Re: ipfwadm on Alpha / RH 5.1

[Maurice Hilarius <maurice@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

With regards to your message at 11:40 AM 01-12-99 PST, Designer 7. Where
you stated:
>Okay.. maybe here is a perspective that might get Redhat people thinking 
>since they plan to target the enterprise with Linux.
>
>I wasn't aware of the broken DHCPCD... since I don't have enough 
>machines here to justify using DHCP. But on a corporate network with 
>hundreds (thousands?) of nodes, IP management is a pain unless you use 
>something like DHCP. So, RedHat, if any of you read this.... perhaps 
>it's in your best interest to fix and test more of your distributions? 
>>From my experience, IT managers will dismiss a product if it doesn't 
>work out of the box... they don't want to spend time to fix a product 
>that they expect to work out of the box....food for thought?

In principle this is a _very_ good idea. So good that Red Hat even claim
they are doing it, with a formal beta-tster program, the bugzilla website,
and so on.
In practice they actually seem very unreceptive to the feedback they get.
For example, in the bug report I made about our experiences with the DHCPCD
problem they replied that they would have to get a cable modem to test
this... Huh?

In another bug report I made where I pointed out that using the "update"
option in Red Hat 5.2 there was a crash that happened if you tried to
select packages.
They repsonded (correctly) that there was a new boot disk image already
posted to fix this. Proble is, they only posted this update file on the
update.redhat.com ftp site.
As this site is _EXTREMELY_ busy, and as almost all of the mirrors of
Redhat do not carry this site, in practice  it was very difficult to obtain
the update. To further compound the problem they also have an "updates"
directory in the regular Red Hat ftp site and its mirrors, which doen _not_
contain the same things as the update ftp site..

What they seem to need, in practice, is not more ability to produce or
support their products ( they already have the tools for this part), but
better management to make sure that the results get to the users. They also
could probably use an attitude adjustment, strictly IMHO, because I find
that while they "claim" to support their products, in my and many others
experience this "support" is very difficult to find or get a straight
answer from, unless they are embarrassed into doing it.
 Hence my somewhat critical and antagonistic approach to these matters. I
am not _really_ trying to be a jerk. It is simply that we have tried all
the "official" routes to support, and have seen very little real results
from them, in reality.
 Again, IMHO, if Red Hat was as good at supporting their software as they
are at spin-doctoring and PR this would be a bloody amazing Linux
distribution.   ;^]

>But also, as I've stated in a post a long time ago... if RedHat people 
>are too busy to test the distribution, they should release a 
>no-guarantee (or implied), "beta" distribution and let others test and 
>submit results. Perhaps offer volunteer "beta-testers" a free RH box 
>once it is "officially" released? I know the rawhide site seems to be 
>doing something like this... but how much feedback does redhat get?
>
>Overall, if RedHat, or Linux in general wants to penetrate into the 
>market of corporate computing, these kind of things need to be fixed.

Maybe. This attitude and practice have served well for Microsoft...
Let's not confuse substance with marketing  ;^}


Best regards,

  Maurice W. Hilarius                   Telephone: 01-403-414-9319
  Hard Data Ltd.                        FAX:       01-403-456-1510
  11060 - 166 Avenue                    email:maurice@xxxxxxxxxxxx
  Edmonton, AB, Canada  - T5X 1Y3       http://www.harddata.com

  NOTE: January 25, 1999, new telephone numbers _AND_ area code:
					Telephone: 01-780-456-9771
					FAX:       01-780-456-9772


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