long term support release

[David Mansfield]

On Tue, 2008-01-22 at 19:25 -0800, Sean Bruno wrote:
> On Tue, 2008-01-22 at 22:16 -0500, David Mansfield wrote:
> > I'm fairly new to this list so if this is flame-bait, then I apologize.
> > I was wondering whether there is any possibility of having the
> > occasional 'long term support' (LTS) release of Fedora (say one every
> > two years or something) so that users can settle down with the distro
> > and actually become productive with it.  
> > 
> > Say the LTS cycle is one release every two years (every fourth Fedora
> > release), and that the 'long term' for support only lasts for two years
> > (which is pretty short to use the term long for, I realize), then there
> > would only be one LTS release, and also the most current release to
> > worry about at any given time.
> > 
> 
> > 
> To be honest, that's more or less what RHEL and the free rebuild CentOS
> are.  
> 
> Fedora is a sandbox of sorts.  It's a place where applications come
> together and sometimes, where they come to die.  :)
> 

I use RHEL/CentOS extensively at work (versions 3, 4 and 5), and I'd
have to disagree about that.  Tons of the 'cool' stuff that's in fedora
gets left out of RHEL/CentOS.  I don't know who decides what 'makes the
cut' for RHEL, but it certainly isn't the Fedora team. 

For example, gnumeric and git, both 'everyday' tools, are missing from
CentOS 5, AFAIK, but I'm talking about tons of other goodies.  The RHEL
package selection process is too restrictive it would seem.

And I'm not really complaining about that.  I think RHEL hits the target
exactly and I don't want it to change, but it's not a real recreational
desktop system, never was, never(?) will be.  It's a server os and
possibly business 'productivity' desktop os.

Plus, by having an LTS release, it would encourage the value-add
packagers like livna and rpmforge to get on the bandwagon, and 'go long'
as well, so it would be possible to have a multimedia enabled system
that lasts more than 6 months. 

David