Fedora lifetime and stability

[John Summerfield]

Serguei Miridonov wrote:

>> Translated, "rolling beta." In return for your access to the
>> latest technology, you can expect cuts and bruises.
> 
> Then don't name "rolling beta" as stable because it is 
> missleading.

Who said Fedora's stable? it's not, that's its point. It's forever 
chaning (just watch those new kernels rock up), and it's perfectly 
likely something you value will break. Like a kernel.

> 
>> If you want a longer life, go look at other solutions.
> 
> Look, I'm running Linux since 1994 starting with Slackware then 
> switched to Red Hat and Fedora. I have Linux on both home 
> computer and in my office. I always liked the fact that with 
> every new release the system became more and more stable and 

Stable has a variety of meanings. Many use it to mean "unchanging," and 
that meaning applies to Debian (they call the current release "stable"), 
to RHEL and its clones, and to SLES & SLED. People bet their business on 
those.

Stable as in "not crashing" often applies to consumer grade Linux, but 
don't bet your business on it, and be prepared to have to pick up the 
bits and put it back together.


> My remarks are not to offense developers and maintainers. I 
> myself was a maintainer of a kernel driver and I know what it 
> cost to keep things alive. I started this thread having just 
> one thought in mind - improving Fedora, at least, to return 
> the stability that Red Hat and Fedora had in the past. This is 
> why I suggest to have one release an year, allow more time for 
> testing before the release and extend the lifetime at least 
> for two years.

About the only company to sink much money into Fedora is Red Hat. Were I 
Red Hat, I'd find value in Fedora as a means of evaluating new 
technology and people's reactions to it and problems with it.

Once Gnome has a new release (it releases about every six months), I 
would not be interested in the old release any more, unless it's the 
version I've committed to an EL release.

RH also has an obligation to its shareholders. Did you see what I said 
about Telstra in another thread? I'm a Telstra shareholder, and 
shareholders get very very shirty if they think the people they've 
appointed to run the business aren't running it very well. If I were a 
RH shareholder, I would expect it to manage costs effectively, sell lots 
of services, and make lots of profit to pay me nice big dividends.

Pouring money into Fedora is something I might look closely at, and 
pouring money into Fedora with no likelihood of a return could make me 
very cross, and if other shareholders agreed with my POV, some directors 
could be looking for new jobs.


> 
> If someone wants new and cool bleading edge software, there is 
> always a testing version of Fedora, so long term lifetime 
> isn't a problem. Even some newest packages can be backported 
> to current test updates.

Someone has to provide the manpower. Are you volunteering>
> 
> Actually, I'm not going to continue this discussion. I wanted 
> just to share my thoughts. I know that I'm not alone. For 
> example, here 
> http://www.oreillynet.com/linux/blog/2007/03/where_fedora_went_wrong.html 
> is also said enough, on both sides. And my opinion is that 
> Fedora will only win if testing period and release lifetime 
> will be at least twice longer.

I don;t think Novell or Canonical would agree, they have a similar model.



-- 

Cheers
John

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