newbie question

[David]

Is Fedora 32 more stable than 33 or vice versa, as on November, 2020?

If a user were to take present state of Rawhide, but not update risky
packages, would there be any benefit to that ?   Meaning to manually
update, skipping some packages.

Are some Desktop Environments in Fedora more stable ?

What are some packages that are the most risky to update ?   systemd ?
 mesa ?  kernel ?

David Locklear

[Matthew Miller]

On Sun, Nov 08, 2020 at 03:51:02PM -0600, David wrote:
>  Is Fedora 32 more stable than 33 or vice versa, as on November, 2020?
Based on crash reports, both seem like pretty solid releases. I don't think
one is particularly riskier than the other.

>  If a user were to take present state of Rawhide, but not update
> risky
>  packages, would there be any benefit to that ?   Meaning to manually
>  update, skipping some packages. 
Benefit would be newer software, but, yeah, definitely more risk here.

>  Are some Desktop Environments in Fedora more stable ? 
GNOME is the desktop environment that gets the most direct work in Fedora,
but the communities around our other desktop environments put in great work
as well. I think this is mostly a matter of personal preference.


>  What are some packages that are the most risky to update ?   systemd
> ?
>   mesa ?  kernel ? 
Well, what risk are you worried about? It's certainly the case that a kernel
update has the most chance of something catastrophic (hardware support
issue, or even machine failing to boot), but on the other hand, since so
many people look at the Linux kernel and since that project has a strict
policy against user-breaking changes, the _frequency_ of such events is
really low. On the other hand, the consequences of updating something like
Inkscape are low in terms of potential impact -- but it's possibly an update
might change a feature or something that the developers felt to be minor but
is crucial to you.


-- 
Matthew Miller
<mattdm(a)fedoraproject.org&gt;
Fedora Project Leader

[Joe Zeff]

On 11/8/20 3:43 PM, Matthew Miller wrote:
>  On Sun, Nov 08, 2020 at 03:51:02PM -0600, David wrote:
> > Is Fedora 32 more stable than 33 or vice versa, as on November, 2020?
>  Based on crash reports, both seem like pretty solid releases. I don't think
>  one is particularly riskier than the other.
>   
There's always a big lump of problems when a new version comes out, 
because the testers can't test everything, which is why I'm not an early 
adopter.  If you look at the number of bugs reported since F 33 came 
out, you might think it's not ready for Prime Time yet, but that's just 
the early adopter bugs getting cleaned out.  If most of them don't get 
swatted by the end of the year, then it will be time to get concerned.

>  Is Fedora 32 more stable than 33 or vice versa, as on November, 2020?

While a release is not EOL it tends to stay fairly well synchronized to 
the latest release.  For example, 33 and 32 are running the same basic 
kernel.


>  If a user were to take present state of Rawhide, but not update risky
>
>  packages, would there be any benefit to that ?   Meaning to manually 
>  update, skipping some packages. 

If your care-about is reliability I would leave Rawhide alone. 
Selective updating often causes issues as old packages can end up 
blocking updates that you want eventually.


>  Are some Desktop Environments in Fedora more stable ? 

That's an emotive question to be sure.  I find Xfce the most solid, 
especially on Rawhide where GNOME 3rd party extensions regularly break 
during development releases of GNOME (which Rawhide gets).


>  What are some packages that are the most risky to update ?   systemd
> ? 
>   mesa ?  kernel ? 

I find release versions tend to be pretty good overall.  Your mileage 
may vary.  I would update everything always.  Unless you want to fiddle 
and file bug reports I would stay clear of Rawhide, I'm having plenty of 
issues with it at the moment.


Ian

[Steven Usdansky]

I'm not seeing any problems with F32-Mate or F33-Mate. Not sure if it was an update
(unlikely) or something I did (very likely) to trash my Rawhide-Mate install, but I just
reinstalled the latest nightly, and so far, so good.

[Ian Laurie]

Take a look here:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1895569

It wasn't just you.

>  I'm not seeing any problems with F32-Mate or F33-Mate. Not sure
> if it was an update (unlikely) or something I did (very likely) to trash my Rawhide-Mate
> install, but I just reinstalled the latest nightly, and so far, so good. 
-- 
Ian Laurie
ilaurie(a)bigpond.net.au

[Flo H]

>  Is Fedora 32 more stable than 33 or vice versa, as on November, 2020?
The older, the more tested, the better patched, the more stable
>  
>  If a user were to take present state of Rawhide, but not update risky
>  packages, would there be any benefit to that ?   Meaning to manually
>  update, skipping some packages. 
That doesn't exist. If you are on Rawhide you
must constantly update. See the target audience of Rawhide:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/Rawhide#Audience