Re: OpenMandriva turmoil - sabotage?

Daniel70 <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 18/07/2026 5:51 am, John McCue wrote:
>> Followups changed to comp.os.linux.misc
>> In comp.os.linux.misc Woozy Song <[email protected]> wrote:
>>> Just got an e-mail from OpenMandriva explaining what occurred. They took
>>> on a new developer, who became abusive to others in the team. So the
>>> person at the top blocked them from the chat, but unfortunately did not
>>> cut off the dev priveleges. Anyway the problematic person spat the dummy
>>> and deleted a heap of stuff from Github.
>>> Has similar happened to other distros?
>> 
>> That is too bad, I have not heard of that happening to other
>> distros.
>> 
>> But Mandriva seems to have a "curse" on it.  IIRC, ages ago
>> the distro it descended from, Mandrake, had an issue that
>> broke some hardware.  I forgot the exact problem but it caused
>> many people to migrate to another distro.
>> 
> Sorry!! How can ANY Distro of anything break Hardware?? Old Age can, 
> sure, but .....!!

Back in yesteryear, and primarially before the advent of multi-sync 
monitors (this is for old CRT tube monitors) if one fed the wrong 
frequency video signals into a CRT monitor that was designed for a 
different set of frequencies, some of those monitors could be damaged 
as a result.  I.e., the monitor was fixed frequency and designed for 
800x600 signals.  Feeding it a 1024x768 or 1280x1024 signal (for some 
monitors) could damage the monitor.

Now, one could, quite reasonably, argue that this was a poor design on 
the part of those monitors that could be damaged this way, but it was 
something that could happen.

Other possibilities that also come to mind:

1) repeatedly hammering a floppy disk head against either the innermost 
or outermost head travel stop to attempt to break either the stepper 
motor or the metal bands connecting the stepper to the head assembly;

2) repeating the same for a hard disk;

3) repeatedly parking and unparking the heads of a hard disk rapidly 
(most hard drives had plastic ramps for the park position, too many 
park cycles could wear down the plastic -- granted "too many" was 
likely on the order of millions, so one had to intentionally try)

There are likely more possible senarios.  But the point is, it is 
possible for software to, sometimes, break hardware.  The video sync 
one was the one more folks were likely to see from installing a 
"distro" in that if the default install brought X up with the wrong 
sync signals the CRT tube could be damaged.  This is why old X modeline 
FAQ's always cautioned one to carefully review one's choices against 
the spec. sheets for one's monitor lest one accidentally setup an 
incorrect modeline and damage one's monitor in the process.  Much of 
this was also before the advent of EDID signaling where the monitor 
could tell the computer what combinations of signals it could 
understand and then the OS could set up the video card to output one of 
the sets the monitor claimed it could handle.