GNOME Vs KDE upgradeability.

[Gain Paolo Mureddu]

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    I write to this list out of a discussion held on both the Fedora
Forum.org site and on the Marketing list. Before I get down to the
details, I think a bit of background is in order.

    First of all, I'm no formal programmer nor developer, I'm merely a
user (a power user, if you will) with basic C and scarse programming
knowledge at best, but no formal C nor programmin in general training
whatsoever. I'm an avid GNOME user and have been a Red Hat Linux user
for quite some time, starting back in late 90s with Red Hat 5, and
I've kept "close to home" with Fedora. What does all this has to do
with the fedora-desktop list? Keep reading, please.

    With the update of KDE to version 3.5 for Fedora Core 4, I noticed
a tendency on Red Hat/Fedora's side, which I found strange, and did
(and still do) not understand: Why is KDE upgradeable and GNOME seems
to always lag behind? It then it struck me like lightning: This was
not the first time this question has been asked, and more importantly
it as also been discussed on public forums, and I have even
participated of those discussions... However, now I find myself asking
the same question and for the first time the commonly given answers
don't quite satisfy me, so put another way: Why isn't GNOME
update-able in between Red Hat/Fedora releases? Usually the answer
given was the degree of complexity of the software and the amount of
packages it touches, which in itself would warrant a whole distro
upgrade, where as KDE is more monolithic and as such is easier to
maintain. I'm not saying that this holds true today, nor that it has
even been true before. Just that these are commonly given answers to
the question.

    So I still don't quite grasp why *exactly* is GNOME so much more
complex in comparison to KDE, or why does it has so many components
"broken-out" into smaller packages, which in turn seem to be exactly
what holds back GNOME from inclusion of newer versions to the
distribution... In this sense, it would seem as if GNOME's modularity
was its Achilles' ankle, for upgrades in a current Fedora/Red Hat
release, anyway.

    It has been no surprise that Red Hat in the past, and now Fedora's
development seem tied to GNOME's development cycle (I'm not saying
that this is the case, like publicly sated about Ubuntu, for example;
is only coincidence). However, since the release of Red Hat Network
(RHN) I don't remember (not that there has not been one) a whole GNOME
update available from RHN, while I do remember various ocations for
KDE and its libraries... Seems odd.

    What prevents that GNOME upgrades could be released as an update
from RHN or via yum repositories? The lifespan of a Fedora
distribution before moving to Legacy and support ceased from the
traditional channles is of about 1 year, which means at least two
GNOME revisions (one every 6 months on fixed dates). This, I think, is
important as not only these new GNOME revisions add features (and some
bugs too), but also solve some  other bugs.

    I don't mean to start a GNOME Vs KDE flamewar or anything like
that, we've already had our share of those on other channels, but to
know why is this the case with GNOME and new versions not making their
way into current release versions before they are moved to Legacy,
that's all.

Thanks in advance for any input.
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[Matthias Clasen]

On Fri, 2006-02-03 at 00:00 -0600, Gain Paolo Mureddu wrote:
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>      So I still don't quite grasp why *exactly* is GNOME so much
> more
>  complex in comparison to KDE, or why does it has so many components
>  "broken-out" into smaller packages, which in turn seem to be exactly
>  what holds back GNOME from inclusion of newer versions to the
>  distribution... In this sense, it would seem as if GNOME's modularity
>  was its Achilles' ankle, for upgrades in a current Fedora/Red Hat
>  release, anyway. 
It is not *that* much more complex to build all of gnome, although there
are some packages lower in the stack which may have tight dependencies
on newish kernels, like hal. It took me ~1.5 days to get the recent
2.13.90 release of Gnome into rawhide. 

It is more a result of limited resources, which we prefer to spend on
the next release, rather than the previous one...

Matthias

[Gain Paolo Mureddu]

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Matthias Clasen wrote:

>  It is not *that* much more complex to build all of gnome, although
>  there are some packages lower in the stack which may have tight
>  dependencies on newish kernels, like hal. It took me ~1.5 days to
>  get the recent 2.13.90 release of Gnome into rawhide.
>
>  It is more a result of limited resources, which we prefer to spend
>  on the next release, rather than the previous one...
>
>  Matthias 
Still, the expected lifespan of any given Fedora release is of about
one year before moving to Legacy, and there has been a lot of "cross
updates" availabe for Core 3 and 4 when 3 was still "current" (i.e
before moving to Legacy).

And another thing... This may be more suited for the -devel list than
this one, but here goes as it has to do with the desktop functionality
(rather than direct development, though): Is there any plan in place
to phase out moves from "current" to Legacy of any Fedora vesion by
providing the necessary yum configurations as updates when the Legacy
infrastructure is in place to provide the scarse update packages? It'd
be nice to have the default configuration automatically replaced with
updated repository data, makes migration seamless.
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[Rahul Sundaram]

Hi

> Still, the expected lifespan of any given Fedora release is of about
> one year before moving to Legacy, and there has been a lot of "cross
> updates" availabe for Core 3 and 4 when 3 was still "current" (i.e
> before moving to Legacy).
>   
>  
The expected lifespan within core depends on the subsequent releases.

