schedule looked like this:

   1. FC 0 -> RHEL 3
   2. FC 3 -> RHEL 4
   3. FC 6 -> RHEL 5

It starts to look like a simple pattern matching test, doesn't it?
Obviously, following the pattern, we would expect Fedora 9 to herald
in RHEL 6. But it didn't. Instead of getting version 6, we got a
series of 5.x releases. Which is all well and good, but it doesn't get
the blood pumping. So what happened? I think Fedora 9 had more issues
than a prairie farm has gopher holes and Red Hat wisely decided to
wait until Fedora stabilized. Their Enterprise Linux 5 series was
doing the job and there wasn't any need to rush. Since then, we've
seen a steady improvement in the stability and polish of the Fedora
releases and I suspect RHEL 6 will be based either on Fedora 12 or 13,
the latter comes out in May. Red Hat has a summit coming up in June
and that strikes me as being a good time to demo a RHEL 6 beta."

http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20100308#qa

==================

I didn't follow Red Hat/Fedora development closely enough to be sure
that this makes sense but, with Fedora 12 working as it does now, I
say there definitely is a problem with the development model. Unless,
of course, Red Hat keeps all solutions up its sleeve or intends to
refer all its customers to bugzilla, at $80/year for unlimited calls,
they're going to go bankrupt with the release of RHEL 6...

This certainly would be a concern if Red Hat was facing only
yesterday's competitors, Canonical and Novell but, in hardly more than
year, yesterday's majors seem to have been pushed back to the minor
leagues.

As Wikipedia puts it:

"Google developers began coding the operating system (Chromw OS) in
2009, inspired by the growing popularity and lower-power consumption
of netbooks, and the realization that these small laptops had gotten
their name from their primary use: accessing the Internet.

(...)

Unlike Chromium OS, Chrome OS will be automatically updated to the
latest version.[11] InformationWeek reviewer Serdar Yegulalp wrote
that Chrome OS will be a product, developed to "a level of polish and
a degree of integration with its host hardware that Chromium OS does
not have by default,"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChromeOS#cite_note-15

IOW, they saw the little netbook and thought: "What a nice little toy
to bring the people to our servers!" Not only Google now has a
cellphone, it seems they also intend on having their netbook/tablet
and push it, just as their partners, to a degree of integration never
seen before. This thing won't be any harder to operate than your TV!

As there is still, maybe, a year of development to go, the product
looks already interesting. See:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANMrzw7JFzA

About security:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9WVmNfgjtQ&feature=channel>

Seeing this train on a fast track, Intel decided it was not to do like
the cows and watch it go by. They began building Moblin. But Moblin
was only for their processors and Google was also developing ARM CPUs.
No doubt they thought that they'd be better offering an equivalent
product and they joined forces with Nokia. Moblin + Naemo became
Meego.

This project doesn't seem as advanced as Chrome OS, but these people
believe in getting market share like you just wouldn't believe.
They'll move fast, though, against Google, it's going to be a harsh
fight.

You see, not only Google will give away its OS, which shouldn't need
much support, they apparently have plans to subsidize the hardware on
2 years subscriptions... Hey, that's better then free beer, it's like
getting paid to drink beer!

Of course, I'm not too sure most people on this list would entrust
their data to Google, even if it was just as a principle. But most
people won't care about this and it does seem to me that Chrome OS
and, maybe, Meego will soon define the paradigms of the industry.

Of course, you'll say this won't affect Red Hat much. Well, it remains
to be seen. Also, what will be Google's next move? I believe they have
some experience with servers that are more than mere toys. They have
get subsidized by states and countries, locations near cheap
electricity and cooling sources. And that's more than just experience
with an OS.

Then, there is Oracle. I believe they have some experience with
databases, no? They tried to offer support for Red Hat products but it
seems industry prefers to deal with the people who get their hands
dirty building the OS :) But now,got its hands on Solaris. If they
license it so that developers get interested, it might work. If it's
done fast.

All this to say that the scenery has changed a lot recently. Though,
compared to Canonical and Novell, Red Hat is certainly in a better
competitive position, it does seem to me a new strategy will have to
be developed, including a new development model where bugs will be
addressed more quickly.

When some people here say that it doesn't matter if Fedora has that
many bugs that never get addressed and that a vast user base would be
nothing but a nightmare, that Fedora is much better off cathering only
to geeks, and that Fedora representatives on this group play dead on
the sideline as if they were afraid of getting involved in a brawl, to
me, this silence is deafening.

Fortunately, we know that "Do no evil" is Google's motto. At others
companies, employees wake up in the morning wondering "What evil shall
I do today?" Not so at Google's.

Google only has plans. For instance, China being a very large and
promising market, they want to conquer it. The Chinese army is hacking
their servers to identify dissidents? They protest and say they'll
move out if ever.... whatever. But they stay and while they pretend
they're making representations to the Chinese government, the Chinese
governement says it has never heard from them and Google plays by
their rules.

Of course, here, we live in a democracy and it's absolutely impossible
that the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, the RCMP, the CSIS and so on, will
ever attempt to get information from Google. Still, I would kinda like
to have an alternative.

And, to tell you the truth, I ponder if there ever will be one. As for
Red Had, I'm wondering if they're not just eating their laurels,
watching the train go by.

Now, I do understand that some pople here will see this last stance as
an attack. It seems that, just in the Slackware and Debian groups, the
staunchest RH/Fedora advocates here are the ones who pretend the
development model is absolutely perfect, bugs are normal and nothing
should change.

Honestly, I never thought that I'd find this kind of communist planned
economy reasoning within the advocates of a company listed on the
NYSE. Of course, I'm not a geek, not even a suit, so I know nothing.
But, if you really get infuriated reading this, maybe you should
wonder if there's not some truth to my opinion.
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