Why should one upgrade Fedora whenever a new version is released?

[Reindl Harald]

Am 16.07.2013 00:38, schrieb Bill Oliver:
> On Mon, 15 Jul 2013, Michael Hennebry wrote:
> 
>> [snip]
>>> Unless I missed it, nobody has described a particular use case yet in
>>> which it is obvious that it is good to use CentOS.  Upgrading holds its
>>> risks as well as using software that cannot be upgraded.  The future
>>> cannot be predicted.  So how do you make a decision like between using
>>> Fedora and CentOS?
>>
>> Is there a particular use case in which it
>> is obvious that it is good to use RHEL?
>>
> 
> Well, IMHO, you want RHEL (as opposed to CentOS) when you need paid support.

yes

> On my home machines, where I can touch the on-off button and see the boot screen, I can play around with
> installations and if something goes wrong, I can fix it.

yes

> On a virtual machine, there are more severe limitations.  

no - on *specific* setups they may

> For instance, if I power down my virtual machine, I have
> to submit a service ticket to get it turned back on

then you choosed the wrong provider if you can't do this by yourself

> I can't touch it to do it myself.  I have "poweroff"
> softlinked to "reboot."  Similarly, if there's a screw-up in 
> upgrading that affects boot, I'm hosed.

with your setup

normally with a VM you have the benefit of a *full Snapshot before the upgrade
and if something goes wrong you are on a working state within seconds

as well as you can setup the ame configuration in a local VM and
test the upgrade steps until you are sure how to act with the
production machines

> When I got the machine, I told the company to install F16.  Now F16 is not supported,
> I find that it is impossible for me to either upgrade or install, because both require
> that I see and interact with the boot screen.

why?

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Upgrading_Fedora_using_yum
20 virtual machines, all upgraded with yum, all production
none of them needed the boot screen to see

yes, UsrMove and GRUB2 migration is possible without boot
screen and the downtime is not more than a regular reboot
after a kernel update

this was installed as F9 and is now F17 until end of this month
tune2fs 1.42.3 (14-May-2012)
Filesystem volume name:   system
Last mounted on:          /
Filesystem UUID:          918f24a7-bc8e-4da5-8a23-8800d5104421
Filesystem magic number:  0xEF53
Filesystem revision #:    1 (dynamic)
Filesystem features:      has_journal ext_attr resize_inode dir_index filetype needs_recovery extent flex_bg
sparse_super large_file uninit_bg dir_nlink
Filesystem flags:         signed_directory_hash
Default mount options:    journal_data_writeback user_xattr acl nobarrier
Filesystem state:         clean
Filesystem created:       Mon Aug 18 06:48:05 2008
Last mount time:          Mon Jul 15 20:03:02 2013
Last write time:          Mon Jul 15 20:03:00 2013

> I talked to support, and they are happy to "reprovision" the box with either F19 or CentOS.  
> However, it means that they do it on *their* schedule, and I have to be ready to re-install 
> all my stuff (webpage, configurations, nameserver, etc).

well, you better would be suited with a company giving you
remote access to your VM's console over a VPN

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