Difference between Debian and other flavours of Linux

[Tim]

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.)

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