On 13 Oct 2002, Warren Togami wrote: > I think many of us just never used the distribution in certain ways > while it was a "beta", so certain things slipped through the cracks. > Despite this, I feel that this past beta cycle created an overall much > better product than the last x.0. The only thing I'm really dismayed > about is the broken RPM, which is deadly serious problem. =( don't get me wrong, i think the beta program is terrific, and i personally start using every beta the instant i can find a usable mirror. :-) but i think there are still things that can be improved. the major point i was making was that there seem to be flaws that are shipped with a new official release that make you wonder how on earth something like that could have been missed by (in this last case) three different betas. hwbrowser being one of them. (and, as i just thought of it, another significant omission was a graphical desktop menu editor. really, that's pretty important.) also, on a more philosophical note, perhaps it's not clear what it means to be a beta release. from what i understood for years, an "alpha" distro meant things were still in a major state of flux, there were still known bugs, nothing was guaranteed, and so on. "beta" on the other hand normally meant that things were stable, the major bugs were dealt with, time for remaining cosmetic changes, etc. most importantly, should "beta" imply what is essentially a feature freeze? it seemed that, as one went from beta to the next in this last release cycle, things were still changing underneath. if that's what's happening, should the release still be labelled as a "beta"? what frustrated me the most in this last cycle was the confusion regarding beta release names and mailing lists. the first beta was called "limbo" and there was a limbo mailing list. fair enough. but the second beta was *also* called limbo, and it used the *same* mailing list and the same bugzilla name. so how was one to know whether a bug was part of the previous or current beta, short of looking at the component version number (which, i submit, we shouldn't have to do.) to make matters worse, the third beta had a *different* name (null), yet continued to use the *same* mailing list (limbo), which was completely inconsistent. anyway, in a nutshell, i like being part of the beta testing process. i just wish red hat made the rules and policies clearer on how this worked and what it meant to be part of the process. and i also wish i had some real coffee at the moment, and not just decaf. rday
