Date: Wed, 30 May 2001 11:21:37 -0400 From: Bill Moran <wmoran@iowna.com> To: "Dr. Hein" <s.hein@spinner.de> Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: upgrades [each time more trouble] Message-ID: <3B151001.FD22C7F6@iowna.com> References: <3B150A3C.A995F11E@spinner.de>
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"Dr. Hein" wrote: > Upgrading from one FreeBSD version to the next release, > which I have repeatedly, successfully, and very happily > accomplished since FreeBSD Release 2.7 [each time with > an increasing set of troubles, though] seems to be by now > [with release 4.3] a matter of high expertise. - At least, > it has apparenty become a task for persons, who have not to > care very much about time as I [a numerical analyst, who mainly > wants to run rapidly his many applications]. In fact, I really > can't afford to look for - and chase through - hundreds of > loosely distributed man pages, only to get the line printer > up and running, for instance. > [I won't speak about the gloating grin of the Linux party liners > under my colleagues, observing me]. If your Linux friends are gloating grinners, they are probably filthy liars as well. Linux is a great system, but it's far from perfect. I have trouble believing that you have many, many problems and they have none. > To be concrete in some examples: > After installing cups, for instance - why does the pertinent > printer setup and configuration tool [QT-CUPS, or CUPS WWW.admin.tool] > not automatically appear in the KDE Task Manager [as the two > do under Mandrake Linux, e.g.] ? Have you emailed the maintainer of the cups port to let him know about this? It's unlikely to get fixed if someone doesn't point out the problem. > Or: past a regular apsfilter setup [completely done in the very > familiar way], why leads the first printer call [lp file1, e.g.] > to an error message ['lp: error - no default destination available' > - without any further explication or indication to the non-expert, > where this may be cured of. - The printer 'lp' was explicitely > mentioned in the setup configuration] ? And why, by heavens! > is the 'default destination' of lp not simply made 'available', > possibly on request, on running apsfilter setup ? Once again, have you contacted the port maintainer? There are people who take care of these things, and while they can't fix everything immediately, they have no chance of fixing something that they don't know about. > These and further [formerly not encountered] complications may > have their reasons and justifications. - What I, and certainly > some other average users, primarily notice is that FreeBSD > installation and upgrading is becoming each time less handy. I'll have to say that I haven't noticed that myself. It's been my experience that the quality and usability of the system continues to improve with each new version. > In our company, I fight a hard struggle for the use and maintanance > of Open Source systems, in general, and FreeBSD, in particular. You may consider spending a portion of that fight to helping make the sytem better. That's what open source is about, right? > With respect to the outcome of this battle I could be more optimistic, > if I hadn't to spend so many [and each time more] hours for > post installation/upgrade tuning of FreeBSD - beside and > sometimes instead doing my proper job. What was the point to this email? If you have a specific problem, file a pr or email the port maintainer or someone else actually working on that part of the system. Open source software doesn't get better by people sitting around moaning that it should be better. You have, at the least, a responsibility to make the developers aware of the problems you find. I understand that not everyone is a programmer, but if users don't point out problems, developers don't always know of their existence. You imply that there are many worsening problems in the FreeBSD system, and yet you only give two examples of problems that can truely be followed up on. If those are the only two problems you've come across, I'd say you're exagerating the problem. If there are more problems than that, then you need to report them in detail to the people who can fix them (port maintainers, etc) -Bill -- If a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, then what can I get for two hands in the bush? To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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