Stable Release Updates types proposal (was Re: Fedora Board Meeting Recap 2010-03-11)

[Thomas Janssen]

On Sun, Mar 14, 2010 at 9:59 AM, Jon Masters <jonathan at jonmasters.org> wrote:
> On Sat, 2010-03-13 at 21:48 +0100, Thomas Janssen wrote:
>
>> Why, do you think, should just a single user change to Fedora, away
>> from Ubuntu or any other Distro? Because we're blue?
>
> If the only reason to choose Fedora over Ubuntu is because Fedora shoves
> out updates at a higher pace into stable releases, then something is
> severely wrong.

Yes, it is exactly the only reason (well, maybe besides it's blue).
And no, nothing is wrong.

> There are many good reasons to choose either distro. I
> happen to quite like both, for different reasons. Fedora moves new
> features into rawhide at a higher pace, and Ubuntu is something that I
> could see a newcomer having a lot of success with. But none of that has
> anything to do with what should be happening in stable Fedora releases.

I have had a lot of distros and i still have two on my boxen. This, my
main Laptop has Fedora (exactly because of the only reason) and my
others run openSUSE. The only difference why i have Fedora on this
laptop and contribute to Fedora is exactly the one reason i had to
choose Fedora over anything else. The reason you want to kill.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not married with Fedora, i can leave if it
doesn't fit me anymore, i sure will do since i can choose. I could run
rawhide, sure, but what's the difference then to run factory, or
cooker.

>> the same just in RPM? Some "slow-it-down-people" do really think that
>> a half baken X-server 1.7beta will make users of other distros go away
>> because they use just 1.6, or our release kernel is 2.6.31.3 and
>> others have 2.6.31.1 trough release-time?
>
> I don't care whether some new hardware gets enabled through an update. I
> would rather that happen in rawhide and the users who can't use the
> hardware in the stable release have to wait an average of 3 months in
> the worst case that there isn't some level of support available now. Few
> other Operating Systems move at that kind of pace anyway. I do care that
> regressions in the kernel, X, or some other subsystem might break things
> that users who are supported are relying on, just to enable other stuff.
> To me, the fear of regressions outweighs any possible other benefit.

Well, hardware support is urgent, but drago01 answered that already eloquent.

> This isn't Enterprise Linux. I don't need a support period covering the
> equivalent of 14 Fedora release cycles, I am fully happy with some
> considerable churn every 6 or 12 months on my desktop or laptop in the
> interest of being up to date with the latest tech, but I am not happy to
> have that churn be on a normal non-upgrade day when I expect my laptop
> to work (and an update just before a meeting to be safe with respect to
> that laptop running a presentation immediately afterward). Somewhat
> shockingly, some people do use Fedora for day to day stuff.

Ugh, what a shock, yeah it's really shocking me that you even think
about to update your box right before a presentation, but hey, to each
their own. This is my day to day stuff box as well. Though i don't cry
if something happens, but try to fix it or find a workaround. But
before the last sentence gets answered out of the context, i saw maybe
a handful of sh!t happen since Fedora 8. And none of this was really
bad, thanks to the Developers fixing it *extremely* fast.
So please stop crying people. We have some of the best developers out there.

>> You will never get a single user of the other distros if you dont have
>> anything special to offer.
>
> Fedora offers a higher rate of new and experimental features.

The typical bla bla. Sorry. But to inform you, that's exactly one of
the reasons who keep people away from Fedora. Well, that and some
boneheaded devels who think whatever it is, it is not my software.
And Fedora isn't the only inventor of stuff. I really get slowly sick
of that. Because exactly the same people who play that card, are
crying in the first place if one of those features bites them at
release time.

> Those
> should be kept in rawhide *where they belong*, for 6 months, until they
> have had some decent testing and are ready to be released.

Do you really think you can find all of the problems of some
experimental software just because it sits in rawhide and it's waiting
to be tested from the masses? I doubt that.

> Users are
> users, they are not guinea pigs to be experimented upon.

If you don't want to be a guinea pig, turn your computer off and learn
to get your day to day stuff done with paper and a pen. Or use a
Enterprise Linux or a LTS version of a modern distro. You're in *any*
modern distro/OS, more or less the guinea pig. Because nobody can test
their software on any hardware and any set of software installed.
Welcome to the real world.

What you most likely want is better QA.

Sorry, again, not a single argument why Fedora should change away from
what it is.

-- 
LG Thomas

Dubium sapientiae initium