FC1,FC2,FC3,etc.

[Billy Tallis]

On Sat, 12 Mar 2005 09:11:18 +0000, Michael A. Peters <mpeters at mac.com> wrote:
> On 03/11/2005 11:37:08 PM, Sasa Stupar wrote:
> 
> > I know that someone will say "that's because we don't have all the
> > same computers - some have old, some have new" but this is not an
> > answer. Even old computers can run FC, it is just the matter of
> > choosing the right install config.
> > I understand that there must be different versions of FC for
> > different computer architectures (i386,a64,etc.) but it is not
> > necessary then to make several subversions for one architecture.
> > Well, this is just my oppinion.
> 
> The reason for different versions is release date.
> About every six months, Fedora releases a new version with newer
> software versions and sometimes new ways of doing things.
> 
> You can update a FC1 or FC2 machine to FC3 - and that is what I
> recommend doing unless there is a specific reason not to (IE you run
> mathematica which was released for FC2 and is not supported in FC3)
> 
> The different versions are not because of differing hardware, it is
> simply because new versions are released as improvements are made.
> 
The main thing is that updating something like the compiler or another
major package usually requires overhauling the system. If you think
about the changes in migrating to kernel 2.6, it is much easier to
start from scratch. The same goes for GNOME and KDE. Even if you can
get a stable system, there will be a lot of unecessary baggage. There
is also the problem of not having a set baseline. FC manages a good
balance by having 2 releases a year that have the latest packages and
maintaining each release for a full year, by which time there have
been major changes to GNOME, etc.