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

[Mathieu Bridon]

On Sun, Mar 14, 2010 at 19:07, Kevin Kofler <kevin.kofler at chello.at> wrote:
> Rahul Sundaram wrote:
>
>> On 03/14/2010 10:13 PM, Kevin Kofler wrote:
>>> Not a very credible one, given that those users are happily using Fedora
>>> as it is now!
>>
>> Can we drop the absolutes which are clearly not true? Some users clearly
>> are not.
>
> Yet they haven't left over it. So why would that suddenly change?

Some have.

Some others arrive and say hi, their first update (the 300MB one you
get when installing 2 months after release) breaks something, they
leave (some will not even finish downloading such a huge amount and
leave).

Finally, even long time users can grow tired of having to fiddle with
their system after an update, and leave, even if they haven't until
now.

In the help forums (at least the french ones, don't know about the
others), I've seen some users staying on Fn-1 (and actually always
upgrading to Fn-1 after Fn is released) because they think it will be
more stable. I've seen people leaving because they were sick of not
being able to use their computer but rather having to fix something
after each update.

Once every months, I install Fedora on some users system (recurring
release party the first saturday of each months) using the liveCD so I
can teach them how to do it themselves. After the install is finished,
we don't have time/bandwidth to apply the huge amount of updates that
were released between F12 GA and now, so I have to leave him with the
job half done. All I can do is tell him how to update and then pray
that his system won't be broken afterwards, because if it is, I'm sure
I won't ever have a chance to fix it for him next month.

Finally, I'm so tired of receiving phone calls from my mother saying «
I don't understand, today I switched the computer on and it doesn't
work anymore » that I'm actually considering moving her to CentOS 6
when it is released, even if that means that I'll voluntarily remove
her the chance to benefit from a modern desktop.

So yes, users *are* leaving Fedora because of those updates, and we
should at least try to do something.


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Mathieu Bridon