Why are so many people using 4.x?

[Andrea Venturoli]

usleepless at gmail.com wrote:
> you have had plenty of response already. i just want to post my experience.

I'll post my 2 cents too.


> in late 2001, i installed 4.3 on a server and a couple of
> workstations. i have upgraded them as time went by up to 4.11. no
> problems, it runs runs runs.

I've had plenty of 4.11 systems. Some of them tends to reboot from time 
to time. Sometimes I was able to track it down to some software failure 
(vinum, net drivers, ...), sometimes to hardware, sometimes I wasn't 
able to get anywhere and I simply started over with new HW&SW.



> i have been following the mailing-lists on a regular basis, and
> decided 5.x was not me ( sorry guys ).

I've read plenty of horror tales on 5.x, yet I've built some new systems 
and done some upgrades and had absolutely no problems so far. In my 
experience even 5.3 is far stabler than 4.11 (which was not at all bad 
in turn).



> so far, 6.0 has been flawless for me. only thing i noticed was: gcc3.3
> seems to be a lot slower than 2.95 ( i have no figures, could be my
> imagination )

I agree 6.0 is even as stable.
As for gcc, 3.x is far slower than 2.9. C++ is a huge beast and 
supporting it all poses heavy requirement on the compiler. 2.95 didn't 
support C++ as well as 3.x, so you'll sooner or later run into some 
missing features; on the other side this implied faster compilations.
Their web site says 4.x is again a lot faster than 3.x, although I 
didn't see any performance comparison against 2.x. I still haven't 
tested this myself.




Go with 6.x, really.

  bye
	av.