RE: [SLE] SUSE 10.1 upgrade
![](https://seccdn.libravatar.org/avatar/2257ef8a28785e2e6ecbbd2ea331b7c1.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Anders Johansson [mailto:ajohansson@novell.com] replied to Steve:
On Thu, 2006-09-21 at 15:40 -0700, Steve Reilly wrote:
im not even sure if i can recommend 10.2 right now. i installed 10.2 alpha4 on a test box, and theyre doing some funky things with the menu system and such..... even thats broken at this point. i couldnt get it to work. tried updating, and the same problems exist..... brand new install, and dependency issues?, but, ill give them the benefit of the doubt........ it is not released yet.
Benefit of the doubt? Recommend it right now???
It is ALPHA! Alpha in computer science terms means "this is known not to work, don't install unless you are a tester or developer and are prepared for things to break and to give constructive feedback in the form of bug reports or patches"
Complaining about the non-working status of an alpha release basically is the same as saying you don't know what it is
That's exactly true, of course (both paragraphs...) When our company gives out an alpha product, the distribution is very limited - usually to the one or two customers who demanded the new feature set. They are working hand-in-hand with our engineers to ensure that the implementation does what they need, fits with their own applications, etc. They participate in two, three, however-many alphas it takes to ensure that the beta version will be working as required. The beta is what our QA department tests, to ensure that: a) the new stuff works in general situations (i.e. as other customers might use it), as well as in the specific situations of the driving customers b) everything else from before still works - nothing got broken while we were concentrating on getting the new stuff to work. As the product matures, the list of "test cases" that QA must perform and pass gets inexorably longer and more complex. They automate as much as possible, so as to a) get it all done in finite time b) ensure the repeatability of testing. The point, however, is that while alphas are almost guaranteed to be broken in a few ways, GA (general availability) releases are expected to have been prodded, poked, thumped and tested "six ways from Sunday" to ensure that _nothing_ goes out the door broken. Certainly nothing that absolutely everybody would use every day. So, something like the après-release updater grief in SUSE 10.1 was (should have been) horribly embarrassing, but all kinds of glitches and oversights in 10.2 alpha are merely expected, and not any cause for alarm. For me, 10.2 will be the first SuSE (er, I mean SUSE) release since 5.2 where I'll sit on my wallet for a couple of months after formal release, until I see which way it blows... or sucks. :-) Kevin The information contained in this electronic mail transmission may be privileged and confidential, and therefore, protected from disclosure. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by replying to this message and deleting it from your computer without copying or disclosing it.
participants (1)
-
mlist@safenet-inc.com