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Funtoo release model


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Hi Guys, 

Yesterday I decided to switch to 1.3 rel. After syncing, some packages were marked for downgrade. I've red the "Upgrade to 1.3" notes, several discussions, etc ...

My questions are:
  - whats the funtoo release model - rolling or some sort of freeze releases, with some marked as LTS

 - is there a way to be/stay always in current, eg to use as before, as a rolling distro

Regards, M. 

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Hi,

you can read here about the changes on funtoo 1.3. Take a look at the "Kit Snapshots" section.

https://www.funtoo.org/Release_Notes/1.3-release.

 

Your second question is answered in this Ticket:

https://bugs.funtoo.org/browse/FL-6219?focusedCommentId=40375&page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel#comment-40375

 

Regards

 

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2 hours ago, pfl said:

Hi,

you can read here about the changes on funtoo 1.3. Take a look at the "Kit Snapshots" section.

https://www.funtoo.org/Release_Notes/1.3-release.

 

Your second question is answered in this Ticket:

https://bugs.funtoo.org/browse/FL-6219?focusedCommentId=40375&page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel#comment-40375

Hi @pfl,

So, in short there is no way atm to use current, right?

Also, dunno whats the problem half of the users/or even more/ to use current. Thats one of the reasons to use rolling release distro.

Maybe, if there is really no way to stay in current, I will stop using Funtoo. Feel sad, before Funtoo used Gentoo, SourceMage, Lunar ... source based distros are fun to use in fact.

Thanks anyway.

2 hours ago, pfl said:

Regards

 

 

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I don't know much about Daniel's decision making process or about how ego and Funtoo kits work.  What I do know is that I want a stable OS that gives me a large amount of control with minimal effort.  No other distro gives us this level of control and stability for this level of effort.  I am willing to give up the rolling release model if it helps Daniel perfect the cost/benefit ratios of Funtoo. 

I don't want to fight with my computer systems, I want to use them.  The same is true for my friends, my family, and their businesses.  It can take a lot of time and effort to keep a production server stable without worrying about a rolling release model that builds a major system malfunction into the OS every six months.  People will put up with a lot of things in life but smart people will not but up with wasted time.  Most people won't use Funtoo because they see source based distros as a waste of time.  I think addressing those concerns is vital to the future of the Funtoo project if it is going to grow financially.  My best guess is that if the project doesn't grow financially it will not expand far beyond what we have now because Daniel needs to feed a family and pay his bills.

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Hi @mlinuxgada

1 hour ago, mlinuxgada said:

So, in short there is no way atm to use current, right? 

At least no official supported way. What you could do is to create your own kits.

https://www.funtoo.org/Creating_Your_Own_Meta-Repo_and_Kits

I made a first shoot but this docu looks a little bit outdated and I faced some issues. I didn't had the time to step deeper into it.

If you do so I would love to hear about your experiences.

1 hour ago, mlinuxgada said:

Also, dunno whats the problem half of the users/or even more/ to use current. Thats one of the reasons to use rolling release distro.

I'm also not sure if most the users will now help with the Development or if they are searching for alternatives. But in fact a less changing Distro will break less which means less maintenance.

Regards

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  • 1 month later...
On 2/27/2019 at 1:42 AM, jhan said:

In a way I can understand both sides. The need to have a "snapshot" to have a version that is stable but also the need to have new versions available when needed. I came to gentoo and now funtoo because I always ran into problems with binary distributions when I wanted to install some package just to find out that this package did need a library or other dependency that was not available for the current release. And installing the dependencies lead to conflicts in the system. Without current or latest versions being available funtoo doesn't offer that benefit anymore. There are still ways to do it manually but it would work better integrated into the system, especially if those manually installed versions become part of a new stable system.

What I don't quite understand is, why you can't have both?

Yes, a stable version or release is good to have, as users can just use that and development has it easier to fix bugs. And it gives experimental users a "fallback" version, if something goes wrong with the system. But that doesn't exclude making newer versions available as early as possible. It would be easy to mark them accordingly, may that be a use flag, a special kit or something else. So the default would be a stable version and a user could choose to see all available versions or e.g. just for some packages. And handling problems with experimental versions could be done as today. Either no support at all, "best effort support" or community support.

And I don't agree with @drobbins statement in the bug report:

I think the opposite could be true. As the users that chosse to install experimental software are mostly the ones that have the knowledge to fix the arising problems and can help with development. Having both types of users is the key here. Users running the stable version can help fixing problems with the stable version but "experimental" users can help in both worlds. Those experimental users might have not stable systems in general but might not be completely unstable, if they e.g. just upgraded part of their system. So they could still help with problems in the stable version. And, when the former experimental versions become part of a new stable release, the knowledge for those newer verions is already there and some bugs probably fixed before they occur in a stable release. Not to mention that the more experienced users are or at least have the knowledge to run multiple versions of funtoo.

