Bill Sommerfeld's Weblog

Tuesday November 06, 2007

Three strikes, you're out (but it's only the first inning of a preseason game)

The indiana prototype was released with the name "opensolaris developer preview".  Having installed it and (briefly) attempted to get work done on it, I'm even more convinced the name was vastly premature.

 opensolaris. nope.  it's the prototype output of a small implementation team and hasn't been through the rigor and wringer of the development process.  It's a fascinating and impressive start, but.. it's not opensolaris yet, and I'm skeptical of some of the design choices (admittedly, I always am..)

 developer.  I'm a developer so it should be for me to use?  I installed it.  I tried to run bugster to file a bug.  Nope, no java.  Tried to build some simple C programs.  Nope, No C compiler, no make.  Tried to add the binary nvidia driver so the display didn't look crappy -- got that working but it was an adventure -- pkgadd(1m) is busted so I had to pkgadd -R on a different system, rsync the bits over, and re-run the package's postinstall script a few times before it "took".

If you want to play with the new packaging system, make sure you have another system running SXCE handy to actually do builds.  And if you see something unexpected, please file bugs early and often.   If you actually want to get work done, you're better off with SXDE/SXCE until further notice.

preview.  When I hear "preview" I think "movie sneak preview" .. getting a look at the almost-final production before they come out.  SXCE & SXDE are previews.  The Indiana prototype is like the raw footage viewed by the production team the day after it's shot before the bloopers have been edited out.

Tim Foster's critique misses the point of the engineering objections.  Attaching this name to a pre-alpha snapshot demo which is simply not even close to done is a mistake.  It might make sense when Indiana is a little better baked, but IMHO, the current name attached to the current bits hurts the "brand".  IMHO the name should have been held in reserve until it was ready for community endorsement.