FC4 state of affairs and FC5

[Hans de Goede]

Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> On 9/7/05, Gilboa Davara <gilboada at netvision.net.il> wrote:
> 
>>Second, a user that tried Fedora (and failed) or worse, a user that
>>switched from Fedora to <insert another distribution name here> is a
>>user that will never return to Fedora.
>>Even much worse, a switching Windows XP user, that sees a kernel panic
>>due to a DRI problem in anaconda is a user that will never try Linux
>>again.
>>We will never know how many Fedora users we have lost due to the iso
>>boot problem (bug 159026) or the catastrophic "Linux killed my Windows
>>boot problem" (bug 115980)
> 
> 
> In the days of the floppy boot it was easier... the user could just
> download an updated boot floppy when the provided kernel on the CD was
> unable to boot...
> 
> There really are two discussions going on here, one is about installer
> updates and one is about packing updated RPMs. They may have differing
> solutions, for example, it would be possible to provide the complete
> installer as an image for a USB memory stick, this would allow someone
> who hit an installer bug to get a fixed installer. Many systems can
> boot off of USB memory sticks... at least that would help some people.
> 
> The updated package issue I 'solve' here by rsyncing the yum cache off
> an existing up to date fedora box before doing a yum update... still
> requires internet access but at least it is not hours of downloading
> per system.
> 

How about a semi-documented option turn anaconda into FC6-alpha 
installer, that way we can get early testing on the new anaconda 
features for FC-6, hopefully making the FC-6 installer better. This 
might even be an idea for each new FC-core release, include unstable 
installer features in a code path normally skipped and add a flag to 
enable them so those who need them / want to tinker can use them, which 
will get us some early feedback in the process.

This is ofcourse as far as the features can be coded before FC-5, but 
not shipped becaused of lack of testing.

Regards,

Hans