how to make things better(tm)

[Andrew Haley]

On 03/05/2010 03:25 PM, Thomas Janssen wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 2:57 PM, Andrew Haley <aph at redhat.com> wrote:
>> On 03/05/2010 10:25 AM, Thomas Janssen wrote:
>>
>>> I can see the need and agree that maybe not every big push needs to go
>>> to N-1 releases. But not pushing 4.x.x relases to the currently
>>> "stable" N release is just plain wrong. That kills what Fedora stands
>>> for out there in the wild. To be a leading edge distribution. And dont
>>> come up again with rawhide. That's just ridiculous, because then i can
>>> run EVERY distro out there and use their rawhide/factory/cooker or
>>> whatever name they have. Leading edge doesn't stand only for "new
>>> technics adopted first".
>>>
>>> Another thing, since you throw that links about
>>> package_update_guidelines around, some maintainers should also check
>>> what software is my software built against and dont push broken
>>> software without testing to stable because of that "mistake" ;)
>>>
>>> Just to remind anyone, if you forgot, or dont know what Fedora stands
>>> for IN REAL LIFE, you might go out and check it. It stands exactly for
>>> what you terribly fight against. And people love it exactly for that.
>>> But sure, there's always the possibility to bend over and try as hard
>>> as you can to make something without an own identity.....
>>
>> I think you're making a mistake.  Surely there's a fundamental
>> distinction between a distro that has the latest packages when
>> released and a distro that has the latest packages all the time via
>> updates.  Even if Fedora didn't push new upstream versions via
>> updates, it'd still be a very hot leading edge distro.
> 
> Well, no. It wouldn't be a very hot leading distro. It would be
> nothing more than any other distro with the same release-cycle.

Assuming that other distros were packaging all of the exact same
releases on the exact same release cycle, yes, obviously.  However, I
don't believe that a distro which always immediately pushed every new
upstream release of everything would be very useful: it'd basically be
like trying to use rawhide all the time.

I suspect that the Fedora policy, as stated, makes the most sense for
most people who use Fedora.  There is no rule against pushing new
package releases to updates, but they're not pushed unless there's a
good reason.  Fedora is a really good full-featured Linux distro with
an agrressive release cycle, even without a continuous
drinking-from-a-firehose updates policy.

> So i (and others who think like me), have no reason to use Fedora
> over one of the other mainstream Distros if Fedora is the same. And
> we will not get users like me if we dont offer that. Sure, there
> might be people who dont give a darn about people like me.

Well, that's a rather specialized taste.

Andrew.