So, if package versions, which are newer than the latest stable version, are clearly marked (e.g. with an experimental use flag) and users need to manually switch to the experimental version and maybe get a appropiate warning about the consequences of that switch, I see no problem in offering both worlds at the same time. A stable version and "cutting edge" technology.

Aren't you describing the whole idea of stable, masked and hard masked? or as in funtoo was stable, current and experimental? 

I think it was a reason I used gentoo and now funtoo. Current was stable enuf or you could always mask yourself the package till update with fix will come out. On other hand you could just easily unmask still not stable package and if needed resolve dependencies, flag updates and etc if needed.

Otherwise if the point of snapshots to give stability, what's the point of being source based at all? :)

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2 hours ago, zogg said:

Aren't you describing the whole idea of stable, masked and hard masked? or as in funtoo was stable, current and experimental? 

I think it was a reason I used gentoo and now funtoo. Current was stable enuf or you could always mask yourself the package till update with fix will come out. On other hand you could just easily unmask still not stable package and if needed resolve dependencies, flag updates and etc if needed.

Otherwise if the point of snapshots to give stability, what's the point of being source based at all? ?

Quick note: I used current all the time.

Atm there is no current, thats the problem for me.
 

So ... funtoo imao is not a rolling distro anymore.

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22 hours ago, mlinuxgada said:

Quick note: I used current all the time.

Atm there is no current, thats the problem for me.
 

So ... funtoo imao is not a rolling distro anymore.

I am with you. It's pity that even Ubuntu gets newer packages than funtoo :(

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On 4/5/2019 at 7:46 AM, mlinuxgada said:

Quick note: I used current all the time.

Atm there is no current, thats the problem for me.
 

So ... funtoo imao is not a rolling distro anymore.

That's true. It's neither a rolling release or a traditional fixed released distro now.  It's changing and we won't know exactly what it will become until it gets there.  I think you have to kind of review what @drobbins has said about his objectives for the distro and decide if you want to go in that direction or just stick with a rolling release.

 

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On 4/6/2019 at 6:08 AM, zogg said:

I am with you. It's pity that even Ubuntu gets newer packages than funtoo ?

Where is this the case?  Looking at stable releases it appears that Funtoo is ahead of Ubuntu in pretty much all instances.

The key question about his new model is whether they will be able to rev it on the schedule that @drobbins has suggested and whether those updates can run as smoothly as your typical emerge.  If that can be successful then I don't think there will be any problem with the freshness of the releases.  

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  • Funtoo Linux BDFL

We are not doing rolling release for the following reasons:

  1. Too much time is spent on fixing various breakages coming in from Gentoo, which takes time away from other things...
  2. other things are more important such as new technology like fchroot and the upcoming containerization solution...
  3. If users are interested in certain packages being updated, I am encouraging them to submit a pull request and maintain these ebuilds themselves, so I am going to focus on helping YOU maintain ebuilds rather than have a few people (this has generally been Oleg) maintaining them for everyone. This model doesn't scale -- we all need to do a little bit rather than a few people doing a lot. See the YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKmOY6p3c9hxv3vJMAF8vVw for tutorials

Short-term, this means development slows down. But in reality, it will speed up development greatly. For those hanging out on IRC, you know that Oleg who has helped to maintain Funtoo for years has moved on to a new chapter in his life, so he is no longer active on Funtoo. But even though I am not slaving away over here, thanks to incoming pull requests Funtoo is continuing to move forward and be responsive to user needs.

So think of it as a course correction as we become more agile and community-oriented, and be part of the solution. If you are reading this, it means you are part of the Funtoo community and just as able to contribute to Funtoo as anyone else (maybe with some tutorials/videos to help).

When I work on technologies, I am trying more to work on key tools that help the community be more productive (like fchroot) rather than focusing on specific ebuilds, which I am leaving to the community to manage using pull requests.

