[ale] Mandrake 9.0

[Benjamin Scherrey]

9/28/2002 2:19:49 PM, Stuffed Crust <pizza at shaftnet.org> wrote:
>
>Note that all of your complaints (with the possible exception of python)
>also apply to Mandrake 8.x.  So I'm really not sure exactly why you're
>directing your angst towards RedHat..

Only because Mandrake is based on RedHat. RedHat's still the one who did it. They made some 
REALLY stupid decisions early on and users (especially developers) kept on having to pay for them 
for a long time. Will be a while before I invest money in their distribution again.

>Meanwhile, the python2 vs 1.5 is really quite simple.  If they were to
>have made python2 the default in a minor release, they would have broken
>application binary compatibility, which is a no-no across minor
>releases.  

Well actually they should have made that *my* choice. Frankly most programs from 1.5 run just fine 
under 2.x unchanged or the change is very simple and apparent when it fails. However, by shipping 
RPMs that named python 2.x as python2, I had to go deal with all kinds of confusion from 
applications trying to detect my (correct) python install. A python2 executable is about as useless a 
thing as I have ever encountered - they shouldn't have bothered. I should change all my scripts to 
#!/usr/bin/python2 ?? No way - I need my code to run on multiple platforms and am not going to 
hack it because one distribution wants to muck it up for everyone else. This is why I resent coding 
for Windows. I would have much rather just had a good 2.x rpm that upgraded 1.5 and let me deal 
with the consequences. Actually the primary code that broke as a result of a 1.5 upgrade was 
Redhat's own internal configuration stuff which is some relatively poorly done code anyway and 
should have just been fixed. Oh well..

>
>Meanwhile RH8 will be coming out on Monday, and that'll also feature
>gcc 3.2.. making the mirror sites even more overloaded, so you'd better
>find Mandrake 9.0 soon..

Yep....

	Ben Scherrey



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