Michael Hasenstein wrote:

When you buy a car it is exactly the same - the same brand, same name, same version number - but the manufacturers make it better if they can and no one of the buyers of the first cars of that line asks for an upgrade. After all, they got what they paid for, an xyz blabla (190 HP). Should possible minor improvements be delayed instead? Excuse me, that's the life cycle of _any_ product out there!!! As long as it's no substential change like an essential bugfix, which will be made available to everyone, in the upgrade directory, why not do it? Printing a new box or handbook anything like that because of some minor upgrades that seem convenient? Who shall pay for that? I don't see anything wrong here. I repeat, I've nothing to do with the decision process, these are ideas that I'd also have with out @suse.de From:-header.

Don't kid yourself. People will take cameras back to the store because they come out with a different strap. And believe me, car manufactures don't make major changes to the model in the middle of the year. They will fix a couple of serious safety hazards, and that is about it. They don't even dare change the model of light bulb used midyear, because that means when the bulb burns out, the dealer won't know which part to install. The same logic applies to software. One of the things everyone HATES about windows 95, is there are about 4 different flavors of it. Because Microsoft didn't use much in the way of version control. Now for example at AT&T we have the problem we'll install the official patches for Y2K problems and the machines won't work anymore, because they don't contain the version of software the patches are designed to be applied against. According to YaST there are about 2000 packages in SuSE 6.1. Of the few hundred I stalled, 241 changed. Which lets say, none of the ones I didn't install changed. That still means about 120f the distribution. Believe me, if you changed 120f a car design, you'd have to safety test it all over before you could legally sell it in any state. So even by your own analogy, SuSE needs to go though a long testing process before burning the new "MASTERS". There is a really big reason why people will complain if you start coming out with a bunch of minor versions, as you stated. But the exact same reasons still apply even if you don't change the version number. And you can't tell me all the changes where really needed for SuSE 6.1. was 'gcal' really seriously broken? Where there really a rash of mis-spelled words in the American English Dictionary, ...? No. Chances are little more changed in those packages beyond the author's comments. Now, here is a puzzle. How do I even know what the 200 or so packages I need to download and install onto my work computer? Clearly if they are important enough for the SuSE 6.1 distribution to be modified, then they are important enough for me to want to download. But I definitely don't want to install 5 CD's worth of software. And only 20 or so of the update RPM's are in the update directory. So, how do I know what to download? I definitely don't want to spend 4 or 5 hours trying to compare version numbers, so I can write a set of ZIP disks to bring to work. Bill -- To get out of this list, please send email to majordomo@suse.com with this text in its body: unsubscribe suse-linux-e Check out the SuSE-FAQ at <A HREF="http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/"><A HREF="http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/</A">http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/</A</A>> and the archive at <A HREF="http://www.suse.com/Mailinglists/suse-linux-e/index.html"><A HREF="http://www.suse.com/Mailinglists/suse-linux-e/index.html</A">http://www.suse.com/Mailinglists/suse-linux-e/index.html</A</A>>