Best,

Daniel

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On 4/8/2019 at 8:46 AM, drobbins said:

We are not doing rolling release for the following reasons:

  1. Too much time is spent on fixing various breakages coming in from Gentoo, which takes time away from other things...
  2. other things are more important such as new technology like fchroot and the upcoming containerization solution...
  3. If users are interested in certain packages being updated, I am encouraging them to submit a pull request and maintain these ebuilds themselves, so I am going to focus on helping YOU maintain ebuilds rather than have a few people (this has generally been Oleg) maintaining them for everyone. This model doesn't scale -- we all need to do a little bit rather than a few people doing a lot. See the YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKmOY6p3c9hxv3vJMAF8vVw for tutorials

Short-term, this means development slows down. But in reality, it will speed up development greatly. For those hanging out on IRC, you know that Oleg who has helped to maintain Funtoo for years has moved on to a new chapter in his life, so he is no longer active on Funtoo. But even though I am not slaving away over here, thanks to incoming pull requests Funtoo is continuing to move forward and be responsive to user needs.

So think of it as a course correction as we become more agile and community-oriented, and be part of the solution. If you are reading this, it means you are part of the Funtoo community and just as able to contribute to Funtoo as anyone else (maybe with some tutorials/videos to help).

When I work on technologies, I am trying more to work on key tools that help the community be more productive (like fchroot) rather than focusing on specific ebuilds, which I am leaving to the community to manage using pull requests.

Best,

Daniel

To be fair enuf, it seems little bit confusing "new technologies" and slow updates. In order to maintain own packages (hello also dependencies of those packages) by yourself + few pull requests from other people vs gentoo community - it would be funny to maintain yourself whole distro (are we LFS now?). Or to bump you for each build and wait for your response. (after all we'll get messy yaourt as in arch with lists of half dead overlays with duplicated and conflicting packages - yay stability \o/ ) 

It's pity that new distro technology comes as price for new packages and up-to-date software.

In other words - it is sad chapter and i think in order to gain stability for end user you would lose actually people who has enuf knowledge for people who is know how to copy paste from instructions without understanding ?

On 4/7/2019 at 10:24 PM, nrc said:

Where is this the case?  Looking at stable releases it appears that Funtoo is ahead of Ubuntu in pretty much all instances.

The key question about his new model is whether they will be able to rev it on the schedule that @drobbins has suggested and whether those updates can run as smoothly as your typical emerge.  If that can be successful then I don't think there will be any problem with the freshness of the releases.  

here is from top of my head as I wanted to check AV1 support lately

Funtoo / Ubuntu

mpv 0.27.2/0.29.0(AV1 support comes here)

chromium 71.0.3578.30/73.0.3683.86

 

Seems like for the past few months only update I saw in funtoo was vim version bumps ?

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2 hours ago, zogg said:

To be fair enuf, it seems little bit confusing "new technologies" and slow updates. In order to maintain own packages (hello also dependencies of those packages) by yourself + few pull requests from other people vs gentoo community - it would be funny to maintain yourself whole distro (are we LFS now?). Or to bump you for each build and wait for your response. (after all we'll get messy yaourt as in arch with lists of half dead overlays with duplicated and conflicting packages - yay stability \o/ ) 

It's pity that new distro technology comes as price for new packages and up-to-date software.

In other words - it is sad chapter and i think in order to gain stability for end user you would lose actually people who has enuf knowledge for people who is know how to copy paste from instructions without understanding ?

here is from top of my head as I wanted to check AV1 support lately

Funtoo / Ubuntu

mpv 0.27.2/0.29.0(AV1 support comes here)

chromium 71.0.3578.30/73.0.3683.86

 

Seems like for the past few months only update I saw in funtoo was vim version bumps ?

 

On 4/8/2019 at 12:46 AM, drobbins said:

...think of it as a course correction as we become more agile and community-oriented, and be part of the solution. If you are reading this, it means you are part of the Funtoo community and just as able to contribute to Funtoo as anyone else (maybe with some tutorials/videos to help)...
 

Do something!  Submit patches, file bug reports, write wiki articles, donate a few dollars to Funtoo on a monthly basis.  Something is usually better than nothing. 

If you are annoyed with the changes in the short term just remember that these are only the first steps in a new direction.  It will take time for the momentum to shift but all of us can reduce that time by doing something.  You have adequately expressed your displeasure with the current state of the distro and more over you have had a direct response from the only person who can make a decision based on your input.  Rehashing your arguments and cherry picking examples to make to your points isn't going to do a single thing to make Funtoo better.

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17 hours ago, lazlo.vii said:

 

Do something!  Submit patches, file bug reports, write wiki articles, donate a few dollars to Funtoo on a monthly basis.  Something is usually better than nothing. 

If you are annoyed with the changes in the short term just remember that these are only the first steps in a new direction.  It will take time for the momentum to shift but all of us can reduce that time by doing something.  You have adequately expressed your displeasure with the current state of the distro and more over you have had a direct response from the only person who can make a decision based on your input.  Rehashing your arguments and cherry picking examples to make to your points isn't going to do a single thing to make Funtoo better.

