On 12/11/2003 11:09:57 AM, Preston Crawford wrote:
No, I don't want a commercially tested and supported distro. That's
why I was fine with Fedora. It seemed like a nice balance. I could run some testing packages, some "stable" packages, but either way since the entire distro itself wasn't being tested by Red Hat I knew there might be some glitches and so essentially I'd be helping to test the distro and how it's put together. I think it's fine to participate in that manner without having to run Gnome 2.5a and Mozilla 1.6a. I mean, come on.
If that's your idea of community supported, guilting people into running bleeding edge software to beta test for Red Hat for free, then I think Fedora is definitely headed in the wrong direction.
To repeat, fedora will generally not use beta software. For instance, Gnome 2.4 will probably be in FC2 because 2.6 is not expected to be stable by then.
It might help you to look at the archive on the fedora development list to see how many 'wishlist' items are being discarded because they will not be out of beta on the FC2 timeline.
Or the developer guildlines. Especially http://fedora.redhat.com/participate/developers-guide/ch-package-versions.html
which clearly states that beta software will generally not be part of Fedora.
*sigh* Nevermind.
Preston, I really do think you can continue to be comforatble with Fedora. It sounds very much like what you are looking for.
And no, you do not need to test the beta in order to use it. If you have a spare machine, and can, that's great. But it is not required.
Actually, from your descriptions of your interest, you might consider testing the FC1 updates before they are released. That way you will get you patches even a little more quickly, and you can do some non- bleeding-edge testing that still has real value. Again entirely optional.
It seems that this thread has gotten a little complex, and maybe a little emotional. If I remember some of your earlier post, you started with the question will fedora be bleeding edge. I think the answer is no, and I think that is well documented at the fedora site.
Also, you regretted that as a fedora user, it was now harder to throw RedHat some modest fee when the time seemed right. I second that feeling. I might just go out and buy a box set to send the cash their way, even if I don't use it. Or maybe an RHEL every few years.
Again, these are optional things.
Speaking for myself, I think your questions are reasonable. Putting aside the rumors on this forum, I don't think you have a lot to worry about with fedora. If that turns out to be true, yes you can switch to something else. But I think from the RH point of view, if every user just contributed one well thought out bug report or RFE with a patch, they by doing pretty well by the open source model. From that point of view, the challenge is not to live on the bleeding edge, but to craft bugzilla submissions so RedHat can use them to efficiently drive their development forward. (And, since Fedora emphasizes upstrem bug fixes, this appies to any included prohject, not just to the fedora distribution alone.
-- Karl
