First they laugh at you. Then they keep on laughing. Then they cry, because they realize the alternatives are just as bad.

My kingdom for a solid OS.

April 11th, 2010

All I want for Christmas are up to date packages, no need to sit around compiling kernels, and solid networking. Is it too much to ask?

Yes, clearly.

RHEL/CentOS: Networking is beyond solid, albeit best configured manually in terms of setup. Xen is absolutely archaic, but at least comes with a dom0 kernel – though it seems plenty finicky around scsi devices and VNC.

Fedora: …Hung at the splash screen post-install. On a Sun Fire x4150. Seriously? Points for the upcoming Xenified kernel in Fedora 13, though.

Ubuntu: Networking seems easy enough to configure, and works, as long as you’re not going super-crazy with abstract interconnects. Xen is absolutely archaic, and there’s not even a dom0 kernel. The answer is to pull a Debian kernel (lol) or compile your own kernel, manually patching with OpenSuSE(!) patches. Yeah, no thanks.

OpenSuSE: Xen is up to date, and has a potentially super-up-to-date dom0 kernel. Networking is curiously annoying to deal with via YaST – but the real problem is, right out of the disc, I apparently can’t do ethernet bonding with Xen due to module differences.

It’s 2010.

I’m just trying to run a solid, up-to-date Xen dom0 with simple, bonded ethernet, without having to a) compile Xen myself, or b) compile a dom0 kernel myself.

It’s pointedly not 1995.

Really, if I wanted to compile common software myself, I’d step into a police box and at least get a kick-ass theme song out of it.

Well, OpenSuSE still seems like the best solution for those who are interested in non-broken, easy-to-manage 3.4.x XEN. Time to fiddle – I have no doubt that bonding works and that I’ve just missed the obvious in the installation process.

Note: Still working out comments/etc. theming. Please ignore the ugliness.

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