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To: Thomas A Watson who wrote (373)	2/6/2001 1:52:59 PM
From: Brian Sullivan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 421

Apparently Mr. Torvalds isn't impressed with the latest offering from Red Hat software: Client Server NEWS 380.2 NewsFlash The Very Independent Observer of Microsoft, Windows 2000/NT and Other Phenomena December 15, 2000 Linus Savages Red Hat 7.0 By Maureen O'Gara Friday, December 15, 2000 - Linus Torvalds, the father of Linux, trashed Red Hat 7.0, the market leader's latest rev of its Linux distribution, as "basically unusable" in a posting he made to the Linux kernel mailing list yesterday. The text of the blistering appraisal reads as follows: "Quite frankly, anybody who uses Red Hat 7.0 and their broken compiler for anything is going to have trouble. "I don't know why RH decided to do their idiotic gcc-2.96 release (it certainly wasn't approved by any technical gcc people - the gcc people were upset about it too), and I find it even more surprising that they apparently KNEW that the compiler they were using was completely broken. They included another (non-broken) compiler, and called it "kgcc." "'kgcc' stands for "kernel gcc", apparently because (a) they realized that a miscompiled kernel is even worse than miscompiling some random user applications and (b) gcc-2.96 is so broken that it requires special libraries for C++ vtable chunks handling that is different, so the working gcc can only be used with programs that do not need such library support. Namely the kernel. "In case it wasn't obvious yet, I consider Red Hat 7.0 to be basically unusable as a development platform, and I hope RH downgrades their compiler to something that works better RSN. It apparently has problems compiling stuff like the CVS snapshots of X etc too (and obviously, anything you compile under gcc-2.96 is not likely to work anywhere else except with the broken libraries)." Red Hat CEO Matthew Szulik, who said he wasn't really the right person to respond to Linus' charges, also said that Red Hat has been expecting a denunciation like this. The rumbling has been going on for months and in many corners. The GCC Steering Committee got its hackles up about it back in early October when it publicly branded the so-called GCC 2.96 compiler unfit for production release. It said it was a "development branch" of what would eventually be GCC 3.0. "GCC 2.96 is not a formal GCC release," "nor will there ever be such a release." It's merely a way station on the road to GCC 3.0. The GCC Steering Committee said 2.96 produces "object files that are not compatible with those produced by either GCC 2.95.2 or the forthcoming GCC 3.0. Therefore, programs built with these snapshots will not be compatible with any official GCC release. Actually, C and Fortran code will probably be compatible, but code in other languages, most notably C++ due to incompatibilities in symbol encoding (``mangling''), the standard library and the application binary interface (ABI), is likely to fail in some way. Static linking against C++ libraries may make a binary more portable, at the cost of increasing file size and memory use." Red Hat is famous for pushing the envelop in its dot 0 releases and using bleeding-edge technology. Red Hat Linux 5.0 was widely criticized when it came out in 1998 for using glib libraries that were not ready for prime time. The instability of Red Hat 5.0 put Informix, the first serious enterprise ISV to port to Linux, in a quandary. It ported the Informix SE database to the more stable SuSE instead, then came up against the popularity issue. Red Hat simply had more market share than SuSE. Informix decided it had to do a special port to Red Hat since the code written for the less radical SuSE would not run on Red Hat, a familiar, if distasteful, problem for any old-line Unix ISV. Programs not specifically ported to Red Hat 5.0 like StarOffice, for instance, broke because their libraries weren't in synch. The same problem exists with Red Hat 7.0. Programs written for it will not work on other Linux distributions. Red Hat critics accuse Red Hat of using the device to differentiate itself or appear to differentiate itself from its more conservative rivals, who abstain from using such edge-of-the-development-curve technologies as although it were unripe fruit, and garner a lead over them in the marketplace. They claim the technique is a disservice to Red Hat customers and say there's general disconnect between Red Hat engineers with their gee-whiz widgetry and the marketplace, which requires stability. They also claim that Red Hat is doing a disservice to the Linux movement per se. Now that Linux is poised on the threshold of acceptance in the corporate world integrity and reliability should be the watchwords. Red Hat CTO Michael Tiemann recently defended Red Hat's decision to use GCC 2.96 against the hue and cry that erupted in the Linux community in the wake of Red Hat 7.0's release in September. He said that "it appears that no better technical decision could have been made" because all the other choices weren't any better - given the complex series of requirements Red Hat had - and rather than go backwards, its decision could push the development of GCC 3.0, which Tiemann described as "quite a ways off" and "very much a work in progress." Tiemann said if critics wanted someone to blame, "then you might as well blame me" for the 2.96 decision. "Frankly, I didn't even consider C++ ABI compatibility with other Linux vendors, since I think that's a losing proposition until everyone is using gcc3. We were already incompatible, since there are a mix of egcs and gcc versions involved."