SUSE Linux 10.1 Beta4 seeks adventurous experts and their *test* systems [LWN.net]

From:		Andreas Jaeger <aj-AT-suse.de>
To:		opensuse-announce-AT-opensuse.org
Subject:		[opensuse-announce] SUSE Linux 10.1 Beta4 seeks adventurous experts and their test systems
Date:		Sat, 18 Feb 2006 17:15:51 +0100


I'm glad to announce that we finally have a Beta4 available.

Beta4 has a number of ROUGH edges, so read the following before you
decide to download and test it.  I advise to not put it on any
production system!


IMPORTANT IMPORTANT IMPORTANT IMPORTANT IMPORTANT IMPORTANT IMPORTANT
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Beta4 is really for the adventurous experts and not for anybody
without a good Linux experience:


*  The CD 1 needs to remain in the cd drive after installing from
   it. Do not remove it during the reboot and wait for YaST to request
   CD 2.

   Otherwise the installation of packages from CD 2-5 will fail
   afterwards.

* Due to the integration of the new package manager which is not
  complete, note the following non working pieces:

  o Only a fresh installation is supported. Update from a previous
    installation is not working!

  o ncurses installation is not supported right now

  o Some statistics do not work, e.g. you see "Size of packages to
    install: 0" - or "Number of packages to install: 0", or "Software:
    Default system (0)".

  o The graphical package manager frontend has only a limited list of
    "views", currently you get a list of all the packages and can only
    search in them.

  o Only adding of selections works. If you want to remove a
    selection, remove all packages in that selection and run the
    resolver manually with the "Check" button.

  o Language dependend packages are not handled correctly. This
    results in the installation of one package-$lang package but not
    necessarily the one for the languages asked for.

  o It is not possible to abort installation while installing
    packages.

  o Network Installations: smb/cifs does not work, http, nfs and ftp
    should work.

  o There are cases where during a ftp installation from the FACTORY
    tree packages for the wrong architecture get installed

* The partitioner is broken in some cases which might result in:
  o mixed up filesystem types - for example one chooses ext2 and the
    partition is getting formatted with reiserfs
  o creates double or totally obscure entries within the fstab of the
    system
  o makes inproper proposals for a standard partitioning


* There are no Release Notes shown - and the download of them fails.

Summing up: The installer is in a rather bad shape, only INSTALLATION
is supported - and the partitioner has some regressions as well.  The
rest of the system should be stable.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
IMPORTANT IMPORTANT IMPORTANT IMPORTANT IMPORTANT IMPORTANT IMPORTANT



Further information and updates are available from
http://www.opensuse.org/Bugs:Most_Annoying_Bugs

We renamed also the directories and filenames to remove the "OSS" from
the names to make it clear that there's only one SUSE Linux.


We've created on
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/10.1/SUSE-Linux10.1-Beta... (and
on the mirrors of it) a repository with some non-OSS software.

SUSE Linux 10.1 is offered via bittorrent and via normal download.
Please use a mirror or the download.opensuse.org URL which directs you
to a mirror.

Download URLs for the torrents of the DELTA-ISOs:
http://ftp.opensuse.org/pub/opensuse/distribution/SL-10.1...
http://ftp.opensuse.org/pub/opensuse/distribution/SL-10.1...
http://ftp.opensuse.org/pub/opensuse/distribution/SL-10.1...

Download URLs for the torrents of the full ISOs:
http://ftp.opensuse.org/pub/opensuse/distribution/SL-10.1...
http://ftp.opensuse.org/pub/opensuse/distribution/SL-10.1...
http://ftp.opensuse.org/pub/opensuse/distribution/SL-10.1...

Download URLs for the full Delta ISOs:
x86 architecture (Intel 32-bit) architecture:
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/SL-10.1-beta4/d...
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/SL-10.1-beta4/d...
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/SL-10.1-beta4/d...
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/SL-10.1-beta4/d...
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/SL-10.1-beta4/d...

For x86-64 (AMD64 / EM64T) 64-bit architecture:
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/SL-10.1-beta4/d...
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/SL-10.1-beta4/d...
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/SL-10.1-beta4/d...
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/SL-10.1-beta4/d...
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/SL-10.1-beta4/d...

For PowerPC architecture:
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/SL-10.1-beta4/d...
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/SL-10.1-beta4/d...
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/SL-10.1-beta4/d...
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/SL-10.1-beta4/d...
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/SL-10.1-beta4/d...

