Re: What is up with Redhat 7.0?

From: Marc Lehmann (pcg@goof.com)
Date: Sat Sep 30 2000 - 10:16:54 EST


On Sat, Sep 30, 2000 at 03:58:20PM +0100, Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> wrote:
> > a broken, experimental, unreleased compiler as if it were an official
> > version. Worse, creating a maintainance nightmare for almost everybody by
>
> They released a supported ex-Cygnus people approved compiler.

Which still makes it an broken, experimental, unreleased and unofficial
compiler, with all the consequences I said.

> possible, but 2.95 isnt binary compatible with anything past or future and

Not true, but even if it were, 2.95 is compatible to all other
distributions, a fine point easy to overlook. And the next gcc release
will be worse, so where is the logic behind choosing a compiler not
compatibly to ANYTHING, except if trying to orce customers to stick to
redhat?

> Want to complain about the USB code, flame the SuSE people who did the backport
> work first, or perhaps you'd prefer to insult the volunteers who wrote most of
> the USB code initially ?

You somehow miss the relations, unfortunately. The usb code if
self-contained and does not affect every program compiled with it.

> Want to complain about the DRM/AGP code, then flame Xfree86 and
> precision insight who did that work, many of them as volunteers ..

Same here.

> to flame SuSE, Conectiva, and especially Mandrake as well - all of them made
> up of hardworking people trying to do what they think is best for Linux. I

Indeed. So why does redhat so a remarkably *bad* job at the same? SuSE for
example did *not* make their distribution incompatible to all others to
try to tie customers to them.

> *want* people to be prepared to ship new and innovative things.

gcc-2.96 is not innovative, it simply does not exist, only in the
unofficial redhat version. So the best thing one could say is that redhat
forked their version of gcc. That's not innovative, that's a marketing
trick:

gcc-2.96 (remember that this thing is not precisely defined as no such
release exists) produces worse code, has more bugs and is less compatible
than 2.95, so where is the innovation? In copying marketing tricks from
other companies? Very innovative for a gnu/linux company indeed.

> you really want a world where you cannot buy a distribution with 2.2 that
> has Reiserfs because Alan Cox refused to merge it with the mainstream ?

It would be better than a world where I cannot switch to another
distribution because vendors only support redhat and the binaries will not
run on the "competitors" linux' distros, forcing me to use redhat binutils,
redhat gcc, redhat libc and so on.

This is *exactly* what is happening with redhat. Comparing this mess with
an usb backport that does not at all cause these problems is missing the
point completely.

> > making redhat binary incompatibly to other linux distributions, therefore
> > effectively forking gnu/linux in a way unseen before.(*)
>
> The fact this was done to help binary compatibility aside ?

Well, if redhat really tried to do this they failed miserably. OTOH, maybe
the redhat people doing that were drugged, because every child could
deduce that using an experimental snapshot that is has a non-fixed and
changing ABI will not help binary compatibility.

> Let me metion the Nazi's. Now can the thread die ?

Aren't you paid by redhat? ;->

-- 
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      ---==---(_)__  __ ____  __       Marc Lehmann      +--
      --==---/ / _ \/ // /\ \/ /       pcg@opengroup.org |e|
      -=====/_/_//_/\_,_/ /_/\_\       XX11-RIPE         --+
    The choice of a GNU generation                       |
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