Hello, dear Barry! Hello, people!
Thanks for your Puppy releases developing.
Alas, my new test for this release robbed me of hope and confidence to fate of the Puppy now...
And excuse me generously for this unpleasant truth.
I have an informed opinion based on my experience of two decades in the IT practice and my long life; in general, that this sad event occurs as phenomenon that has long been familiar to an older generation of people who dedicate their lives to engineering practice. Many things has been fixed... but, in alas, the current generation of IT "successfully" forgotten them, including those expressed in the famous Parkinson's and Murphy's Law/Rules...
But I have no intention here to argue for a long time on this topic, especially with the even generally and as philosophical reasons. However, I allow myself to simply highlight here my two or three points...
It's main components, which must be led to provides it as "unexpected" result of the development project, which is not too happy and do not inspire hope...
One reason is difficult to unjustified balanced judgments of the use to the Puppy' release this newest OS kernel, which has fully not sufficient testing practices, and who is passed not on the kernel developers from any bugs. Includes errors with drivers communicative problems. Any problems, which is more than eloquent was be confirmed of the monthly beta testing for Lupu 5.0x.
It's life truth after applied the kernel developers is identification of the release as 2.6.33.2 (Note to the last digit!)
Note. An oldest programming practice and impartial monitoring of the set of specialists on the Programmer's World, clearly shown fact: every software product and operating system and components like kernel, which in its minor digit not gone far from zero, they release of the software it's are potentially relevant not stable. This is fact of life.
These mind would seem that this is a fairly well-known fact, but the stupid fact and unthinking adherence the "Zeitgeist", and reckless aspirations of young people in the project to all "newest" develop -- on the external form only, not on facts, not on the merits... and this is precisely unjustified passes of wisdom aspirations must be lead to the similar occurring now. And it's main cause of.
But programmers forgotten now many of this basic things...
Meanwhile, the developers of the project Ubuntu Lucid 10.04 LTS can be develop it very much wiser and weighted. They used quite a stable kernel, since passed true debugging process, with the number of this kernel is 2.6.32.20/22. And this fact eloquently shows the reasons for the success of this release. And the Ubuntu uses people not noticed any bugs and incompatibilities with the equipment of most PCs under current and stable the Ubuntu release.
Alas, this can not boast a team of Lucid Puppy 5...
The second important cause of numerous OS' errors and hardware bugs in this project is desire of the developers to apply for this newest release too many innovations at one time. This is bad developers mind and very bad practice!
Many developers, who have great experience, those people, who is know and understand this reasons, known the fact: disproportionate amount of changes made in the current project immediately and without progressive experimental testing process, they developers lead to an avalanche of bugs and provides to many programming mistakes! And it's poor way to condemn the developers for painful and unproductive process of debugging it.
Both users and beta testers too, they get frustrate for it; they have reasonable causes to confusion in the process of probing this newest releases.
This is true, because it's so many bugs and abnormal behavior of user PCs has this Puppy' release...
And it's I says as last reason. It is prefer if the Puppy' projects would be divided (on a fork, but as common subprojects) to successfully processed studies of many directions to development of the newest Puppy. (It would seem that it was done...)
The first program line and first way is development of direction to maximum usability the OS for most attractive destination users, for so-called "end users"; they prefer it for any OSs. And as second way is improvement to provide and evolution the maintainer's technology, including technology to provide for simply building any software packages.
The second way and task is direction by Barry and that is very successfully develops himself by Barry.
But the first direction way on the community Puppy is now essentially natural chaos... What is not good, IMHO...
I wish many for the people participating in the project, and Barry personally, and many every success! And especially -- lot of courage and patience to overcome the failures of this way.
P.S. Excuse me for my poor English.