[openbeos] Re: Updating OSes bit by bit

On 2004-05-24 at 15:56:34 [-0400], Plüss Roland wrote:
> 
> >AFA source based patching - like I said - this is a distro related issue. I 
> >don't personally have any plans to build a system that does source based 
> >patching. Be didn't and I don't see that it is a huge win. That isn't to say 
> >that SOMEONE can't. It just isn't me, nor will I assign it to someone. 
> >  
> did not intend to demand it anyways. just have been my two cents ;=)

I think that, for you, a Gentoo style distro might be the right thing.
This is exactly the reason that we are working things the way that we are - 
there is no "one size fits all". We can make a distro that is nearly perfect 
for any given user. That is pretty easy. The hard part is making a distro for 
EVERY user. That is the hard part. And that is why we aren't doing that - we 
are letting others pick niches. Someone wants to be the Gentoo of OBOS? Great. 
Another person wants to be the RedHat of OBOS? Great, too. 
 
> >AFA testing - I never said that testing is a complete replacement for 
> >patching or that we all write perfect code. As Dijkstra once said, testing 
> >can't show the absence of bugs.
> >
> OMFG... and how i know him... came across this guy at least once in my 
> studies ^_^

Mine too. :-)
 
> >But did you ever notice that BeOS needed a lot fewer patches than other 
> >operating systems?
> >
> don't kill me for this but... if the system has not much software, there's 
> not much to make faulty. i mean with this only that if you bloat beos with 
> all the software linux or even windows has there might be a little bit 
> different image. it would still be much less than the other systems due to 
> the coding schemata but still 'Size does matter' ^_^

Well, yes and no. I mean - BeOS provides many (most?) of the same services as 
Windows or Linux. I think that if you calculated the number of bugs per 
feature, you would find that BeOS did a whole lot better than Windows. :-) I 
certainly don't intend to "bloat" BeOS. Small, sleek and fun is where it is at.
 
> yeah... somehow. i donno how you feel this but in my eyes linux still has a 
> lot of patching going on, but more under the hood where more LFS oriented 
> people (or distro maintainers) see it due to the daily handling of sources. 
> but still better than M$. had already a couple of cases where i even had to 
> mess a bit around in the kernel sources to do something (not much stuff... 
> some simple silly errors that only occur in certain ./configure-ations) and 
> there i've been hell glad i could dig down into the sources myself to wrap 
> things up for my personal need. but i would never burden this on a user not 
> knowing c++ coding out of the box ^_^

Linux isn't exactly where we want to be, but it is far closer than where 
Windows is. I want to be at a place where end users can, 90% of the time, only 
install "big" releases - that is, R1, R2, etc. That they don't need patches. 
That patches are available for certain weird cases (i.e. we didn't test on a 
brand X motherboard with Y meg of memory and there is a weird interaction that 
we fixed in a patch). I don't want to have to release a patch that says 
"Prevents any website from rooting the box". That is a *BAD* bug. I hope to not 
have those via good testing and many eyes.

Michael

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