Hi,
Finally I got hold of the manager who decided that 4.0C should not
be shipped to customers with Digital Unix OS subscription. She
told me that the decision was based on the following arguments:
-- 4.0C is just a hardware release and is identical to 4.0B for customers
who do not have the new hardware. To avoid confusion, they decided not
to ship the product.
Counter argument: I *subscribe* to a product. I want to get every single
release of it. That's why I subscribed. I would be outraged if New
York Times would send me onlly those issues that they find important.
It is easy to put a huge warning on the package that says: 'If you
don't have X hardware, there is nothing new in this release'. As a side
note: is the claim true? I heard that a large number of 4.0B patches
were integrated into 4.0C. If (and I'm not sure) the argument against
the decision is even stronger.
-- Customers don't need 4.0C since new hardware comes with 4.0C factory
installed.
Counter argument: I don't like the default root partition size (nor
do I like the size of /usr, I also want /var in a separate partition, etc.).
It is a major pain to repartition the system disk (and I can only do it
if I have an extra disk in the box). I also prefer to install only those
subsets that I need -- as opposed to removing subsets that I don't need,
diging through the dependencies. Most important point: if my system disk
fails, I'm not sure I can recover. Will I be able to boot from a 4.0B
CD? If not, than just how did they envision the disaster recovery? If this
wasn't a concern for me, I would be running windows-95 :-)
-- So far (since late April) nobody complained about the missing 4.0C.
Counter argument: they didn't even tell me that there is a new release
(I knew it from this discussion forum) so may be people just haven't realized?
I don't recall any obvious message during boot that tells me it is
4.0C, not B when I boot the machine so it may be easy to miss it.
So if you think this choice was a misstake (and strongly believe it was
and it should never happen again), PLEASE tell this to Dec (the department
in charge is in New Hampshire, I talked to Sharon) because they haven't
realized that they did something questionable.
Gyula
Received on Wed Oct 15 1997 - 22:04:47 NZDT