On Monday 25 November 2002 22:27, Mike A. Harris wrote: > I'm just surprised that so few people realize this, and sucker > themselves into believing it. Personally, I can't wait until > the distro ditches the idea of version numbered releases and goes > with something more modern, but wether or not that ever happens > is neither here nor there. Mike ... I do believe that there is something of value for the numeric number of releases. In general, we know that modules built on release (n-1).* will run on release n.* but that modules built on n.* will not run on release (n-1).*. Furthermore, there is generally more compatibily between the "minor" releases of a "major" release than between major releases. While this information is useful to me and some others, I am not sure that users in general appreciate this. Microsoft has conditioned users to expect that anything that ran on old versions of DOS or Windows will still run on the latest version. I do not believe that this situation is completely true but I do believe that this is the user expectation. I am not sure what you mean by "something more modern". Currently, they seem to have a "release" which they name (Windows 2000, Windows XP, etc.) and then minor releases which they name "service packages" (sp1, sp2, etc.) Since they do release new function in services packages, this scheme could work. On the up side, this approach could users something "easy" to bring their system "up to date") and, assuming each "service package" was rigerously put through a beta/QA test cycle, the service pack would be "known" good. On the down side, Red Hat usually adds some new device support in their releases. I can foresee a system which the major release could not be install on new hardware because the device support was in a service package. If Red Hat did use such a major release/service package approach, I cann see them issuing service packages AND integrated releases with the major rlease integrated with a service package (too expensive and duplicative of effort). However, I do believe it is worth some effort re-thinking how to do distro packaging and release. -- Gene _______________________________________________ xfree86-list mailing list xfree86-list@redhat.com https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/xfree86-list IRC: #xfree86 on irc.redhat.com
