Re: Plan for tomorrows (20070531) FESCO meeting

[Jesse Keating]

On Wednesday 30 May 2007 15:39:53 Gerry Reno wrote:
>  I went that route for a while until I got fed up with the lack of
> new
>  hardware support.  eg: spent two weeks just getting a gigabit nic card
>  working properly under CentOS.  Had other issues with plugging in new
>  usb devices.  I just got tired of it all so I went with Fedora and
>  instantly got rid of all those problems.  And yes I know the Fedora is
>  more on the bleeding edge but I really haven't had any major
>  difficulties despite that.  I would rather spend my time working out
>  something on the bleeding edge than fighting the fact that you cannot
>  install any new hardware from your local compusa on some of these
>  so-called 'stable' distros.  Basically I was finding that unless you
>  were good at hunting up old hardware on ebay or in a flea market that
>  you were SOL with these 'stable' distros. 
Well, CentOS5 would probably support those.  Quite a lot of hardware works 
just fine with the older RHEL/CentOS releases, but yes, sometimes the brand 
new stuff manufacturers like to put out that are incompatible with older 
drivers/kernels makes that hard.  Then again you have to take the bitter 
pill.  To get up to the minute hardware support you have to get the bleeding 
edge distro with the frequent updates and....  But hopefully your mission 
critical systems that can't be updated via anaconda aren't relying on 
whatever is around at CompUSA on a given day...

>  >  
>  >
>  > Upgrading with yum is mostly OK, there are a few gotchas regarding some
>  > changes that have gone into the kernel.
>  >  
>
>  "mostly" - I don't like this word.  Need better word like
> "always". 
You're not going to get a word like 'always' in Fedora.  There is just some 
things we can't do in a package %post.  Some things that need the file system 
to be offline at the time.  Other such "magic" to bring an older system up to 
par with the newer system.

>  > Upgrading from i386 to x86_64 is going to be a MUCH more
> difficult task.
>  >
>  > I'm jut not sure what you're looking for out of FESCO on this.
>  >  
>
>  Is not FESCO a technical strategy and policy making group giving
>  leadership to Fedora?  I think it should fall within this area to say
>  that there must be a process whereby, for instance, i386 to x86_64
>  upgrade is necessary/required and then seek resources to make it happen. 

If you want to propose a policy about such things, that's different.  It 
sounded like you just wanted help in accomplishing your task.  Talking about 
such things in broader scope are under FESCOs purview, however I think we've 
had this discussion many times over.


-- 
Jesse Keating
Release Engineer: Fedora