Re: Draft release notes and errata for RC1 - please comment

[Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr>]

On Fri, Nov 10, 2006 at 02:10:29PM +0100, Frans Pop wrote:

First, a question, does this apply to the rc1 also, or to the expected final
version ? If we are going to release debian with 2.6.17, there are half a
dozen issues which will need to be mentioned in the erratas i guess.

A few comments concerning the powerpc port now :

> - http://people.debian.org/~fjp/d-i/RC1_errata_DRAFT.html

 - You say : Airport Extreme driver is reported to be broken in 2.6.16 (#358833)

   This strikes me at odd, we have no had 2.6.16 kernels since age, and the
   airport extreme (bcm43xx or something such) driver has been rumored to be
   fixed in 2.6.18-3 or something such, and now working well. I have no such
   hardware to confirm, but the return of the bug reporters seemed to indicate
   such.

   In fact, the bug report quoted says (on june 2006) :

   "bcm43xx and softmac-snapshot got removed now. Please use 2.6.17 which
   has a far newer and bugfixes version of both merged in anyway."

   So please drop this one.

 - you have two entries about oldworld powermacs floppy installs : 

   floppy installations for powerpc are broken because no device node is created for the swim3 module

   Oldworld powerpc boot floppies will not work as miboot is not included

   This wording is abysmal in confusion. And maybe they could be regrouped
   together or something. The first issue clearly seems one which could be
   fixed, and maybe someone like Holger who has powerpc oldworld hardware
   could do it before the release even.

   In any case, the right name is not "powerpc floppies" or "oldworld powerpc"
   but "floppy installation on oldworld powermacs". In any case, installation
   using bootx and the normal cd installation method should work on oldworld,
   not sure though, as i have not tested and there where brokeness which was
   supposed to be fixed upstream. I have not really followed the oldworld
   issue, but maybe other can comment.

 - works only on some PowerPC systems (most ATI graphics cards)

   I would have written : "Works on all PowerPC systems with ATI graphic
   cards". I believe we have had no single success report with non-ATI graphic
   cards, and we solved all ATI related problems. Well, i am not sure if this
   applies to radeonfb only, or if problems remain with older ati cards
   though. Eddy/Attilio, can you comment on this ? 

   Notice that most PowerPC hardware out there has ATI graphics :)

> Draft versions of the release notes and errata for RC1 are available at:
> - http://people.debian.org/~fjp/d-i/RC1_release-notes_DRAFT.html

The same comments apply here about the powerpc port : 

 - There are still various issues for some powerpc subarchitectures.

   Here we could replace it with an exhaustive list of the actual issues,
   which are not so many, and mention the miboot floppies maybe ? But then you
   also cover this in the erratas, so i don't know. But this is at odd with
   the degree of detail of the other Known issues.
 
 - g-i and : works only on some PowerPC systems (most ATI graphics cards).

   Same remark as above.

We could also mention architecture support changes :

  - PowerPC: dropped support for powerpc/apus.
  - PowerPC: Added support for 64bit PowerPC architectures (IBM pSeries, Apple
    G5 powermacs).
  - PowerPC: not supported : Apple Nubus and IBM pre-power5 Iseries.

Well, to be complete, one could have the list of supported subarches too : 

  - Apple newworld and G5 powermacs
  - IBM CHRP machines (RS6K, pseries, iseries, ...)
  - Genesi CHRP machines (Pegasos, maybe Efika)
  - PReP machines (IBM 43P-140, Motorola PowerStack, ...)

Well, these are just data points, i don't know how it integrates best with the
release notes and erratas, but i would be glad to participate in the
discussion about those.

Friendly,

Sven Luther