> And another thing... This may be more suited for the -devel list than
> this one, but here goes as it has to do with the desktop functionality
> (rather than direct development, though): Is there any plan in place
> to phase out moves from "current" to Legacy of any Fedora vesion by
> providing the necessary yum configurations as updates when the Legacy
> infrastructure is in place to provide the scarse update packages? It'd
> be nice to have the default configuration automatically replaced with
> updated repository data, makes migration seamless.
>   
>  
Already part of the proposed plans.  
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.redhat.fedora.devel/33303

-- 
Rahul 

Fedora Bug Triaging - http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers

[Gain Paolo Mureddu]

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Rahul Sundaram wrote:

>  Hi The expected lifespan within core depends on the subsequent
>  releases. 
Which, last I heard, was a cycle of about 6 months, hence one year per
release, as they are being "replaced", becuase they are not moved into
Legacy right away, but until the next release reaches Test 2 stage.
There's the "new" release, then the "current" release (for lack of
a
better term), then the ones in Legacy, until "next" reaches Test 2
stage, where "current" moves to Legacy and "new" becomes
"current".

>  Already part of the proposed plans.
>  http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.redhat.fedora.devel/33303
>  
Excellent! That way people won't have to move right away, and gives
chance of planned upgrades.
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[Rahul Sundaram]

Gain Paolo Mureddu wrote:

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> Rahul Sundaram wrote:
>
>   
>
> >Hi The expected lifespan within core depends on the subsequent
> >releases.
> >    
> >
>
> Which, last I heard, was a cycle of about 6 months, hence one year per
> release, as they are being "replaced", becuase they are not moved into
> Legacy right away, but until the next release reaches Test 2 stage.
> There's the "new" release, then the "current" release (for lack of
> a
> better term), then the ones in Legacy, until "next" reaches Test 2
> stage, where "current" moves to Legacy and "new" becomes
> "current".
>  
Refer to http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FAQ for the details.

-- 
Rahul 

Fedora Bug Triaging - http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers

[Gain Paolo Mureddu]

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Rahul Sundaram wrote:

>  Refer to http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FAQ for the details.
>  
Yes, which is exactly (much better worded, mind you) what I meant.
Which means the lifespan of a single Fedora release is that of two
releases (i.e FC3 moved into Legacy when FC5T2 was announced), in
general approximately a one year cycle.
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[Gain Paolo Mureddu]

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The original point of my discussion has been vindicated: There's yet
again, another KDE update with all its libs and all other programs to
3.5.1, and got me wondering, GNOME 2.12 should be almost 6 months now
and Fedora Core 4 never got an update for it, nor was there an update
for Fedora Core 3 to update from 2.8 to 2.10 once Core 4 was out as an
update. I know resources are limited, and yet KDE has had a major
version update, where GNOME has had none... What I find oddest about
this, is that Fedora is built around GNOME (or GTK+ at least) and
GNOME's even the default desktop, and yet the one with a major revamp
is KDE? Call me stupid, but I plainly don't understand this, and goes
beyond the fact I use GNOME over KDE, I'm sure a lot of KDE users and
fans in Fedora are quite happy with the updates, I just wonder why
this is not the case with the *default* DE... Seems odd.
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[John (J5) Palmieri]

You fail to see that major development in GNOME itself is done by the
desktop team at Red Hat.  GNOME is heavily dependent on the whole stack
of technologies that make up the OS.  Moving from one version to the
next means new dependencies on lower layer technologies such as HAL, D-
BUS and others.  Not to mention all the SE-Linux changes that would need
to be made.  Sure we could ship a new version without these tight
dependencies but then you often lose functionality or bugs pop up from
interactions that we would not have time to test.  We prefer to leave
older version stable with bug fixes and leave development to happen in
Rawhide with stabilization happening right before a new release.  Put it
this way, we could spend our time constantly updating GNOME in older
releases and chasing down regressions or we can build new functionality
to compete with other OS's.

This doesn't preclude someone from going out and building an alternative
repository for GNOME updates on older versions of Fedora.

On Sat, 2006-02-04 at 12:09 -0600, Gain Paolo Mureddu wrote:
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>  
>  The original point of my discussion has been vindicated: There's yet
>  again, another KDE update with all its libs and all other programs to
>  3.5.1, and got me wondering, GNOME 2.12 should be almost 6 months now
>  and Fedora Core 4 never got an update for it, nor was there an update
>  for Fedora Core 3 to update from 2.8 to 2.10 once Core 4 was out as an
>  update. I know resources are limited, and yet KDE has had a major
>  version update, where GNOME has had none... What I find oddest about
>  this, is that Fedora is built around GNOME (or GTK+ at least) and
>  GNOME's even the default desktop, and yet the one with a major revamp
>  is KDE? Call me stupid, but I plainly don't understand this, and goes
>  beyond the fact I use GNOME over KDE, I'm sure a lot of KDE users and
>  fans in Fedora are quite happy with the updates, I just wonder why
>  this is not the case with the *default* DE... Seems odd.
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-- 
John (J5) Palmieri <johnp(a)redhat.com&gt;

[Rahul Sundaram]

Gain Paolo Mureddu wrote:

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> Rahul Sundaram wrote:
>
>   
>
> >Refer to http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FAQ for the details.
> >
> >    
> >
> Yes, which is exactly (much better worded, mind you) what I meant.
> Which means the lifespan of a single Fedora release is that of two
> releases (i.e FC3 moved into Legacy when FC5T2 was announced), in
> general approximately a one year cycle.
>  
None of the Fedora releases have been EOL'ed yet. Fedora Core 1,2 and 3 
is maintained by Fedora Legacy project. Fedora Core 4 and the 
test/development releases are maintained by the Fedora Core team.  The 
lifecycle of Fedora can be extended to any amount of time as long as the 
community is willing to maintain it.

-- 
Rahul 

Fedora Bug Triaging - http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers