yum flavors vs/ fc1, fc2, fc3...infinity
John McBride
jmcbride at ccis.com
Fri Jul 16 04:07:35 UTC 2004
Robert Locke wrote:
> On Thu, 2004-07-15 at 04:53, John McBride wrote:
>
>
>>I suspect it is as I feared. The rules appear to have changed (fedora
>>was originally portrayed as being somewhat stable, but over time more
>>posts are saying it's not suitable for production, only experimentation
>>stuff or home use).
>
>
> So, yes, FC2, I suppose, could be declared a less stable distribution
> but it's not a minor upgrade (a proverbial point release). To me, FC2
> is a dreaded point zero release. But I refuse to condemn the Fedora
> Project for moving forward.
>
I'm glad they are moving forward, too, and it's great that there are a
lot more people involved. Still, you sound like you are in the same
position as me--FC1 was great and fairly stable from the get-go, while
FC2 appears to have issues, and FC3 is coming up pretty
fast...administrating these 25 or so machines is a very part-time thing
for me. Redoing two servers and 25 boxes every 6 months is problematic
for me, it's repetitive work I'd rather not do. And it's work that
implies Linux is not ready for prime-time (that's the perception I will
get). I hope they at least consider stretching things out or coming up
with a better upgrade methodology.
>
>>This is okay and all, but it leaves me in a tough spot. I'm gonna take
>>some hits for migrating a bunch of people off RH 8/9 6 mos. ago and now
>>this product appears to be marketed strictly for experimentation.
>>
>>I've tried Suse, Slack, Debian, Mandrake...and all had far more problems
>>than Fedora, in my experience.
>
>
> I think the real change we need to understand is that the Fedora Project
> is just that, a Project that is community supported.
>
> The free lunch is still here, though. Just as many probably did before
> with RHL you can continue to do with FC: download it, install it and use
> it.
>
> But, with RHL, how did we get support? We paid. But now, you need to
> take ownership of supporting it yourself (with your clients paying you)
> or you need to find someone to support you. But expect to pay for that
> support. Of course, if this is a little too shaky for you on who to
> find to support you, then go to what the big vendors are supporting:
> purchase RHEL or purchase Suse Enterprise and receive a support contract
> if the alternative is too shaky.
Actually support (in the form of updates) was free for RedHat products
until RH9 was end-of-lifed, as I recall. It's all subscription now,
isn't it?
The problem is we are still evaluating whether anyone in our company
should use linux *at all* with the idea that, at some point, we might go
for a more professional service, distribution or "flavor". It's just too
early right now. "Free" is not that big of a deal to me--I just don't
want to be locked into a subscription.
Fedora gotten to be like drugs for me. Often new packages will appear
for fedora through a third party site almost immediately after
release...it's great. And they tend to work just fine.
Suse, by the way, is a borked product. I know people might not want to
hear that, but I've got two fairly seasoned web developers (lots of unix
and web experience) who had several support mightmares with
it---critical packages way out of date, paths and environment variables
pointing to unusual places, etc. They are okay with FC1 but are going to
scream when I walk in to upgrade them to FC2 or FC3 ("YOU JUST DID THIS
LAST WEEK!") not really but they will be pissed.
>
>
>>RedHat 2004 anyone, coming to a shelf near you?
>
>
> Actually it already is: shrink-wrapped and called Red Hat Professional
> Workstation and based on RHEL 3 WS. Works nice....
>
I have never seen this anywhere. I have been under the impression that
all non-fedora RH products are subscription only. I'll look into this
and if this is something like a RH8/9 replacement I will go for it right
away.
Also, I have become totally addicted to my local rsync'd FC1 yum
repository. I doubt I'll ever use another distro that does not have this
ability.
---
John
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