fedora mission (was Re: systemd and changes)

[mike cloaked]

On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 1:29 AM, Kevin Kofler <kevin.kofler at chello.at> wrote:
> Matthew Miller wrote:
>> I don't know a single student using Fedora anymore,
>
> I'm a student using Fedora. :-p But not at Harvard. ;-)
>
>> I don't know *what* to blame that on
>
> I blame it on people slowly destroying what Fedora is all about, with things
> like that "stable updates vision". And also on people blatantly not caring
> about sizable parts of our community, e.g. by hiding the KDE download links
> behind several clicks from the front page (while making the GNOME download 1
> click).

Any analysis of trends of this kind have to be done carefully
otherwise it is easy to draw invalid conclusions. Some people run
multiple machines but update their systems from local repos so raw yum
checkin data may not necessarily be representative.  In addition some
people do not update for specific reasons - some servers are regarded
as relatively safe behind firewalls and there may be reasons that are
not directly Fedora ones for not updating. For example one machine
that I manage is needed to run MS office via crossover office and in
F12 onwards there are selinux issues that mean you can't do that
unless you downgrade selinux protection.  That particular machine
needs to share files with other Windows users in the office and edit
office files, so OpenOffice is not an option in that case (Complex OO
calc files have been demonstrated to be very incompatible with MS
Office, for example) and so any upgrade from f11 will have to wait for
that machine.

However some normal users who are not that familiar with admin may be
reluctant to spend the time and effort running new installs and
spending the time to learn the "tricks" needed to get things working
on the new system.  The only people I personally know who use Fedora
are sufficiently admin capable to take on upgrades every cycle, *or*
who have knowledgeable geeks like me to fix their system for them, and
remain a *pure* user. How that plays out across the large numbers of
users across the world is hard to guess with accuracy.

Either way, we do need progress, and I am all in favour of driving
exciting new features - after all think back to the early Fedora days
and compare those old versions with f13 - there is no comparison, and
we *do* have a superb and efficient and very usable operating system -
as we move to f14 and beyond it is absolutely right to move forward
onto new ideas and developments with enthusiasm.  Of course there will
be rocky roads to drive across and there are always unforeseen
problems to resolve - but that is what being a developer is all about
- so long as the bugs and issues get resolved in a satisfactory way
then we are doing the right thing.

Fedora leads the way in some of the linux areas - and sure there are
plenty of people who use Ubuntu and won't switch to Fedora - but in
some areas Fedora is ahead - but I bet that unless things deteriorated
markedly then there will still be a supportive and vibrant Fedora user
community. Just by the way I am an academic and I do know some
students in my department who run Fedora - in fact the majority of
linux machines in my department run either Fedora or Centos but not
Ubuntu!

-- 
mike c