[cooker-amd64] Rather dismal review of 9.2 for AMD64, mentioning 2.4 is depreciated for AMD64

[Duncan]

Well, I mentioned last nite that I was posting this "later tonight", but
then I had Konqueror freeze on me (with several windows open), and further
attempts to reopen it in web mode simply crashed..  After trying all sorts
of stuff, I finally figured out Konqueror worked, but it would crash when
it attempted to open libkhtml.  After trying some more stuff, from
renaming my user KDE config to see if that was causing it, to trying  it
as root (on a local page, I'm not THAT dumb <g>.. BTW, how come it's OK
for urpmi to d/l as root?.. that STILL bothers me!), to see if it was a
permissions issue, to rebooting to a different kernel to see if that
somehow affected it.. I finally decided the binary was corrupt.   After
d/ling and force installing a new lib64kdecore4 package, it FINALLY worked
again.. and I was able to finish catching up on the current LWN and other
news (looking to see if there was anything else on this story.. but not
that I found..).

Anyway.. It's well into morning now, but here it is.. A (rather bad)
review of Mdk 9.2 for AMD64, with some interesting additional info..

The LWN article, from a couple week old weekly news feature (Jan 22, but
I'd been working on getting kernel 2.6 going here at the time and had
gotten behind in my LWN reading..)

Link to the Jan 22 Weekly Distribs page (which also has a pretty good and
favorable article on urpmi =:^) :

http://lwn.net/Articles/67422/

Link to their discussion of the 9.2 AMD64 review:

http://lwn.net/Articles/68438/

<quote>
Review: Mandrake Linux 9.2 AMD64 Release (PCBurn)

This PCBurn author was not impressed with Mandrake's AMD64 release.[...]
</quote>

The LWN excerpt goes on to say that the first thing the author noted was
that it came with a 2.4 kernel, not 2.6, and that this wouldn't be big
news, EXCEPT that 

<quote>
The 2.4 kernel series is being deprecated for AMD64, and as of 2.4.23-pre7
the kernel has devfs support disabled completely for x86-64 due to it
causing memory corruption of all things. 
</quote>

There are only a couple comments, both by the same person, and the story
is old now, and probably won't be getting many more reads, so commenting
now likely isn't worth much.  However, the gist of his posted comments is
that 2.6.0 had serious problems on his Mdk 9.2rc1 for AMD64 machine.. and
that yes, Mdk depends to much on devfs.. for supermount, among other
things, which one gathers he doesn't like.  (I don't either, and always
disable it in my own kernel compiles, even if with the Mdk kernel sources,
but I understand why Mdk likes it.. because the MSWormOS converts often do.)

Here's the URL for the original story:

http://pcburn.com/review-Mandrake_9.2_AMD64_Release.php

Basically, it's a tale of one thing after another failing to work
properly.  Failing to detect the USB keyboard and mouse in setup, not
allowing both the USB and PS/2 mice to be setup later to both work (with a
remark that again, this is due to the 2.4 kernel, 2.6 of course uses the
same device interfaces for all mice.. or a simple dual entry in XF86Config
would do it, as he says some other distribs use, even with a 2.4 kernel),
problems with net setup, problems with his NVidia video card and the
NVidia drivers installed by the setup -- which he manually corrected by
switching to the open nv drivers but at the expense of acceleration.  Over
200MB of updates LESS THAN A WEEK after release -- he was glad he was on a
high speed connection, when he COULD finally d/l them (after the initial
network issues).  One of those updates being a security patch for the
kernel -- but without an accompanying NVidia driver so even if it DID work
he'd have been out of luck with NVidia.. etc.

His conclusion, naturally, was don't use this one!  The end notes say that
if Mdk can tighten up its quality control, 10.0 might be better for AMD64,
but this one wasn't worth it, period.  They also mention that in all
fairness (as I've posted b4 here), that NONE of the AMD64 distribs at this
point seem all that trouble-free, and that it may be better sticking with
the 32-bit versions even on AMD64, for now, unless the bleeding edge is
what you WANT, complete with the troubles it will bring.

..

Anyway..  Aside from the review, which IS rather harsh, but basically what
I've said all along about AMD64 at this point, the BIG thing is the news
that 2.4 is depreciated for AMD64 at this point, and that devfs is KNOWN
TO CAUSE MEMORY CORRUPTION.

While I know it would have been difficult for Mandrake to include a 2.6
kernel, because this WAS after all, basically the now outdated 9.2, with
the 2.4 kernel, only now available for AMD64, what **I** can't understand
is WHY THERE'S THEN NO UPDATED 2.6 KERNEL AVAILABLE, OR EVEN A 2.4 KERNEL
WITH DEVFS DISABLED, if it is KNOWN to cause memory and therefore possible
disk data corruption as well.

Sure, it might mean disabling supermount, but I know that without
supermount, the 2.6 kernels with or without devfs compile fine, as I'm
running them here!  Granted, it's not absolutely stable, but it's
certainly no LESS stable than the 2.4 Mdk kernels were, and if there are
known problems..??

Or.. if these issues have been resolved with Mdk-specific patches, why
aren't these listed in the changelog?  Why isn't there an advisory
available, telling folks the issues of not updating?  9.2 full is out now.
This is NO LONGER the RC stage.  Where's the support?

..

While on the subject of stability and support, is the new Mdk policy
regarding "Official" stable versions released several months LATER going
to apply to Mdk 9.2 for AMD64, or only 10.0?

Finally..  We are getting close to the release of 10.0, AND MAJOR PACKAGES
HAVE YET TO BE TESTED **AT**ALL** ON AMD64, BECAUSE THEY DON'T COMPILE!!

KDE 3.2 is out.  Mdk cooker 10 for i586 has had KDE 3.2 beta packages out
for some time.  Unfortunately, the head Mdk developer for KDE doesn't seem
interested in supporting AMD64.. I guess.. <shrug>

Likewise with major portions of the "Drake" packages, the ones that make
"Mandrake" uniquely "Mandrake", not "Fedora" or whatever.  Many of these,
while available, won't run, because a primary dependency, perl-GTK2, isn't
available.  How are we supposed to test without the packages available to
test?  I know this has been worked on, but how many weeks now has this
been held up?  How many successive versions of Harddrake and the other
tools have we had to ignore, because we don't have the dependency?

Is Mdk 10 for AMD64 going to release synced with the i586 version or not? 
If not, why not?  If so, testing time is getting a bit critical, wouldn't
it seem?

.. On top of all this I just read an article on the latest ReiserFS
developments.. which mentioned that Gentoo uses it by default..  Since I
have to deal every time I boot up.. on this system that remains all to
unstable on Mdk for AMD64.. with a Mdk fsck system optimized for Ext3 not
ReiserFS.. and my dual Opteron should handle the recompiling without to
much of a problem now..

I'm just frustrated.. is all.. and yes.. I know the late packages have
been covered before (and perl-GTK2 AND KDE STILL aren't available, how
many weeks later??), but now reading that 2.4 is depreciated, and devfs
deactivated entirely, due to issues on AMD64, but we don't even have an
update.. <shaking head> It's just all getting very depressing..

And the fact that Mdk STILL doesn't seem interested in providing an
actual desktop type AMD64 product I can buy.. and club doesn't seem to
deal with AMD64.. doesn't help..

I guess I'll probably stick around for 10.0, at least, and see whether Mdk
is more serious about it.. but it doesn't look to be really headed that
way, at least not for release synchronized in product and time to the i586
release, the way things are going right now..

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little
temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." --
Benjamin Franklin