Evolution (it works! sorta)

[Edward Glowacki]

Quoted from Adam McDougall on Mon, Oct 08, 2001 at 09:58:01AM -0400:
> On Mon, Oct 08, 2001 at 08:03:30AM -0400, Edward Glowacki wrote:
>   Well, given that XFree86 locked up on me, oh, about 5 times on Friday,
>   by comparison Evolution is doing pretty good, especially when you
>   consider XFree86 is at version 4.1.0 and Evolution is still in beta
>   before a 1.0 release... ;)  As a note, when you have an unstable XFree86,
>   life is really freakin' miserable... =(
>   
>   -- 
>   Edward Glowacki				glowack2@msu.edu
> 
> Have you tried replacing hardware to try to isolate the problem or
> is it a known bug with something?  I could at least offer a Matrox
> G200 AGP card and a network card if you're interested in swapping 
> those for testing.  

Oh, I know it's the video card, it's an ATI Rage 128 Pro, and it
spits out nice messages to /var/log/XFree86.0.log.  A Google
search for the problem shows messages on the XFree86 mailing lists
from a year ago that mention the problem.  Unfortunately, this is
my work machine, so I'm not about to spend my own personal money
to make it work, and MSU certainly isn't going to buy anything for
me with the current budget crunch, especially given that I already
have the nicest machine in the office.

The thing is that XFree86 should be rock solid, it's been around
for a LONG time now and is the core for most Linux/*BSD and similar
systems.  And it's not like my system is bleeding edge, it was
purchased over a year and a half ago, and several revisions of
XFree86 have been out since then.  I reported the bug a month ago
and got an automated reply, but I haven't heard anything else since
then.  The autoreply said to read the FAQ, which is out of date
and no longer available.

I get the feeling that XFree86 is in trouble, as it seems to be
falling behind in terms of fixing bugs, having better web pages,
having better documentation, general quality control on the releases,
etc.   I can't really explain it, and it's not based on any solid
evidence, but a bunch of little things have added together to give
me the mental picture of a project that's floundering.  Given that
XFree86 is at the heart of so many systems, it needs to have much
better support and be rock solid 100% of the time.



-- 
Edward Glowacki				glowack2@msu.edu
GLLUG Peon  				http://www.gllug.org
Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.
                -- Jules de Gaultier