Download URLs for the full ISOs:
x86 architecture (Intel 32-bit) architecture:
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/SL-10.1-beta4/i...
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/SL-10.1-beta4/i...
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/SL-10.1-beta4/i...
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/SL-10.1-beta4/i...
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/SL-10.1-beta4/i...

For x86-64 (AMD64 / EM64T) 64-bit architecture:
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/SL-10.1-beta4/i...
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/SL-10.1-beta4/i...
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/SL-10.1-beta4/i...
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/SL-10.1-beta4/i...
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/SL-10.1-beta4/i...

For PowerPC architecture:
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/SL-10.1-beta4/i...
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/SL-10.1-beta4/i...
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/SL-10.1-beta4/i...
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/SL-10.1-beta4/i...
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/SL-10.1-beta4/i...

Andreas
-- 
 Andreas Jaeger, aj@suse.de, http://www.suse.de/~aj/
  SUSE Linux Products GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany
   GPG fingerprint = 93A3 365E CE47 B889 DF7F  FED1 389A 563C C272 A126

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SUSE Linux 10.1 Beta4 seeks adventurous experts and their *test* systems

Posted Feb 20, 2006 0:06 UTC (Mon) by benjiman (guest, #36010) [Link]

This is a beta, there are not security/bugfix updates in the same way that
there are for stable released versions. There is the constantly changing
factory tree you can update from, which the betas are snapshots of.

SUSE Linux 10.1 Beta4 seeks adventurous experts and their *test* systems

Posted Feb 20, 2006 0:39 UTC (Mon) by einstein (subscriber, #2052) [Link]

Hello? this is a beta... participation is completely optional, if this sort of thing frightens you, wait for the production release...

SUSE Linux 10.1 Beta4 seeks adventurous experts and their *test* systems

Posted Feb 20, 2006 2:40 UTC (Mon) by kornak (guest, #17589) [Link]

I am not a SUSE user but I admire it's history and tools, yet I was a little
taken aback by the announcement especially when one considers this a fourth
beta. One might normally expect a more stable release at this phase.
My two cents.

SUSE Linux 10.1 Beta4 seeks adventurous experts and their *test* systems

Posted Feb 20, 2006 9:44 UTC (Mon) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link]

There's no difference if it's the fourth beta or the 40th beta. Betas in OpenSUSE are just weekly snapshots from the development tree. It's not decided yet how many betas there will be before it get's hot with the release candidates. It will depend on how quick these problems get resolved.
I will most probably try the next beta. Should be a little nicer :)

SUSE Linux 10.1 Beta4 seeks adventurous experts and their *test* systems

Posted Feb 20, 2006 12:39 UTC (Mon) by kornak (guest, #17589) [Link]

I am unfamiliar with SUSE's release schedules or methods, but, this appears
to be, traditionally speaking, more an alpha rather than beta. Semantics I
suppose. I blame Google. ;-)

SUSE Linux 10.1 Beta4 seeks adventurous experts and their *test* systems

Posted Feb 20, 2006 16:48 UTC (Mon) by tjc (subscriber, #137) [Link]

[snip] this appears to be, traditionally speaking, more an alpha rather than beta.

Yes, you are right. The term "beta" as it relates to software releases has been abused by so many people for so long that it really doesn't mean anything anymore. It's supposed to mean that the software has passed system testing and regression testing, but when there are comments in the announcement of known bugs, then obviously it has not.

SUSE Linux 10.1 Beta4 seeks adventurous experts and their *test* systems

Posted Feb 20, 2006 16:56 UTC (Mon) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link]

Yes, nowadays a beta is really just some arbitrary testing version.

Release Candidates have taken over the role of Betas. When roadmaps show that even several release candidates are planned and even they are released with known bugs, the whole naming scheme seems kind of obsolete.

SUSE Linux 10.1 Beta4 seeks adventurous experts and their *test* systems

Posted Feb 20, 2006 8:15 UTC (Mon) by vblum (subscriber, #1151) [Link]

I had no intention to start a flamewar. As my fellow poster said, this issue must be fairly major if it's not fixed for a release called "beta 4". I am hoping that this will be fixed by the release ...
Still, what is the rationale behind changing the installer of all things, for a ".1" release?

SUSE Linux 10.1 Beta4 seeks adventurous experts and their *test* systems

Posted Feb 20, 2006 10:35 UTC (Mon) by henning (subscriber, #13406) [Link]

OpenSUSE 10.1 will (like 9.1) be the foundation for the upcomming SUSE
Enterprise Server 10. Novell bought Ximian some times ago, and uses now
two package managers, Yast and RedCarpet. So decided to to merge the two
different approaches to packet management.
You find more infos on this topic on the opensuse-announce mailing list.