Too bad it takes an AC post to even get a look at "the other side." I'm not saying that "the other side" is right, but they certainly deserve fair consideration...and, as the parent points out, the issue may not be as simple as it first seems. I sure I wish I had mod points right now.
I actually did a research report on the Therac-25 incident while I was in Software Engineering class a few semesters ago (I was also in Technical Writing at the time, so I could kill two assignments with one report!);-) The details of the incident(s) are actually quite fascinating and sometimes spine-chilling.
Here's the report in PDF if anyone's interested: reportfinal.pdf
I really have to come to Mandriva's defense on this one. My experience was completely the opposite of yours except for one point: I too installed Mandriva 2006 on my laptop (a Compaq Presario X1030US) mainly because of the advertised support for Centrino. It installed very smoothly, and the Centrino does indeed work wonderfully (even though I did have to point it to the correct file first).
KDE looks great with the included interfaces, WINE runs c-evo (my favorite strategy game) nearly perfectly with a single interface tweak (see the September/October forum for details) and all the other software I use (OpenOffice.org, Firefox, Gaim, Dia, Netbeans, etc.) was either included with the install or installed and worked with minimal effort. Battery life seems comparable to running under Windows and my widescreen display (1280x800) was correctly detected during installation. The system is quite responsive and runs speedily enough for me.
So I'm guessing your problems are laptop-specific and, I propose, not representative of Mandriva 2006 as a whole. I'm sorry you had such trouble, but I hope that others aren't turned off; it's working great for me.:-)
Here's hoping that the overall project isn't hurt by conflict between Google developers trying to "lessen memory requirements" and Sun developers trying insert/preserve their own Java technologies in OpenOffice.org.
Indeed--I don't think anyone could honestly blame Western authorities for this sort of thing. The Chinese government is hurting no one but their own citizens by restricting access to materials hosted in other countries. The thought of an educated public scares a heavy-handed government, but they are biting their own tail with actions like these.
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Too bad it takes an AC post to even get a look at "the other side." I'm not saying that "the other side" is right, but they certainly deserve fair consideration...and, as the parent points out, the issue may not be as simple as it first seems. I sure I wish I had mod points right now.
I actually did a research report on the Therac-25 incident while I was in Software Engineering class a few semesters ago (I was also in Technical Writing at the time, so I could kill two assignments with one report!) ;-) The details of the incident(s) are actually quite fascinating and sometimes spine-chilling.
Here's the report in PDF if anyone's interested: reportfinal.pdf
And in HTML for those of you who prefer it: link
I really have to come to Mandriva's defense on this one. My experience was completely the opposite of yours except for one point: I too installed Mandriva 2006 on my laptop (a Compaq Presario X1030US) mainly because of the advertised support for Centrino. It installed very smoothly, and the Centrino does indeed work wonderfully (even though I did have to point it to the correct file first).
KDE looks great with the included interfaces, WINE runs c-evo (my favorite strategy game) nearly perfectly with a single interface tweak (see the September/October forum for details) and all the other software I use (OpenOffice.org, Firefox, Gaim, Dia, Netbeans, etc.) was either included with the install or installed and worked with minimal effort. Battery life seems comparable to running under Windows and my widescreen display (1280x800) was correctly detected during installation. The system is quite responsive and runs speedily enough for me.
So I'm guessing your problems are laptop-specific and, I propose, not representative of Mandriva 2006 as a whole. I'm sorry you had such trouble, but I hope that others aren't turned off; it's working great for me. :-)
Here's hoping that the overall project isn't hurt by conflict between Google developers trying to "lessen memory requirements" and Sun developers trying insert/preserve their own Java technologies in OpenOffice.org.
Indeed--I don't think anyone could honestly blame Western authorities for this sort of thing. The Chinese government is hurting no one but their own citizens by restricting access to materials hosted in other countries. The thought of an educated public scares a heavy-handed government, but they are biting their own tail with actions like these.
As opposed to all the students who coded all summer and didn't even get a T-shirt?