FC4 good new tech, bad legacy support

[Jan Visser]

David G. Miller (aka DaveAtFraud) wrote:
> 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?"
> 
What is more similar to RHEL 4 ? CentOS or WB?