The Usual Suspect — I

About a month after the most recent Red Hat point release, the same updates come rolling downhill in CentOS.

Same routine — second verse, same as the first. Which means I always expect breakage.

With the recent 7.6-1810 release I experienced the following in my VirtualBox instance.

The VirtualBox Guest Additions (GA) break because of kernel changes.
Mouse copying no longer works in mate-terminal. The latest GA ISO does not help.
Mouse wheel scrolling fails. The latest GA ISO does not help.
App menus do not respond. The latest GA ISO does not help.
Opening the MATE Control Center is a gamble because the selected option might open a different option.
Opening any MATE related app in the X desktop froze the desktop.
Fonts lost subpixel hinting.
The MATE Appearance->Fonts dialog shows Arial Kavovika or Arial Standaard rather than Arial or Arial Regular.

In all systems, bare metal and virtual, On reboot or shut down, I see a Failed to unmount Kernel Configuration File System error.

For some obtuse reason, somebody upstream moved the fontconfig cache directory from /var/cache/fontconfig to, get this, /usr/lib/fontconfig/cache. Why, oh WTF why?

I don’t understand the breakage. The CentOS rollout doesn’t happen for a month or more. That period provides adequate time to test packages. The number of bugs do not speak well for upstream testing at Red Hat either.

Something always breaks with Red Hat/CentOS point releases. Always.

People tend to mock Ubuntu quality assurance but for a long time I have experienced the same low quality from Red Hat.

Posted: December 23, 2018 Category: Usability Tagged: CentOS

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