Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (2255 mails)

[Richard Creighton <rccj@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu March 12 2009 3:41:28 pm Carlos E. R. wrote:
> Richard Creighton wrote:
> > On Wed March 11 2009 10:41:20 pm Fred A. Miller wrote:
> > > Larry Stotler wrote:
> ...
> > > > What's the point in us testing and providing feedback and making our
> > > > voices heard if we are ignored?  I'm now looking to move on.  10 years
> > > > of supporting SuSE for this.  11.1 is a broken piece of crap that I
> > > > don't even want to look at again.  If the devs don't give a crap about
> > > > what we have to say, then I know when I'm not wanted.  I pushed for
> > > > KDE3 to remain in 11.1 only to see if get screwed up if you don't do
> > > > anything but a standard install.
> > > > Looks like it's time to quit wasting our time Fred.
> > > 'Sure does look that way....UNfortunately.
> >
> > So, what do you propose?   Capitulation to the ones that shout the loudest? 
> >   Or, fighting for what is right?
>
> Yep.
>
> > IMO, SuSE is the closest thing to the best distro available, far from 
> > perfect but worth saving.
> > Puppy Linux is great for doing a lot with old, small systems.
>
> Not so small/old.
>
> I have an old machine, that currently "runs" SuSE 7.3, with only 32
> MiB. This will not run Puppy Linux, or so I read. For example, on the
> wikipedia:
>
> ] When the operating system boots, everything in the Puppy package
> ] uncompresses into a RAM area, the "ramdisk". The PC needs to have at
> ] least 128 MB of RAM (with no more than 8 MB shared video) for all of
> ] Puppy to load into the ramdisk. However, it is possible for it to
> ] run on a PC with only about 48 MB of RAM because part of the system
> ] can be kept on the hard drive, or in the worst case, left on the CD.
> ]
>
> So I can not run the installer. Maybe version 1 of puppy.
>
> > Ubuntu is  ok for newbies but relatively inflexible when compared to
> SuSE, IMO.
> > Debian is very good but I still prefer SuSE.
>
>
> And I have been told today that a Bugzilla I reported will not be
> solved because they consider my machine (P-IV, circa 2001) too old.
> So, Linux no longer supports old hardware :-(
Carlos,
I think you actually make my point.....SuSE is worth saving, it used to work, 
it is becoming bloated, it is largely becoming bloated because of poor 
programming practices such as including everything by default in the initial 
installation and by including libraries that are actually systems that contain 
too many unrelated subsystems that  become incorporated in other libraries that 
become inturn dependant and therefore contribute to the bloat and inability to 
support the older/smaller systems.   The idea of MODULES in the kernel to 
support the newer features and abilities of the new hardware and modules with 
the ability to support the existing/older legacy hardware is being 
bastardized/usurped by the dependency hell library mess we get by building too 
many 'default' layers of installed programs and features.   

One way that might be solved would be to have a minimal installation with a 
mostly 'naked' system that loads a bare system that utilizes whatever hardware 
it can detect (eg network, monitor, sound, etc) and then OFFERS a post 
installation session where the installation can be completed 'as is', 'Business 
office oriented', 'Multimedia oriented','experimental', ...etc where people can 
add the stuff like Beagle, Pulse audio (for those that want to experiment), the 
latest version of Gnome or KDE as opposed to the stable and proven version of 
3.5.x or whatever beta/alpha versions the devs would like to push for testing.  
 

The idea is that you don't make a release that contains a big glob of defaults 
that are 'bleeding edge' or untried packages and certainly not packages that 
replace well tried and stable versions as a default.   Such bleeding edge 
packages should go into the postinstallation session if the user wishes to 
install them.   

I liked your idea of any packages that *are* made defaults are made so by 
incorporating a STUB library AND whatever additional library or libraries 
needed to support the package.   That way, only the stub need be retained in 
the distro, all others can be removed because all other dependencies go through 
the stub....kinda like an API.

So, SuSE was worth saving....still should be, don't you think?
-- 

Richard
-- 
To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxx
For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@xxxxxxxxxxxx