Hi,
I have a request for list regulars.
The Fedora Workstation working group is curious if there's any pattern
or categorization how Fedora installations typically break. i.e. the
installation is successful, the system has been updated multiple times
successfully, and then for whatever reason it breaks.
[...]
I work with large packages from NASA and ESA that rely heavily on open
source libraries. It is not unusual to have problems with these packages on
new OS installs because they tend to rely on older libraries (gfortran is the most
common example) which the developers have carried over from an earlier OS
release, but aren't installed by default in fresh OS installs.
I generally do upgrades a couple times, then a fresh install to try a new
filesystem (xfs a while ago, and recently btrfs) and because linux accumulates
old libraries over time. This has resulted in cases where my system was able
to run 3rd party packages that required older libraries and would not run on
colleagues systems with fresh install. If time permits, I do update before the
fresh install to check for issues in mission critical apps.
The issues I have seen:
On an elderly system with an old Nvidia card, the new kernel had a bug
in nouveau affecting my card. I had to use an older kernel until the bug
was fixed. With other distros and the same machine I have had issues
when drivers were removed from the kernel (they were eventually
restored).
On newer hardware with UEFI, upgrading from F34 to F35 failed to boot.
I used the rescue kernel to discover that the kernel command line generated
by the installer had misplaced quotes adding back "rhgb quiet" that I had
removed. Since I was planning a fresh install anyway, I didn't try very hard
to fix the problem, just did a fresh install with a new filesystem.