WHY I WANT TO STOP USING FEDORA!!!

[Bill Davidsen]

Chris Tyler wrote:
> On Sat, 2009-02-07 at 21:13 -0500, Mike Chalmers wrote:
>> I do not understand how Fedora expects you to upgrade or reinstall
>> every 6 months or so.
>>
>> This is just not right.
>>
>> Should a distro keep continuing to make you install every six months,
>> if so, I would rather use Microsoft. Why not provide updates, major
>> ones, to the already installed OS instead of having to reinstall a new
>> OS!!! I imagine that this, if done in an organized way, could be
>> easier on the developers of Fedora.
>>
>> INSTEAD OF MAKING CONSUMERS INSTALL EVERY SIX MONTHS OR UNTIL THE
>> UPDATES STOP, JUST PROVIDE LARGE UPDATES THAT UPGRADE A SYSTEM WITHOUT
>> HAVING TO DO A COMPLETELY NEW INSTALL???
>>
>> THEN YOU WILL HAVE A LARGER FAN BASE AND A MORE STABLE OS!!!
> 
> Hi Mike,
> 
> There's a few things to note:
> 
> - Updates are available for 2 releases plus one month. You can update
> once a year and stay current with Fedora.
> 
> - The "preupgrade" package enables you to upgrade from one Fedora
> release to another without reinstalling (though your mileage may vary).
> 
Indeed, it depends on your hardware, if the drivers have been changed some 
"improvement" maps to "eats the files" or "no visible display" instead. In other 
words, backup before trying.

> - For long-term support, there's RHEL and CentOS (both are based on
> Fedora technology) -- you can reinstall just twice a decade.
> 
> - Releasing every 6 months helps Fedora fulfill its goal of driving the
> rapid development of open source.
> 
And there I do want to say the support for the oldest supported version often 
seems to be limited to bug fix. If a new version of an application comes out it 
is less likely to make it to, currently, FC9 than FC10, depending on what it is. 
Now that the FC11 alpha is out, I expect damn few resources for FC9, which is 
just getting really stable and getting 3rd party applications ported.

I would love to see some concept of LTS in Fedora, or some policy like "updates 
to new versions for six months (next release), bug fixes for a year after that. 
Not the LTS of Fedora Unity days, but I know resources are scarce, although 
honestly I have some drivers and such which just allowed an update from FC6 to 
FC9, and some long term love would be great.

My solution has been to run some machines in a VM, to protect them from newer 
threats while still being able to use features which are necessary and not 
available in newer versions. Perhaps that will help the O.P. run stable machines 
longer while having newer features available.

-- 
Bill Davidsen <davidsen at tmr.com>
   "We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from
the machinations of the wicked."  - from Slashdot