Feature Proposal: Rolling Updates (was Re: WHY I WANT TO STOP USING FEDORA!!!)

Michael Cronenworth mike at cchtml.com
Tue Feb 10 21:45:57 UTC 2009


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: WHY I WANT TO STOP USING FEDORA!!!
From: Mark Haney <mhaney at ercbroadband.org>
To: Community assistance, encouragement, and advice for using Fedora. 
<fedora-list at redhat.com>
Date: 02/10/2009 03:21 PM

> 
> Now, I'm done with this thread.
> 
> 

OK, great. Maybe we can speak to you now.

Firefox
Yes, it's a beast for me, too. Fedora builds FF with Pango support. Try 
disabling Pango in the /usr/bin/firefox script and see if it makes any 
difference for you (sometimes it does for me). MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO

Rolling Updates
Think about this for a second. Rolling updates work -- if you have the 
infrastructure for it. Fedora was based on Red Hat. Red Hat was 
supporting a corporate mindset of version numbers on operating systems. 
The mindset you speak of is without version numbers. You can never slap 
a version number on a rolling update distribution.

In reality, for rolling updates, you need a QA staff to make sure 
nothing breaks. For Gentoo, Debian, and friends, they rely on keeping 
"stable" levels of software that are often multiple versions behind 
upstream. Fedora doesn't want to wait that long (cue "bleeding-edge" 
mantra). However!!! Fedora is actively gaining a refined and better QA 
team and QA system.

This brings me to my point:
While Fedora gains new features, it also gains more flexibility. 
PackageKit and friends technically allow rolling update functionality in 
Fedora. This flexibility can also be seen on the Red Hat side with their 
"Satellite" software package. We [Fedora] can now provide updates of any 
multitude to people with or without Internet access. This is a HUGE step 
up from the Fedora 1 through Fedora 6 days.

Before Fedora gets to Fedora 15, 16, 17, etc... I think you should be 
actively pushing for a rolling update feature. Every release bring it up 
with FESco. Start a blog, website, etc. 
http://www.fedora-rolling-updates.org/ or whatever fits your fancy.

I can see one day that we rid ourselves of a distribution versioning 
scheme. It's old, it's obsolete, and it's does more harm than good. You 
must get the right people to see this or else it will just be a pipe dream.





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