[oclug] Way to lose a customer

[Rod Giffin]

On Mon, 2004-01-26 at 14:34, Shad Young wrote:
> Heh,
> 
> I am (I'm sorry to say) utterly appalled by this version of Mandrake. It
> is beyond bad. It is the single most broken POS I have encountered in the
> Linux world in a long time. Combined with the fact that there is no other
> distro that comes close to MDK 9.1 (let alone OSX or WinXP) in overall
> polish and functionality I would say Linux has taken a giant step
> backward.

It would be a little easier for me to sympathize with your position if
you were to outline what parts of Mandrake 9.2 appall you.  It's working
great on my laptop, and it's not even supposed to supported Linux.  I
have found no fault with Mandrake 9.1 either, and there is no pressing
need to upgrade from 9.1 to 9.2

> I fail to understand how they can release a distro that destroys CD-ROM
> drives then have the audacity to blame the manufacturer of the drive for
> their (MDK's) lack of knowledge. If all distros broke the drives, I would
> say blame the drive co. But AFIAK only 9.2 has the problem, so IMO the
> blame for it rests on their feet. Everybody else knows how to get around
> the issue.

That misrepresents the issue somewhat.  Other distributions were not in
the same phase of the development/release cycle that Mandrake was when
the bug was discovered, and so had the time to side step it.  SuSE for
instance, apparently also had the same problem, only they had time to
fix it before already having burnt hundreds of thousands of CD's before
discovering - not Mandrake's but, but LG's bug.  Mandrake sent several
news and message items regarding this issue, and a kernel fix is
available.  

Mostly, it was unfortunate that the bug was discovered late in the
release of a distribution.

> My experience with MDK 9.2 has left me with a bitter taste in my mouth
> toward Linux in general.

If you like Mandrake, and you have 9.1, there is no pressing requirement
to upgrade. If you feel you NEED to upgrade, you can also take a look at
Mandrake 10.0, which is in public beta.  Has some interesting new
features, and is apparently not affected by LG's bug.

If you want to, you can join the crew, even if just for helping with the
debugging.  Who knows, maybe your *constructive criticism* might have an
influence. All they ask is that you tell them what you don't like and
how it might be changed to make it better.

Rod.