You are correct regarding contribution. Though my point was not about missing packages, but in general in the idea of switching to rolling release.

It's obviously that after all @drobbins is doing amazing job, it's just the current idea of future updates does not suit me or/and some others.

For me rolling release is the reason I was on Gentoo and after that Funtoo for about 15 years and it is natural that such change is something that would make me consider if this is the way I want to go.

And I did contribution to Funtoo , small but still... As today I have less timne and opportunity to hack around and break my work setup especially :(

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On 4/11/2019 at 4:27 PM, lazlo.vii said:

 

Do something!  Submit patches, file bug reports, write wiki articles, donate a few dollars to Funtoo on a monthly basis.  Something is usually better than nothing. 

If you are annoyed with the changes in the short term just remember that these are only the first steps in a new direction.  It will take time for the momentum to shift but all of us can reduce that time by doing something.  You have adequately expressed your displeasure with the current state of the distro and more over you have had a direct response from the only person who can make a decision based on your input.  Rehashing your arguments and cherry picking examples to make to your points isn't going to do a single thing to make Funtoo better.

About doing smth, well, some do, me included. Small, but here and there.

The question is more about the direction things are going.

We all know release model is much easier than rolling distro. One of the reasons I jumped on Gentoo/long time ago/ then on Funtoo is the rolling model. Some of the others are that its source based, slots, alot of customisation/flags ... etc.

My point is - today you decide to switch from rolling to release, eg no current, just freezed releases. Tomorrow nothing stops you from source based to package/bin oriented ? Maybe Debian clone /one of dozens/ ?

Dont get me wrong. I use funtoo not geeky weekends, where I can spend whole day install/reinstall/fiddle with this or that. My workstation is build on Funtoo. My work depends on Funtoo. If some1 decides to flip a coin and make a decision, when I am not sure about the general direction ... 

I can install a Debian/Manjaro in minutes, but I dont want to. I want Funtoo as it was for years - just to have current.

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It seems as though you two do not understand that isn't something the our BDFL just decided to do.  There are important reasons for this change.  Don't take it personally that change has come you favorite distro.  Complaining about the changes is bad for our signal to noise ratio and confuses the issue.  Everything changes.  If you can work hard enough maybe you can change it back.  Again, there are important reason for this change.  The biggest reason is that the one person that was maintaining the vast majority of Funtoo ebuilds is no longer doing it.  If either of you can take his place go for it.  Otherwise if we going to get updated packages between upstream snapshots it's going to take a few people doing a lot or a lot of people doing a little.  If you two have any better ideas about how to keep Funtoo running smoothly then please share your plans with us. 

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  • Funtoo Linux BDFL

Hey I just want to jump in and say it's OK, I understand if there are some people that are disappointed about us not having pure rolling releases anymore. It's fine to express your opinions here. I think that's totally understandable, frankly.

Now yes, these changes were totally needed and like I said earlier, there is a strategy that is being very successful so far even though it's in its early stages. The strategy is that I support our users (with things like YouTube videos, code.funtoo.org, fchroot) to be contributors to Funtoo. So yes, right now I think it's fair to say we are playing a bit of catch-up with Oleg moving on to other things -- BUT, considering we just started this effort, I also think it's fair to say that in time we will likely catch up and even go beyond what we were capable of before.

And that means that we can push ahead more with many more updates and possibly even a more up-to-date release (betas?) or a true rolling release again.

In the mean time, I ask @lazlo.vii and others to be supportive of those expressing disappointment since I want people to have a place to vent their disappointment -- I don't see it being overboard or in poor taste at all -- and in my experience, the worst thing for a community is if any disappointment is bottled up and never expressed (and then we need to guess why people are unhappy) so I would much rather have people share how they feel. As long as they understand the reason for the decision, it's fine to share feedback and vent a bit.

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8 hours ago, lazlo.vii said:

It seems as though you two do not understand that isn't something the our BDFL just decided to do.  There are important reasons for this change.  Don't take it personally that change has come you favorite distro.  Complaining about the changes is bad for our signal to noise ratio and confuses the issue.  Everything changes.  If you can work hard enough maybe you can change it back.  Again, there are important reason for this change.  The biggest reason is that the one person that was maintaining the vast majority of Funtoo ebuilds is no longer doing it.  If either of you can take his place go for it.  Otherwise if we going to get updated packages between upstream snapshots it's going to take a few people doing a lot or a lot of people doing a little.  If you two have any better ideas about how to keep Funtoo running smoothly then please share your plans with us. 

