About fedoras evolution?

[Patrick Bartek]

--- On Wed, 6/16/10, Mats <unix at comhem.se> wrote:

> I have tried to find information about fedoras evolution
> but haven't
> find an answer to the following question:
> How long will fedora 12 be supported with security
> updates?

Approximately 13 months from initial release.  This goes for all Fedora releases.  This link gives a nice overview:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedora_%28operating_system%29

> I'm coming from ubuntu and used to the idea with
> LTS-versions (long time
> support) but I like some of the security philospohy in
> fedora more.

I doubt if you'll see a Fedora LTS release from the Fedora.  That's what RHEL, CentOS and Scientific Linux are.

> Will fedora 12 be a more mature and stable version in the
> long run to
> use? More tested and so on? I know that I have to do some
> of this
> judgement by my own.

Fedora is the testing distro for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), which is mature and stable, and has long time support--5 to 7 years typically.  The current version of RHEL, 5.5 IIRC, is based on Fedora Core 6.

RHEL 6 is due for release around October, if all goes well.  If not, who knows when?  There's a 6 Beta release available for download and testing. 

   http://www.redhat.com/rhel/beta/

It should be based on F12 or 13 code.

You should look at CentOS and Scientific Linux, too.  They are rebuilds based on the open source RHEL code, and would make a good "free" choice.  Both have the same longevity and fixes as RHEL.  New versions are typically released about a month after Red Hat's.

I'm waiting for the 6 releases to evaluate for my primary desktop OS.  I've been using Fedora since Core 3, and I'm tiring of the 6 month release cycle and the initial problems after install even though in the last three years or so I've taken to upgrading every third release--6 to 9 to 12--which is less of a headache.

B