Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2002 07:40:42 +0100 From: Cliff Sarginson <cls@raggedclown.net> To: questions <questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: using 5.0-RELEASE Message-ID: <20021125064042.GC19841@raggedclown.net> In-Reply-To: <3DE16028.2060600@liwing.de> References: <3DE16028.2060600@liwing.de>
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On Mon, Nov 25, 2002 at 12:26:32AM +0100, Jens Rehsack wrote: > Hi, > > just a question to the possibilies using 5.0-RELEASE. In the "early > adopters guide" (chapter 1) it's written, that 5.0-RELEASE should be as > stable as possible to "getting a large number of users to test". But if > it's not recommented to use it in production environments, what test > results do you expect? > Oh I think the implication is that if you have the time and capacity you can run your normal stuff against 5.0 but use a pseudo-production environment if possible. In other words if it goes horribly wrong no real damage is done. At least that is how I read the advice. They obviously do not want you to jepoardise your live systems, but they want experience from people who use FreeBSD in thousands of ways they cannot possibly simulate. I should think their expectations are that people will find things wrong that they have not, and report accordingly. This is a major jump in the O/S, the biggest for years I would guess, and they are quite naturally wanting the maximum real-life (or pseudo real-life) exposure to it. If I was on the development team one of the things I would be interested in is behaviour at the boundaries of the system. Many program bugs occur at boundary conditions (such as the n+1 problem) and the kernel is a program too.a Resource exhaustion. But also the mix of programs running simultaneously...a different scenario for every volunteer tester. It is encouraging that people are managing to use it trouble-free already. But no-one wants to see a Slashdot headline saying "New FreeBSD Release 5.0 a disaster area" ! Not that I believe half of what I read on that particular site .... but people do. I am not a Linux basher (I use it as well as FreeBSD) but the 2.4 series of Linux kernels was checkered with disasters, very serious ones. Probably because it does not follow an intelligent release cycle by any stretch of the imagination. -- Regards Cliff Sarginson The Netherlands [ This mail has been checked as virus-free ] To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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