Date: Fri, 19 Mar 1999 10:23:41 -0800 (PST) From: Mike Meyer <mwm@phone.net> To: stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Confusion Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.05.9903191004430.464-100000@guru.phone.net> In-Reply-To: <19990319094651.A75415@relay.nuxi.com>
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Ok, I've watched this for a while. I've got to say something. From: David O'Brien <obrien@NUXI.com> > This guy is absolutely correct. The designations RELEASE, STABLE, > and CURRENT, what they mean, and the targeted audience of each are > exceedingly confusing. STABLE is the only one that is. CURRENT isn't - it's the current build, possibly working, possibly not. That STABLE applies to the source tree, not the resulting product, is confusing. RELEASE is just that - a released product. From what I can tell, the complaint about 3.0 was that it was labelled as release when it wasn't as stable as the existing (2.2.x) product. However, the *only* way to get it to that level of stability was to get people using it on a much more widespread basis than it was being used as -CURRENT. That's true for *any* product that includes lots of new technology. That's why .0 releases are generally so buggy/slow/etc - they haven't been debugged in nearly as broad a range of environments as the .1, .2, etc. releases. I'm relatively new to FreeBSD - this was my first .0 release with it, and it appeared to be pretty bad. I was lucky in that my system was built for 3.0, and my second system I could delay until 3.1. On the other hand, I've been working with Unix for > 20 years now, and I've seen worse .0 releases from commercial vendors, and seldom seen better ones from non-commercial projects. If you want to fault the FreeBSD team for debugging on their customers platforms - then you've got to fault the entire industry. Everyone does it - because there isn't any way you can replicate *every* system that users are going to try and run your product on. Wise users have been avoiding .0 releases for production systems since - well, longer than I've been in the game. It's part of life in the software world, at least until that world undergoes some *radical* changes. In short, you're faulting the FreeBSD team for doing what everyone does. The difference is they were honest about it, and got out a .1 release in quick-time to get the bug fixes in place. <mike BTW, FreeBSD is the most stable Unix I've used, bar none. 3.0-RELEASE was noticably faster than 2.2.7 on my hardware, and no less stabel. I congratulated JKH by private email and in person; the rest of the development crew deserves to hear it as well. Great job, guys! To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message
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