Date: Sat, 5 Apr 1997 00:20:10 +0930 (CST) From: Michael Smith <msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au> To: dennis@etinc.com (dennis) Cc: msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Does de driver do 100MBIT Full Duplex? Message-ID: <199704041450.AAA21916@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au> In-Reply-To: <3.0.32.19970404095015.006b3514@etinc.com> from dennis at "Apr 4, 97 09:50:18 am"
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dennis stands accused of saying: > > > >Because, as has been observed beforehand, this "large number" of users > >were either too timid, too indifferent, or too _stupid_ to participate > >in the testing process. > > Please dont blame us for our genetic problems....... :-) If I thought the problem was genetic, I'd be off abusing your parents 8) > As much as I would have like to download and test the countless > alphas, betas and gamas, I kind of have my hands full at the moment. > Life isn't always so simple...and unlike most of you, I have to support > 5 O/S, some of which have muliple "releases", and until they get > that 30 hour day thing going I'm sunk. Please note that many of the rest of us have the same sort of time restrictions that you do; we depend on FreeBSD working for us and so I have integrated testing FreeBSD into our product test process. It means that when something busts in a prerelease we can often feed the problem right back and integrate the FreeBSD fix cycle into our own. We, too, support (to admittedly a much lesser degree than you do) our software on a pile of different platforms, most hostile. I delegate that work. > The point here is that you *knew* that de wasn' t ready, and if NFS loads > really dont work then it seems incomprehensible that no-one knew about it... > unless it was simply never tested. I didn't "know" the 'de' driver wasn't ready - every 'de' card I could get my hands on worked flawlessly with the driver in 2.2. During the intensive training we have been carrying on for our field techs they have been averaging 2 or 3 FreeBSD installs per day, via NFS from either their notebooks, our build server, or one of our GP workstations off an MOD, or via FTP from the same source(s). > The question is, how far ahead do we think? Ever since 1.0 there's > been the promise of "finality" in the next release, but every time > the next release rolls around there are sufficient problems to > consider waiting for the next one. Yup, and until the wider userbase hops on the bandwagon by testing the releases before they are cut, this will continue. If you can spare a few hours to install a BETA- or GAMMA- prerelease on a test machine and pound it for a while like you would a production machine, you're helping. Downloading the release and saying "when I do XXX it doesn't work" is just going to get someone like me, who has torn his hair out trying to find anything to complain about, _very_cross_. I and my employer donate my/our time and resources to this; it'd be nice to feel we were being appreciated just a little. > There has been much talk about get publicity; getting corporate users to > use FreeBSD, but until you get to a point where loading a new release is much > less than a crapshoot It's just not going to happen on a widespread basis. Major vendors achieve this by spending lots of money on test hardware and "beta sites". We don't have money; we depend on the generosity and enlightened self-interest of the user community. Sadly, this is one area in which that's still wanting 8( > db -- ]] Mike Smith, Software Engineer msmith@gsoft.com.au [[ ]] Genesis Software genesis@gsoft.com.au [[ ]] High-speed data acquisition and (GSM mobile) 0411-222-496 [[ ]] realtime instrument control. (ph) +61-8-8267-3493 [[ ]] Unix hardware collector. "Where are your PEZ?" The Tick [[
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