Fedora "backports" repo? (Was Re: PostgreSQL 9 for F14?)

[Jon Masters]

On Tue, 2010-09-21 at 10:59 -0400, Brandon Lozza wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 21, 2010 at 7:40 PM, Jesse Keating <jkeating at redhat.com> wrote:
> > On 09/21/2010 07:20 AM, Brandon Lozza wrote:
> >> One thing I wanted to point out. Windows users get to install the
> >> latest Firefox, KDE, and other apps without having to wait for a new
> >> Windows release. If users had to wait for Windows 8 to get the latest
> >> Firefox, things would be messy. I don't understand what the fear is of
> >> doing this on GNU/Linux.

In my personal opinion, Windows makes mistakes, but is more enlightened
when it comes to embracing users installing stuff they did not get from
Microsoft. On non-enterprise Linux systems, the libraries and userland
change so often you really do need to either have a third party building
for every release, or getting it in the distro (which isn't always
practical or possible). I'm sure I'll be told how "wrong" I am.

> However, if for example Microsoft had a similar system and did package
> software for it. Their users would be up in arms for the latest
> firefox too and Microsoft wouldn't keep them on an old firefox
> version. Where is the logic in NOT having the latest software as long
> as it doesn't break file format compatibility?

You know what's kinda cool about some other Operating Systems? (Linux,
non-Linux, etc.) You install them, then they always work the same way
until you decide to upgrade them one day (when you set aside time to fix
all the "this shouldn't be a problem, but oh yea, there's that corner
case that..." issues). All the bugs are consistent, if you plug in a
gizmo it works or doesn't, but there are few random surprises. I love
lack of random surprises. It's not just file formats and the innards.

I'd rather see either a backports repo with all the junk, or just no
junk and only have new stuff land in the next release. That changes
nothing about Fedora releases, other than adding predictability.

Jon.