system autodeath

[Vasile Gaburici]

Also Fedora sometimes lacks the latest packages of something for
*many* releases. Take TeX for example. I've not upgraded my laptop,
which I use mostly for typesetting from FC5 until F9 came out. Why?
I've manually upgraded some LaTeX packages (and yes I reaaally had to
delete the old ones, not just install the new ones privately).
Anything in between FC6-FC8 would have been a downgrade for my laptop.
It looks like the history is going to repeat itself with F10 and
TeXLive 2008, but I'm digressing...

On Thu, Aug 21, 2008 at 5:39 PM, Horst H. von Brand
<vonbrand at inf.utfsm.cl> wrote:
> Rahul Sundaram <sundaram at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
>> seth vidal wrote:
>> > A friend forwarded me this blog:
>> > http://www.gdt.id.au/~gdt/blog/linux/autodeath.1024px
>> > and I wondered if it would be something to consider for fedora
>> > releases.
>> > This would NOT be as a default, but as a package you can install, if
>> > you
>> > wish, to drop the route on your box after whatever expiration date. We
>> > can set the release date in a file in the package and key from there.
>> > If the package was included in a fedora repo we could have it have a
>> > death date of whenever the release started + 14months (some wiggle room
>> > for release slips) for example.
>> > Any thoughts?
>
>> I think it is much better to hookup preupgrade with PackageKit so you
>> get notification on your desktop when there is a new release and a
>> easy path to do so. Notifying and encouraging users to upgrade would
>> solve the problem of people sticking to old unmaintained releases in a
>> much nicer way.
>
> Also, some people I know stick to old versions for (closed source or
> inhouse developed) software that is hard/impossible to port forward, or
> just random inconsistencies between versions (automount troubles between
> CentOS 5, CentOS 4, Fedora 8 and 9 here were a recent example; we are
> working on open source related to the ALMA radioastronomy observatory,
> there they are still running ancient Red Hat Enterprise Linux versions due
> to software written in "C++" as understood by old GCC, newer GCCs just barf
> at the code and rewriting/retesting that huge mess is a titanic job just
> now really underway).
>
> On philosophical grounds, I'm against forcing people forward, even for
> their own good...  /encouraging/ them forward is a much better idea.
>
> [Most tyrannies tried to force people "for their own good", some did it
>  perhaps even in (mistaken?) good faith, a few were even right in this...]
> --
> Dr. Horst H. von Brand                   User #22616 counter.li.org
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