Hi Chiara,

> The only stable release of Firebird, (1.03) is pratically
> inusable on newest PC's, HT is not supported, W2k3 is
> not supported, latest XP are not supported, W2k SP4
> are not supported, ODBC are inusable, i need to install
> windows95 on my old Pentium to use Firebird???

Firebird 1.03 does not support SMP. HT simulates 2 processors, so that's the
problem. But it will work ok if you disable it.
I don't know about Windows 2003.
Latest XP is supported. You must just be aware of the system security and
.gdb extensions. Firebird does not have an extension, and people use .gdb
for historical reasons. Find an extension that you like, and use it.
W2KSP4 is "not supported" in any machine. :-) M$ did have a problem with
this Service Pack. Read the docs, they will report the problem. This is not
a Fb problem.
ODBC is inusable? Wich driver are you refer? There are plenty.
And finnaly, no. Read the docs, you must upgrade TCP/IP stack to use W95.
:-))

You will find that must people that use Firebird work mainly with W2K or XP
in Win environments, or just use Linux. The problems you talked about are
mainly Win problems, with the limitations of Microsoft Operating Systems.

> I toke a look at Firebird 1.5
> is it a real release??

No. It's a RC - Release Candidate.

> the rc8 seem to introduce more bug
> the any other previous relase since 1976: a serious
> security bug, a computed fields bug, an installer bug,
> the 1.5 are in this state since a year, (as stated in
> developer ng) but all are "exiting" building FB2, is
> Firebird a lab for gurus? or it is a product?

Release Candidates are made to detect this kind of problems.

Firebird 2 is our goal. Firebird 1.5 is just a transition.
Yes, it takes time to build a product such as Firebird. How many Oracle new
versions did you get in an year? How many MS SQL Server versions?

Firebird is an Open Source Project. The gurus that work on it think that
software must be well tested before a Release be public. You have a very
good product - Firebird 1.03 - you have a transition product almost without
bugs (well, at least few bugs if you compare with IB 6 initial bug list),
that will be out soon. And you have a good team working already on next
version - Firebird 2. Should I mention that Yaffil (a Fb fork) is beeing
merged with the main tree? Did you get some info about Vulcan also?

> Is Firebird
> a choice today?

For me, yes. A very good one. The best I can get in the market.
For you, I don't know. You didn't tell me what you want to do with it.

> or I need to search some thing more reliable?

Can you give me an example of something more reliable, please?

> When we can aspect a runnable Firebird? As in firebridsql.com
> "relational database for the new millenium" starting from 2000?

You already have one.

But you can help on this. The source code is freely available in
sourceforge, so you can peek it up at this momment and start working on it
today. You may start with something that it's important to you, like HT
support in Windows. Or W2KSP4 support. Or a rock-solid free ODBC connection.
Personnaly, my projects don't need any of this "features", so I will not use
any of your work.

I'm really glad that your worries are mainly OS and hardware related. That's
good that you just come to this testing a database engine on your lab.

Finnaly, this is a support list. If you want to talk a little about firebird
future use fb-general list (also here in yahoo).