Cooker: If you have used or plan to use cooker please take this poll and post here!
 

I'm considering switching my sources all over from Mandrake 10 Official to cooker.

I'd like to hear from all of those who have used cooker sources with Mandrake 10 Official in the past and those who continue to use cooker sources.

The reason I'm posting this is because I'd like to get a feel for how many people here have used cooker and how the experience has been for them.

Please take the included poll and answer these questions that follow. Thanks for your time and for reading this post.

Have you used cooker sources with Mandrake 10 Official? If so:

1) Did you (or do you) experience any huge crashes? If so, which programs and versions?
2) Did you (or do you) notice any serious problems when using cooker?
3) How often do you have to urpmi --auto-select when using cooker sources compared to using regular sources?
4) Would you recommend others using Mandrake 10 Official to switch to cooker sources if they want the latest and greatest available for their desktop OS?

Re: Cooker: If you have used or plan to use cooker please take this poll and post her
 

1) I have to say I had never experienced any "huge" crashes...as a matter fact, I can remember of only one instance that my box froze (can't remember if it was a prog that froze the box or due to a fresh kernel(rc) install.)

Of course, it goes without saying that, there have been (and will always be) problems such as:

a) ATM, there is an ongoing problem with artsd crashing during login with no system notification sound and any progs associated with arts sound server are not working. But ALSA works like a charm after package/lib fixes.
b) Other than having some games crashing (glaxium, abuse_sdl, racer, etc...mostly due to seg faults), it's pretty stable to use everyday (I mainly use this box as a workstation, web-surfer, music/video server/encoder, video transcoder/encoder, image manipulation and graphics work.)
c) kernel(s)-2.6.7-0.rc(1-3) all gave me kernel panics, but the latest (2.6.7-2) runs like a ferrai,
d) Xorg's xorg.conf file symlinking to the wrong file caused the GUI not to work (but after a long and painfully head-stratching, solved it by simply symlinking the file to the correct one)
e) ...I guess you get the idea. If you have a nack in figuring out the inner workings of your OS, have some time to kill playing, testing, cursing, praying at your box, then by all means, it's one great learning curve to ride.

2) Serious problems? I guess when you are using a operating system and all its components that are still in development, then you have to expect the worst, so the question will depend on your experience and/or determination.

3) I don't have any sources other than cooker (main, contrib, plf) and I update/install at least once a day (sometimes 3x!:eek: ) and it's like Christmas everyday! But hopefully you have high-speed broadband...some packages and dependencies, like KDE, get to be in the 100's+ of MB.

4) See number 1e). In addition, you can check with qa.mandrakesoft when problems do arise, and search for known bugs or report new ones. And see the progresses at work and enjoy that your contribution, of many, is working to build a better OS.

I can't elaborate much on what estatik said. I didn't have the x.org problem, but I did have that annoying (and constant, regardless of what "dev" sources you take from whatever distro - Debian's Sid is like that too) aRTs problem. Its been reported to the bugzilla several times, so its gonna be fixed someday.

x2 on the kernel! 2.6.7 rocks! I loved it so much that I made sure I got it installed on Gentoo! Same deal with the rest. KDE 3.2.2 seems a bit more responsive (but the arts thing is annoying), x.org's server seems faster than xfree86's. The kernels available work well (but sometimes break the bootsplash).

If you're a noob, don't do cooker. If you can fix basic things once in a while, you might wanna try it, but be prepared for some things to be broken for weeks (and its hard to revert to the older stuff without pain).

No.

Not unless you count the install not completing or hosing the mbr.



As often as you like. Keep in mind that Cooker is a development system and is updated constantly. It's common for Cooker ftp installs to have problems because the rpms change while you install.

Keep in mind that you can often use Cooker rpms without trouble if you download them manually and don't use urpmi --auto-select to install them. I have kde 3.2.2 from Cooker installed with 10.0 community (the development tree not the isos) and it works ok. Try using rpm -F *.rpm for this instead of using cooker as an urpmi source.



Well, basically ==> NO !!!! <==

I agree with the answers the previous posters gave. The reason I'm saying no is that Cooker is a development system and not really intended for newbies or people who don't already have good skills. Cooker is intended for people who want to help Mandrake out by testing and sending in bug reports.

People who want the latest stuff without too many problems might be better off compiling source code. It's easy enough to keep multiple versions on one system. Just have multiple users with PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH set differently. I have kde 3.3alpha and kde 3.2.3 (from source) along with the cooker kde 3.2.2 on the same system this way.

If you really want to try Cooker I'd recommend you have it in it's own partition and have 10.0 official around to fall back on. Also make sure you know how to use a rescue cd and do backups and restores, you may need to.

Thank you for all the wonderfully detailed, informative, and quick replies! I really appreciate it!

As i'm currently limited to 56k I guess I'll have to pass on using the cooker sources, but it does sound very interesting, fun, and rewarding. I look forward to giving it a try sometime in the future. Thanks again to all of you for taking the time to share your experiences. Thanks to those who participated in the poll for this thread as well.