[ltp] Mandrake vs Redhat

[Tod Harter]

On Thursday 03 January 2002 17:19, you wrote:

> Which I believe can be interpreted much differently than you have  (if
> you're referring to http://www.kde.org/packagepolicy.html).  For example,
> Redhat 7.2 ships with KDE 2.2.  But KDE 2.2.2 is the latest version, I
> believe released after Redhat 7.2 shipped.  It is true that Redhat doesn't
> necessarily provide KDE updates for an already released distro and
> apparently this bothers the KDE developers quite a bit.  But, unless there
> is a serious bug or security problem, they generally don't do this for ANY
> package, be it KDE or Gnome or whatever.  I think this is a reasonable
> policy.

Yeah, its not what I would call an unreasonable policy. Mandrake has taken a 
slightly different tack with this, which in some cases is a bit more 
flexible. They provide fairly regular updates for recent releases, so there 
IS an "official" 2.2.2 release for 8.1 (which shipped with 2.2.0), and they 
have a subscription service (freq) that lets you get the new stuff fairly 
quickly. Its just a bit different business strategy.
>
> If you want to run the latest release of a particular package, that may or
> may not have been tested with the rest of your system, then Redhat probably
> isn't for you.

Unfortunately desktop stuff in particular is evolving so fast that often 
major functionality is missing or broken. Using the KDE 2.2 vs 2.2.2 example 
there are a LOT of bug fixes in 2.2.2. It would be a hardship to need to wait 
6 months for a new OS release to get those, yet I don't really like to spend 
my time installing from CVS or tarballs either, especially if it requires 
compiling something as complex as KDE.
>
> Maybe you have some inside information that I don't.   However, the
> 'bleeding edge' Redhat is called `rawhide', which currently can be
> downloaded with KDE 3.0.0 (again, see http://www.distrowatch.com/).  I
> suspect that rawhide will be tested/updated for quite some time before an
> official distro is made (7.3 or 8.0).  At least this is how pre-Redhat 7.2
> progressed.  Certainly the KDE rpms aren't added as an afterthought or at
> the last minute.

Perhaps not, but KDE is to some extent the poor cousin to Gnome there. That 
was really all I meant. Mandrake it seems is more dedicated to making pretty 
much everything under the sun supported. In the long run it may turn out that 
Red Hat's approach works out better. I guess we shall see... ;o). 
>
> One thing I am sure of:  I'm much more productive using Redhat/KDE than
> using any M$ platform, and I'm confident that I'd be the same using
> Mandrake.

Yeah, I'll second that sentiment. Even with various problems and sometimes 
uneven quality in certain classes of tools its still better to be in Linux 
land.
>
> -Rob
>
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