long term support release

[Les Mikesell]

Horst H. von Brand wrote:
> 
>> The scheme that would make sense to me would be to make the update
>> switch to 'stable mode' at end of life by default, retaining the app
>> versions supported in the enterprise disto since this takes
>> essentially no extra effort,
> 
> Nonsense. The versions in Fedora have by then drifted far from the
> "enterprise distro".

What do you mean 'by then'?  What was different in FC6 at the time of 
the RHEL5 release?  What difference would have been required if this 
transition had been planned?

> And keeping them up to date is /hard/ (that is what
> people are paying for RHEL, essentially).

Or getting for free with CentOS - so why keep them from getting it for 
free with fedora?

>>                              and concentrate new volunteer effort on
>> building current 'fedora-version' apps that could optionally be
>> installed over the enterprise base.
> 
> And said new versions require new infrastructure (new libc, new Gnome, new
> X, ...; yes, ABIs /do/ change without you being aware), and are built to
> different environments (font/icon/... files are now elsewhere, new SELinux
> layout, configuration conventions have changed, ...).

Yes, there are transitions that wouldn't be possible - which is a huge 
problem itself that probably can't realistically be fixed, but what 
about the ones that would be possible?  That is, can you build a current 
firefox and OpenOffice for FC6 or RHEL5 today, and if so, why can't they 
be in a repo somewhere?

>>                                      If the latter effort fails,
>> you've still got a solid, working version.
> 
> If you want "solid, working", why are you messing around with
> "bleeding-edge apps"?!

Why are people writing 'bleeding-edge' apps if there is no reason to use 
them?  A desktop app that crashes once in a while is not a huge problem 
- and wouldn't be a problem at all if there were an option to drop back 
to a more stable version.  A machine that won't boot or a device driver 
that no longer talks to my hardware is.

-- 
    Les Mikesell
      lesmikesell at gmail.com