Fedora Users — Re: FC4 good new tech, bad legacy support

Christofer C. Bell wrote:

On 6/29/05, Scot L. Harris <webid@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I must have missed the part where you said you were testing things.  I
read your statement above "I like and want to use Linux, not spend hours
working out problems in getting it to work." to mean that you wanted a
stable release to run your software on.  I recommended Centos as a
viable option to that end.

While the rest of your post is not in the same tone, I feel this sort
of "if you want stability go somewhere else" responce disappointing
from many members of this mailing list.  It seems there are a lot of
folks who like to  take the "Fedora as testbed" stance to an extreme. 
The operating system is not advertised as "unstable" and it shouldn't
be viewed as such.  The recent selinux mistake is understandable as
all previous patches are nominally understood to be applied before a
new one is (and under these conditions, the selinux issue doesn't
occur in my understanding).

The Fedora "Objectives" page[1] does state:

* "Provide a robust development platform for building software,
particularly open source software." - Implies some modicum of
stability.

I'm developing using Perl, FC4 is not robust for that.

* "Establish and implement technical standards for packages to ensure
quality and consistency of the operating system." - A clear nod to
stability.

Well, for the core and extras trees, they did this magnificently.

* "Create an environment where third party packages are easy to add
and positive encouragement and support exists for third party
packaging." - Stability is required for this goal to be met.

Surveys said... BUZZZ! Sorry, FC4 fails this miserably. In fact, "easy" would be a blatant lie.

* "Form the basis of Red Hat's commercially supported operating system
products." - Poor quality assurance in Fedora implies poor quality
assurance in Red Hat Enterprise Linux, so poor quality assurance in
Fedora better not be happening (and I don't think it is).

Well said.

* Fedora does not want to be "a dumping ground for unmaintained or
poorly designed software." - This also implies a robust quality
assurance process.

Perhaps the standards are far too high in coding rules and compatibility, as that completely breaks much of the code in the open source community. It's ok to have standards, as long as they are reasonable.

Yes, Fedora is "the basis of Red Hat's commercially supported
operating system products" and thus it's a moving target -- but this
does not imply that a given release is to be viewed as unstable or
that people who experience problems should be told to go elsewhere for
their Linux experience or to "suck it up and deal."

As for the person that said it's advertised on Fedora's page that
users can expect to run into show stopping issues with regularity, I'm
hard pressed to find that anywhere on the site.  Do you have a pointer
to it?  (Hint: It's not there because it's not in Red Hat's interest
to discourage people from using their software).

[1] http://fedora.redhat.com/about/objectives.html

Well said, again.