Difference between Debian and other flavours of Linux
Tim
ignored_mailbox at yahoo.com.au
Mon Apr 24 11:53:08 UTC 2006
Tim:
>> One of the dislikes I have with Fedora *is* the release schedule.
>> There'll be a release around a certain date, ready or not, sensible or
>> not. A new release comes up around the time the last one has many of
>> the bugs ironed out, yet the new release is so radically different that
>> you can't take advantage of the information gleaned over the last one.
>> It won't be a fixed version of the prior release, it'll be a different
>> version. It's case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Paul Howarth:
> Taking it as read that Fedora is a distribution that tries to keep up
> with upstream releases, how long would you suggest the interval
> between releases be? The longer you leave it, the more different it's
> going to be.
When it's ready. When it works. When something is a significant
improvement over a prior release to justify a whole new OS.
There's zero value in bringing a product out on a certain date
regardless of its operating condition, and from some points of view,
there's *negative* value in doing so.
There's a significant advantage in having a long-lived OS, which allows
programmers to build for a known goal. Some program development is
quite long-term, and to have the underlying system changed on you,
several times, might well mean that you just can't be stuffed developing
for it. It'd be different if there was a usable system standard that
worked across all distros, but they're just about all different and
require custom implementations. I much preferred how my old Amiga
worked, I had the same OS on it for many years, it did its job well, and
didn't need replacing. I updated *applications* when I felt like it,
and that was all I needed to do.
Remember how older, Red Hat Linux, releases used to have longer lifes,
with sub-versions before radical changes (e.g. 7.0, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3)?
Where OS faults (supposedly) got fixed, before moving onto a new one.
--
(Currently running FC4, occasionally trying FC5.)
Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored.
I read messages from the public lists.
More information about the fedora-list
mailing list