On Saturday February 28 2004 07:02 pm, Brian Kelsay wrote:

> I don't like on any installer where it says it is 99% finished, but
> there is an hour to go.

One way this happens is that the installation is technically complete, but the 
tasks that finalize it like building the database of installed RPM's isn't 
complete.  It may also be running things like makewhatis and updatedb, which 
take a lot of disk thrashing and CPU time.  These processes have been 
successfully launched by the installer, which is therefore at the end of it's 
list of things to launch, and announces that it has launched 100% of the 
tasks.

KDE startup is similar - on my notebook there is usually another two minutes 
to go when KDE happily finishes "Restoring Sessions" and announces "KDE is up 
and running!".

I think there's some intentional dishonesty here on the part of the 
developers.  They want to be able to claim that their systems are "faster" 
than someone else's work, so they cheat on how they count the time.  Seeing 
as developers are right up there with gamers in having the latest and 
greatest hardware, they probably don't see the difference as significant.

Generally, software could be improved a lot by chaining the developers in the 
basement with an old XT and a 14" CGA monitor.  Give them 16M of ram and an 
RLL Hard drive to swap to.