Why Fedora ?

[Jeff Vian]

On Thu, 2005-11-03 at 11:52 -0600, Les Mikesell wrote:
> On Thu, 2005-11-03 at 08:28, Timothy Murphy wrote:
> > > 
> > > And it probably never will.  Fedora is meant to be a cutting-edge
> > > testbed for RH enterprise-level distributions.  This is both good and
> > > bad, depending on your perspective.  As others have said, if you need
> > > a stable desktop environment, most likely you really should be looking
> > > elsewhere.
> > 
> > I find this often made comment - that FC is "bleeding edge" - 
> > utterly bizarre.
> 
> Think of it in the context of untested vs. well tested, and look
This is a bizarre statement.  If you are running the development version
then you can justifiably say untested.  That is what that tree is for.

The release version on the other hand has been tested and judged to be
stable enough for most to use. 

> at the volume of updates made during the short FC version life
> and it won't seem so bizarre.  Those updates are done for a reason.
> 

Yes, the updates are done for a reason.  Often security fixes,
enhancements, and bug fixes as well.

> > It seems to me, on the contrary, that the Fedora team
> > is extremely cautious and only takes one tiny step at a time.
> 
> FC1 -> FC2 was a very big change.
> 
> > If you want "bleeding edge" try the development repositories.
> 
> Even less tested...
> 
> > In my (very long) experience,
> > Fedora is neither more nor less adventurous
> > than any other distribution,
> > or indeed than Redhat itself.
> 
> Then you don't understand to difference between fedora and RH
> enterprise.  With fedora, the goal is to be stable at the
> _end_ of the distribution life cycle.  That is, the purpose
> is to get wide exposure and testing of the new development
> included at the start of that version's life and fix the
> problems that won't otherwise be found.  With RHEL, the idea is
> to start with stable, well tested code in the initial release
> and do minimal changes over the much longer life of that version.
> 
True, and you have the opportunity to decide how much change 'you' can
handle.  A very good but still somewhat improving fedora, or a stable,
nearly static RHEL version.
 
> > There are very good reasons, in my view,
> > for keeping up-to-date with Fedora,
> > as many very useful developments come on line.
> > (In my case, for example, the integration of bluetooth into the kernel,
> > and the availability of recent bluez rpms,
> > has greatly simplified my life.)
> 
> This is true - but new development brings new bugs, and hardware
> related issues are only going to be found after extensive use.
> 
It is impossible to have the amount/variety of users and hardware in a
limited testing environment..

Fedora is a testbed, but still very solid and hardly worth being called
unstable.

> > It is true that there are occasional problems with new versions
> > of old applications, but that's life.
> 
> Exactly - so you don't want to run untested code in places where
> those 'occasional problems' have serious consequences.  If your
> computer is a disposable toy, or you have a machine just for testing,
> or everything you really need is backed up and you are prepared
> to reinstall, you can do the testing yourself.  Otherwise you'll
> probably want to play the odds with well tested code.
> 

Again, that is your choice.  Use centos or whitebox linux or even debian
if you need more stability.

> It is somewhat unfortunate that all the software is treated the
> same way in the distribution.  I'd like to see a middle ground where
> fairly current applications are included (since a bug there won't
> normally crash the machine) along with a stable, well-tested operating
> system.
> 
> -- 
>   Les Mikesell
>     lesmikesell at gmail.com
> 
>