@lazlo.vii  You know, it will be much better if you at least try to be polite, right?
@drobbins Back to the topic - if you want to get more and more involved into funtoo dev - isnt it better to have current/dev branch? If you want devs, isnt it a must to have at least dev branch,where they can work with ?!

I mean, some of the major distros release based models have that :
 - Debian has unstable/sid -> testing  ... -> stable release major/minor releases
 - FreeBSD has current -> release -> .. stable

I still don't get it with removing current branch. Do releases, implement whatever process you think its best for you.

But keep the current. Or, explain how it can be done.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 2/26/2019 at 3:05 PM, lazlo.vii said:

I don't know much about Daniel's decision making process or about how ego and Funtoo kits work.  What I do know is that I want a stable OS that gives me a large amount of control with minimal effort.  No other distro gives us this level of control and stability for this level of effort.  I am willing to give up the rolling release model if it helps Daniel perfect the cost/benefit ratios of Funtoo. 

I don't want to fight with my computer systems, I want to use them.  The same is true for my friends, my family, and their businesses.  It can take a lot of time and effort to keep a production server stable without worrying about a rolling release model that builds a major system malfunction into the OS every six months.  People will put up with a lot of things in life but smart people will not but up with wasted time.  Most people won't use Funtoo because they see source based distros as a waste of time.  I think addressing those concerns is vital to the future of the Funtoo project if it is going to grow financially.  My best guess is that if the project doesn't grow financially it will not expand far beyond what we have now because Daniel needs to feed a family and pay his bills.

 Nuf said for me ? I am here to break, and then learn how to fix things - dont mind me!

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From my understanding anyone that is so concerned about stability should not use current masks and use stable ones instead.

Telling that waiting for release for 6 months in case you need to fix something on your system (don't tell me that if it says stable it will be 100% perfect and bug free, especially if it's done by 1.5 person).

As an example I have some 32 bit software I can't use with 1.3 release as no proper workaround is ready now, so it forces me to have chroot with new system I need to maintain as well for this 32bit software or being stuck on 1.2 which is broken (Oleg words btw) and just left to die as is. Meaning I have no security updates and using old system or I can update to half working which I never be sure when will be finished (if at all).

So I'm not sure about what stability and  "I don't want to fight with my computer systems, I want to use them" he was referencing.

So what we have now is that latest Ubuntu LTS (binary based one) already has newer packages (including system/core ones). 

I'm not even sure if all critical CVEs are fixed by anyone on Funtoo (telling me I can do it - means exactly "fighting with your computer" btw).

So it seems that stability means — don't touch as it is working? :D

I really do not understand why not utilize Gentoo ebuilds that are built by much bigger community and reinvent new concept that requires much more man power and maintenance while much less people are now involved in any of this on Funtoo side.

I mean, sure kits are great idea, but why not just prepare automation that patches/breaks gentoo portage into kits first and grow maintainers and contributors power first, instead of making plans for perfect release in long distance future ( if Funtoo will survive at all till then.)

P.S. Community ebuilds - much worse than rolling release, as no QA there and look at yaourt as an example on Arch - it is such a mess of duplicated and messed packages with broken dependencies. So I'm not sure how stable and ebuilds done by community members who need tutorials to do it comes along 

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On 4/24/2019 at 8:12 PM, zogg said:

I'm not even sure if all critical CVEs are fixed by anyone on Funtoo (telling me I can do it - means exactly "fighting with your computer" btw).

That's interesting and I'm concerned. Does anyone can confirm and/or provide examples?

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3 hours ago, mrl5 said:

That's interesting and I'm concerned. Does anyone can confirm and/or provide examples?

 The latest update 5 months ago and latest version 1.13.2 — https://github.com/funtoo/nokit/tree/6f2923d531ffd96789bec3cebdb0249ec27bfe77/sys-cluster/kubectl

As an example CVE that effects this version — https://www.cvedetails.com/cve/CVE-2019-1002101/

I assume if you want to search you can find more :D

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  • Funtoo Linux BDFL

@zogg if you are looking for others to do the work for you and keep everything up-to-date for you, this is not the right distro for you. We track CVEs that are reported on the bug tracker and we actively incorporate any CVE fixes. But they need to be reported on the bug tracker. Definitely use Gentoo if you want a bunch of developers to do all the work for you.

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  • Funtoo Linux BDFL

Just to expand on this, it is perfectly fine for us to be a bit behind Gentoo in terms of updates, and even quality of ebuilds in some areas. We will improve, as I get more videos out to help our community do better and my job is to keep our bug tracker responsive to reported issues. I think it is important to be realistic and realize where we are now, it would be foolish to think that a small community is doing everything it needs. That is fine -- we are improving. That is the key thing.

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