Of Beta Software, Bugs and Other Things

[Counterspy]

In the Linux world there is always beta testing of new or updated programs all the way to complete distros. Anyone using this software should be aware of the potential for causing problems with your existing system.

 

As of February 3, 2003, beta 3 of Mandrakesoft's 9.1 has been released. In another forum a user asked about upgrading this beta version from 9.0 to 9.1 beta 3 and was advised to go ahead and do so. There is little question that doing such an upgrade would trash his system because of problems in the beta. If you wish to test beta software you should set it up in such a way that it will not damage or lose your current install. Backup is a necessity for a full distribution and installation to separate partitions is the safest way to do this. This means that you need to install two distributions side-by-side which involves rewriting lilo or grub manually from the Mandrake Control Center. If you wish to do a dual install, post a question in the Terminal Shell Commands, Kernel and Programming Section.

 

To see what else you are up against, take the time to read the cooker mailing list. You can read it from either of these two URL's: http://www.mail-archive.com/cooker%40linux...x-mandrake.com/ or http://archives.mandrakelinux.com/cooker/ . Links to other Mandrakesoft archives can be found here: http://archives.mandrakelinux.com/ . Occasionally there may be a mention of beta versions in other archives.

 

If you have discovered what you think is a bug in Mandrake 9.0, you can post it in Bugzilla, found here: https://qa.mandrakesoft.com/ . The status of most bugs is reported here. If you are beta testing other software, follow the author's instructions or email him directly.

 

Remember there may be no way of reversing what a beta might do and finding its files can be an undaunting task.

 

Counterspy