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Red Hat Interviewed about Red Hat Linux 7
theridersofrohirrim writes "Linuxtoday has a very interesting summary and some interviews with redhat staff, regarding redhat 7, gcc 2.96, and more. It also includes some embarassing (but justified in my opinion) comments for Slashdot's redhat 7 bug story. Linuxtoday's article can be found their site."
Linus has blessed an old version of gcc (ala egcs) as the stable version of gcc to build kernels, so RH includes it as "kgcc". But if you compile your own kernel, you knew that, right?
The big GCC complaint is that object files, *.o, won't be compatable between 2.95.2 and 3.0 - except for C (and Fortran?), so basically C++.
This means you can't distribute *.o files made in C++ from one OS to another.
Maybe some of you have had to do this before in your life, but I never have. And if you do, older versions of GCC are freely available for you to downgrade to (but if you're the type that sends C++ object files around, you knew that).
The ELF binaries that GCC makes are still 100% portable.
RH7 looks like it was made for 2.4.x kernels, but when they realized that 2.4.x was still down the road they decided to release it with 2.2.x.
If I were RH, I would have released it for two reason: (1) there comes a time when you must freeze something for QA and only do bug fixes, and from that point on there are no new features. If RH sat on 7.0 too long it would have been completely out-dated by the time 2.4.x came along.
And (2) releasing now means that they can drop 2.2.x support and start focusing properly on 2.4.x, and getting DRI/AGPGART/GLX/etc/etc worked in properly.
There have been 613 bugs logged against RH7 in Bugzilla (as of earlier today). Something like 287 of them are "NOTABUG" or "DUPE", and another 300 or so are "FIXED".
This says to me that out of everyone calling Red Hat unstable, and unusable, etc, etc, less than 600 people have taken the time to do something productive about it.
I, for one, am very happy to see that *someone* is still compiling and releasing bleeding-edge distros.
"Release early, release often" should be burned onto the foreheads of every single distro manager. It's the whole engine that powers Open Source.
And as for "GCC 2.96"... That's a great idea. The GCC folks have a really nasty-bad habit of living behind their ivory walls, and tossing a release over the gate once every *year* or so. Rubbish! Get it out there, let us use it, let us find the bugs!
And if the widespread adoption of a GCC newer than 2.7.8 finally convinces Linus to fix the hackery in the kernel that exploits non-standard GCC behaviour in older versions of the compiler, well, then so much the better.
Hey, newbies! One of the whole points of this "Linux" thing is to actively find and report software bugs, so that they can be fixed. Linux is a participatry experience, not a "product". Red Hat's "product" is the service of gathering up all the bleeding-edge stuff, testing it for a certain level of usability, and then packaging it in a convenient format for you to get at. To expect a distro- any distro - to be bug-free is to miss the whole point!
I *strongly* recommend starting with a RedHat *.0 release - you get to see the newest stuff, and you get to actually contribute to the process.
Go Red Hat! The distribution for people with balls!
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
It also includes some embarassing (but justified in my opinion) comments for Slashdot's redhat 7 bug story.
I know that the slashdot Editors/Hemos/etc say they're overworked & don't have time to check their facts, but just how much damage do you think that the original story that slashdot posted did?
The mainstream media (who don't know any better) often look to slashdot as a source for stories - I just wonder how much trouble it stirred up for no apparent reason? Isn't that FUD?
I've been using RH7 for a few days & have found it to be a good, if not a little bloated, distribution.
Please, please, please start checking the stories before you post them.....
Half the people seem to want "innovation" (or bleeding at the edges -- what you call it is a matter of opinion) and the other half want "stability" (or lagging behind the times, ditto). It's just not possible to satisfy both factions at the same time.
.0 releases if they knew that in a couple of weeks' time there would be a .0.1 patch to deal with some of the running wounds.
Instead of compromise, how about adopting a 3-digit release scheme instead? Ie. let the label "7.0" be the thing that appears on pretty RH box fronts, but let it be 7.0.X in reality, depending on the date of production. If the X is available as a patch upgrade on the RH website, nobody loses.
This would satisfy the release early and often brigade, while at the same time it would reduce the software sellers' nightmare of carrying rapidly obsoleting stock, and production houses would be more likely to upgrade to new
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Can you show me the server-side code release for their fancy little Update-Agent?
The GPL doesn't specify that you have to give the source to anyone who ask for it, only to those who you distribute your software to. So, you distribute a piece of software, you distribute the code too.
As far as we know, the server-side Update-Agent could be GPL, and RedHat would still have no obligation to give out the source code.
Je ne parle pas francais.
I don't know what the ruckus is all about. With the release of 7.0, more posts were made about "I hope it's not as buggy as 6.0!" and "I'll wait for the .1 release!" then most others, yet people still insist on installing and then complaining? (loudly, rudely)
The introduction of gcc was justified to me. Perhaps not to you, but I understand their reasoning. The inclusion of kgcc should have been enough; RTFM.
I understand that without complaints problems may not get solved, but there's probably better ways to spend your energy - utilizing Bugzilla and the like. If all you do is cause the RedHat crew to expend energy to answer allegations of abuse and bugs, then you're taking them away from SOLVING the problems.
And in either case, it simply goes to prove that you should *ALWAYS* wait for a service pack or release greater than 0.. *grin*
The LinuxToday article just goes to prove that those of us who post on Slashdot have greater impact than we may realize, for good or ill.
-- Talonius
My reality check bounced.
Wrong. Among the things I can think of off the top of my head (and considering I use Debian, I'm sure there are lots more that I can't think of) include XFree 4, a brand-spanking new RPM (4.0, IIRC), and a filesystem reorganization to make things FHS compliant. All of these are major changes, striking at the core of how the distro works and is installed, and as a result merit a new release. Please, take the time to actually find things out before you post.
~luge(frustrated that by the time I post this will have been moderated up as "interesting" instead of down as flamebait)
IAAL,BIANLY
Can you find one quality hacker that wouldn't put the latest gcc up on their own system, disregarding what it might do until it does it -- and then telling you that knowledge of the fix is just part of what any self-respecting admin should know anyway?
The upset stomach that /. has had over 7.0 is just fanatical kiddies trying to put down one distro over another. Too bad their wanking is going to hurt the entire Linux community. Red Hat trading at $5/share doesn't mean anything to these jokers, until they graduate and are forced to slave over a Win2003 "console".
And the value of /. is diminished by such ranting. I agree with Taco's recent chat denying any actual level of responsibility. But that means all the rest of us have to be *very* responsible. *Mostly* moderators and meta-moderators.
If the community is going to reward anti-Red Hat group-think, or even anti-MS group-think, the community will pay dearly. People, please moderate and meta-moderate well...
--
Seems that the folks at RH have some very good reasons for what they did. The gcc bit is still a bit bothersome though. They should have communicated better with the GCC dev team, otherwise...
/. According to Troan First of all, the 2,500 number was all of the open bugs in our ticket system for all releases of all products. It includes engineering requests as well as our engineers internal todo lists for future releases. Although I didn't follow the original slash posting (thought it was pretty low S:N ratio) and haven't checked the bug list personally, if what he says is true then the poster and in part the /. community has done a disservice to RH. Sensationalistic journalism is all to prevelant elsewhere we shouldn't support it here. Unfortunately too many people, especially the other news mongers out there dont delve very deep into comments (if at all) which just spreads the misinformation.
The thing that gets me is the bit about 2500 bugs etc. Especially the reporting on