End of life for FC12?

Patrick Bartek bartek047 at yahoo.com
Sun Nov 14 18:52:18 UTC 2010


--- On Sun, 11/14/10, Bill Davidsen <davidsen at tmr.com> wrote:

> Patrick Bartek wrote:
> 
> > Since FC6 (I've been using Fedora since Core 3), I've
> only upgraded with every third release--6-9-12.  I
> think it wasteful of time and energy to upgrade any
> faster.  It takes almost the 6 month release cycle to
> get everything working smoothly anyway.  Then chuck it
> all and start anew with a new set of problems?  No
> thanks.
> >
> I went from 6->13 on one machine, had some drivers for
> custom hardware which new 
> driver models didn't support. Finally the USB passthru in
> KVM got good enough to 
> run in a VM, and I do.

Custom hardware isn't required to have new release issues.  Just older hardware is good enough, particularly peripherials.  And they don't have to be that old.  For example, my Samsung ML-1710 laser printer has been discontinued for 4 years or so.  I bought mine in 2006.  No problems.  FC6's CUPS had the driver.  So, did F9 when I upgraded to it a year or so later, but F12 didn't.  Support had been dropped due to it being discontinued (I guess).  Samsung's dedicated driver had problems with F12.  Or, perhaps, it was the other way around.  Fortunately, I was able to find a third party compatible driver through the LinuxPrinting site.  

Now, there is nothing wrong with the printer.  I've used it daily in my business since I bought it.  Have gone through 4 or 5 toner cartridges, and  reams and reams of paper.  One of these days, it will finally die and I'll replace it, but I resent having to replace something that works perfectly well simply because support has been dropped due solely to time and not lack of demand.

Another reason, I'm looking for Long Time Support in my next OS.

B 


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