Timothy Murphy said: > William Hooper wrote: > > >> You can't have it both ways. If you want newer packages fast you have >> to do fast releases. That is why Fedora does time-based releases, so >> that newer packages get integrated faster. > > I don't really agree with this. > You are making a principle out of what was really an error of judgement. No, it is a principle of the project. To quote the Fedora home page: "The project will produce time-based releases of Fedora Core about 2-3 times a year with a public release schedule." It can be debated that the principle is an error of judgment, but it is that principle that has been put forward since day one. > FC-2 was not sufficiently well tested. Works for me. It also works for a number of people. Maybe some cases were not well tested, but you are making a blanket statement that a number of people would disagree with. You have to keep in mind when making conclusions based on mailing lists: People who don't have problems aren't complaining. > If in fact it is not possible to test FC-n properly in the time allotted. > the time between releases should be increased. Again, I disagree. Having installed FC2 test 2 through the final release there were a number of improvements. The end result wasn't perfect, but it never will be. There were also a large number of changes in FC2 vs. FC1. I highly doubt this will always be the case (for example, FC3 doesn't appear to have anything drastically different). > Personally I haven't found FC-2 too much trouble, > and I will stick to Fedora, and continue to upgrade unless it becomes much > more difficult. So you haven't found it to much trouble, but yet it "was not sufficiently well tested"? > I think Fedora could and should try to develop > as a replacement for RH-9 for as wide an audience as possible. This is not the stated goal. It never has been. > It's important in my view to keep a balance > between adding new features to Linux and at the same time ensuring Linux is > as easy to install and use as possible. How does adding new features to Fedora make it hard to install or use? > I've said before, and will say again - > you would get many more testers, and therefore more reliable > distributions, if it were stated that test releases should in principle be > upgrade-able. There is no way to reliably do this. Currently newer versions can be tested in the Test releases (makes sense, huh?) because they can always be backed out in the next Test release or in the Final. If you try to make everything directly upgradeable you will have to stop this type of testing. > I'm sure there must be many people like me > who would be willing to run test releases but who don't have a spare > machine to devote to this purpose, or the time or inclination to > re-install every 3 months. How would being able to do an upgrade change you willingness to test? Test releases are likely to have problems that can cause data loss. Running them on your "one and only" machine isn't a good idea anyway. -- William Hooper
