long term support release

[Horst H. von Brand]

Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com> wrote:
> Jesse Keating wrote:

[...]

> > What earthly reason would you have to run some old code set, with not
> > even close to guaranteed updates, let alone timely ones, with little
> > man power behind it, and the opportunity to be ignored by most package
> > owners?

> Here's the reason: you have a new computer with hardware supported in
> fedora but not the current RHEL/Centos release -

Lack of care when buying a machine can't be cured by the distribution.

>                                                  or you need some
> software feature provided in the newer fedora apps so you install
> fedora.

I was perfectly happy with RH 6.2, and most of what I do now I could do
there, so this can't really be an issue.

>          A year passes and you've installed an assortment of
> additional apps and perhaps written some of your own.

Upgrade to next Fedora. Gets easier each time around. A bit of foresight
when installing originally helps much here.

>                                                        Everything you
> need is working nicely, but now your security updates end.  Your 'some
> old code set' description doesn't quite match what people care about -
> they want a code set that meets certain needs and once that is
> installed and working they don't care if a prettier new version with
> new bugs happens to be available.  But people will be installing that
> on new computers or new situations where they need a feature.

If they care for "working indefinitely" they aren't into "mint-fresh
hardware" nor into "bleeding-edge software". This scenario isn't at all
realistic.
-- 
Dr. Horst H. von Brand                   User #22616 counter.li.org
Departamento de Informatica                    Fono: +56 32 2654431
Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria             +56 32 2654239
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