FC4 good new tech, bad legacy support

[David G. Miller (aka DaveAtFraud)]

Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com> wrote:

>On Thu, 2005-06-30 at 15:27, Richard Kelsch wrote:
>  
>
>>> I still stand by my claim that FC4 fails 
>>> the intentions of the project.  Nevertheless, I know it will be fixed 
>>> eventually, perhaps FC5.
>>    
>>
>
>But you could bet that it would not be fixed if it wasn't released in
>its current state so people could fix it.   That's the point of the
>fedora releases - it is supposed to meet the usability intentions
>by the *end* of a release, when the effort shifts to a new batch
>of code and the updates to this one stop.  Since there are 3 prior
>releases you can get a pretty good idea how this works by looking
>back at the updates that made the other versions usable.
>
>--
>  Les Mikesell
>    lesmikesell at futuresource.com
>
Actually, you get a far better idea from looking at the RHEL releases.  
Upgrades from say RHEL 3 to RHEL 4 are not recommended nor were they 
recommended from 2.1 to 3.  To "ensure a consistent user experience" Red 
Hat recommends a clean install.  Given this, is it really that 
surprising that upgrades from FC3 to FC4 are at best marginally supported?

Now, take a step back and consider that Red Hat will continue to support 
a version of RHEL for something like 5 years.  If RHEL 3 fully supports 
a particular hardware platform, what incentive do you as a user have to 
upgrade to RHEL 4?  Other than, "Oh, cool.  I'm running the latest 
version of <fill in the blank>?"  This is especially in the corporate IT 
world.  If it ain't broke, don't fix it. 

This is in marked contrast to a certain company in Redmond, WA that 
wants to keep everyone upgrading to the latest and greatest version 
mainly because they've sold their product based on a different support 
model that costs them for every year they continue to support an older 
version.  Finally, consider all of the things that can go wrong on an 
upgrade (e.g., third party packages) and the support costs associated 
with trying to provide  a "consistent user experience."  Red Hat has all 
sorts of incentive to keep people on the version of RHEL that they 
bought and a lot of reasons for discouraging people from upgrading for a 
given piece of hardware.

BTW, I'm not complaining.  I have an Athlon 1700+ box that I use for my 
gateway/server and it does just fine with White Box Linux 3.  There is 
really no reason for me to upgrade it to WB 4 since WB 3 mirrors RHEL 3 
and continues to be fully supported.  It has nothing to do with cost and 
a lot to do with, "What do I get that's better after an upgrade?"