Singing the Fourty

Hola,

Hoy he enviado un mensaje a los Forums de Mandriva. Si eres miembro del MandrivaClub, por favor, leelo y comenta en el foro de Mandriva tus impresiones.

forum.mandrivaclub.com

Para los que no soys del club:

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awilliamson:

As you are our GeneralBenKenobiDrake ("you are our only Hope!"), being the only one who is read by The Powers That Be on MandrivaSoft, I'm sending this (open) message to you, a message containing both complaints as well as proposals.

Complaints, because I'm deeply disatisfied.

Proposals because Mandriva has good roots (*) and I cannot believe that it's going downhill, when it can be the desktop distro that We All Want.

(*)As a friend of mine says:
[quote]
"...Mandriva is the distro with the best base, compiled for i586, more than enough software, wonderful DrakeTools, very good management of configuration files, pretty awesome performance.... Mandriva has it all, and it is the only EuroDistro left. But it is a shame that Mandriva is going down the drain"
[/quote]

Don't destroy Mandriva.

Some Complaining:

It would be nice to have a Club that is worth something else beyond showing support to Mandriva.

Right now, I am deeply dissatisfied with the Club:

* no word kept: "...there will be special releases for Club members...", and all what we get is a crazy Xmas editiion, and an outdated Mandriva One (a product that replaces the terribly outdated MandrakeMove)
* no word kept (ii): "... stabler software with the 1 year release cycle...". 4 ugly words: kat, Xorg, acpi, logrotate
* non-maintained benefits for Club members: unsafe Skype, kernel collisions between official MDV kernel and Club releases of nVidia/ATI drivers
* "El Becario" effect ("The Intern", in Spanish): some rpms seem to be packaged by an intern that has no clue about packaging, or there are crazy (and/or circular!) dependencies, or updating apache in such a way that vhosts suport gets disabled after an update or ...
* No real "VersionUpgradeDrake" tool. I know, I do the urpmi.removemedia -a && urpmi.addmedia --distrib && urpmi -- test urpmi && urpmi urpmi && urpmi --auto --auto-select --test && urpmi --auto --auto-select && urpmi --test kernel && urpmi kernel && reboot myself. But This Is Not The Drake Way (TM)(R)(c)

All in all, seems that there is lack of professionalism. For an enterprise with positive cashflow, Mandriva actions are apalling.

Some Proposals:

After multiple discusisons on http://BlogDrake.net , there seems to be consensus of what plenty of Mandriva/MandrivaClub users want from Mandriva/MandrivaClub.

Users want both a stable ditro and the latest software. But, then, what needs to be stable is the core distribution. And the latest software always means latest user applications (KDE/Gnome/amaroK/Quanta/Jedit/Eclipse...). Thus, setting apart "coreland" from "userland" should simplify MandrivaSoft's life.

See below the proposed Release Cycle:

* 1-year release of "baseline" distro (2006, 2007...). A full release containing all new, updated and tested components.

* From this "baseline" release a "point-release" every quarter (2007.1, 2007.2...), with all bugfixes up-to-date. Every point-release should replace ISOs on mirrors: strain on update servers will be lower (now, after d/l 5 CDs, users still need to d/l yet another 500MB of updates), and overall satisfaction of new installs will be greater (known problems already solved on boot).

* Every 3 / 4 / 6 months, release the latest (tested) desktop applications (KDE, Gnome, OpenOffice) built ontop of of the "baseline" release (not ontop of cooker). Keep all apache/Xorg/databases/server-side in the same version as in 2006.0. Call this a "point-release". As both KDE and Gnome have a bi-annual cycle (IIRC), the release plan should be planned to give safe margins between DKE/Gnome releases and "point-release" dates. For example:

(assuming 4-month cycles)

2007.0 on 10/2006. Baseline release
2007.1 on 2/2007. Baseline + bugfixes + a newer KDE. Including ISOs
2007.2 on 6/2007. Baseline + bugfixes + a newer Gnome. Including ISOs
2008.0 on 10/2007. Baseline release

(assuming 3-month cycles)

2007.0 on 10/2006. Baseline release
2007.1 on 1/2007. Baseline + bugfixes + a newer KDE. Including ISOs
2007.2 on 4/2007. Baseline + bugfixes + a newer Gnome. Including ISOs
2007.3 on 7/2007. Baseline + bugfixes + a newer KDE. Including ISOs
2008.0 on 10/2007. Baseline release

Of course, make ISOs available first only to Club members (for 2 weeks) and then, open to general public. Just like now.

And, of course, any software released at those point-releases will replace (upgrade) existing versions of KDE/Gnome software, so those versions will be the only versions to be supported (updates) by Mandriva.

Please, Mandriva, don't keep running so close to the cliffs; your fall will be painful and inevitable if you keep your current ways.

On a personal note: I've been in Linux since 1996 (Slackware). I've been earning my bread with IT since 1995. I've worked from small to huge companies (including Linux-related companies). I've been with Mandriva sinde MDK 7.02. I've been with the club for quite a long time. I created and maintain BlogDrake (website for Spanish-speaking Mandriva users). So, maybe, I might know what I'm talking about

Regards,
SinnerBOFH

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Salut,
Sinner