Re: FC2 doubtful quality?

Timothy Murphy wrote:

Dexter Ang wrote:

So I guess developers were "pressured" to release on a deadline, hoping
to fix most bugs through updates. As much as I'd personally love to help
test and test until all bugs are stamped out, you can't avoid the fact
that a lot of other people simply won't test until a "final" release is
out.

I'm not sure how typical I am,
but I haven't run any test releases because it has been said
that one cannot upgrade from a test release to a new FC release.

Nothing is supported anyway. I have upgraded from test cycles to final releases several times. This may leave newer versions of programs on your machine that were not stable enough t be released with the final version of the distro. Hopefully, the program will become stable enough that the fonal release version will replace the not ready for release version.

I have one system that is always paced with current rawhide packages. This system is surprisingly stable. In fact, my network cards both work on this environment.

I have another version that is an install of FC1 and went through the test phase (FC1 to FC2) and is staying at current FC2 released packages. This upgraded environment has all of the multimedia related packages and is what I consider my main OS.

The third version is a fresh install of FC2 and is pretty limp in that it does not have all of the multimedia related add-ons included. This evironment works great for things like dvd burning and the sound to be set to a decent default level.

It would simply be too time-consuming for me
to re-install FC whenever a new release comes out.
Perhaps I'm not very well organised,
but I would have to go through dozens of config files
to see which need to be copied, and which updated.

If you are not running a lot of services, add-on programs and user related data seem to be the only major drawbacks. I've been held back by pre-existing config files on several occasions. I was unaware that CD burning worked on later versions of RHL. The hdx=ide-scsi addition to the boot loader from RHL 6.x series to RHL 7.x series never took place. Once I did a fresh install and found out that I no longer needed to boot into windows to burn CDs, I was happy with catching up.

So I would suggest to the Fedora administrators
that if it were possible to upgrade from test releases
there might be a lot more people willing to test.

The answer that you most likely will get is that this is unsupported. The good news is that other than progressively upgrading through the test cycle is not that bad. At least from my exposure to doing *the unsupported* betas to next release cycles.

Disadvantages of upgrading throughout the OS cycle. New programs added, they will not be installed. Config or default application settings changes for the better, config files might be better with a new install.

Advantages of clean installations. You will get newer packages that are included in the new version. You will get the latest configuration file defaults, which seem more sanely based.

Good luck and have fun testing. Who knows what is supported anymore on an unsupported OS. It works great though, at least for me.

Jim