10.17.07
Gemini version available ♊︎Novell’s Instability Legacy Lives On (Corrected)
The following new story from ComputerWorld brings to mind the flakiness of Novell’s software [update: see corrections in the comments]. Whether it depends upon another layer of the stack which is to blame here or not, well… it seems irrelevant when you read the second item.
“My co-worker and I set up nine classrooms with 300 computers hooked up to nine Novell servers,” says fish. “The classrooms were to be used to teach typing and accounting.
“Everything worked well during testing, and we were excited about the new school year.”
But soon trouble starts: Servers are frequently rebooting — sometimes several times during a single class.
Imagine the surprise when on the very same day you find a review that complains about the same problems in the “latest and greatest” product from Novell — OpenSUSE 10.3.
I faced only these stability issues, but these are reproducible.
I always put stability as the most important factor while judging a distro. I was extremely impressed by the stability of SUSE 10.2 and thats the reason that I am more depressed with SUSE 10.3. I have done the online updates, but still the crash problem is there.
Another reasons to look elsewhere?
Eric Gearhart said,
October 17, 2007 at 5:53 pm
Yet another propaganda post from the desk of Roy.
You’re about as fair and balanced as Fox News Roy. Really. You’re destroying your credibility with these posts.
From the page you cite:
“Fish finds one of computerized classrooms empty and checks a keyboard. Sure enough, there’s a small switch intended to let the keyboard be used with either an XT- or AT-style PC.
He flips the switch back and forth — and across the room, the server beeps and reboots.
Fish tries again with other keyboards. It works every time.
“I quickly paged my co-worker and demonstrated the trick,” says fish. “He was dumbfounded. We then came up with a simple solution. On each keyboard, we moved the switch to the XT position and put a drop of super glue on the exposed part, then moved it back to the AT position.
“We waited for the class and sat in the back to observe. As the class started, we watched a group of boys grin and slowly move their hands under the keyboard and watched their fingers move. Frowns creased their foreheads as their fingers began moving more frantically.
“Soon, they discreetly lifted the keyboards and peered underneath. One of them looked back at me and I grinned and waved at him.
“My co-worker and I repeated the same fix for each classroom over the next few days and we had no more problems with server reboots for the rest of the year.”
So a switch on a keyboard causing a server to reboot, automatically means all of Novell’s products are crap? Are you serious?
Roy Schestowitz said,
October 17, 2007 at 11:34 pm
Eric,
You’re right. I should have read the whole article, but I didn’t. I’ve corrected the post.