Les Mikesell <lesmikesell(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Horst H. von Brand wrote:
[...]
>> You probably can't match RHEL's QA for free, but
testing - and not
>> shipping things that don't pass - is the only way things can get
>> better.
> Pray tell us, exactly how do we /do/ that? I think we all agree
that
> that is the ideal, but I strongly believe it is unatainable in pratice.
The big problem for me is that it's a package deal. I
wouldn't mind
beta testing a few apps at a time on my working system with a stable
OS and libraries, but to run them you also have to take an
experimental kernel and device drivers. And my history with those on
fedora is that I waste too much time getting the hardware to work with
new versions. Maybe that's changed... If you had a way to separate
the apps from the OS, you might find people more willing to test the
parts that interested them.
Many problems are integration problems, i.e., package version foo doesn't
work with library version bar. It also happens that to run the very
latest-and-greatest version of the package you need experimental(ish)
versions of other stuff.
>> I've heard the term used as in "an instrument's
tuning is 'good
>> enough' for folk music" or "an approximation is 'good
enough' for
>> government work". What's 'good enough' for an operating
system?
> Works mostly. Doesn't crash too often. Doesn't destroy
valuable data
> except under extremely unlikely circumstances.
Kernels that don't boot on machines where the last version worked
Keep the next-to-last one around just in case. Have a LiveCD of the lastest
stable/beta at hand for the case it gets too screwed up. Yes, it's a
nuisance.
or
lose the ability to access devices like firewire drives isn't 'mostly'
enough for me.
Ditto.
> This is engineering, not mathematics. And even in mathematics
there have
> been mistakes...
But would you want to test a plane where the engineers said it was
probably good enough and didn't crash too often?
So you have never heard of plane crashes? Or other failures? In the end, as
100% perfect is not realistically doable, you have to make do with "good
enough", and what /that/ means depends on the circumstances: The kernel of
a game console (a crash means a minor inconvenience or at most a lost game)
has /very/ different safety/security requirements than software controlling
a radiation therapy aparatus (which could very well be lethal to the
patient).
--
Dr. Horst H. von Brand User #22616
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