Christofer C. Bell wrote:
The Fedora "Objectives" page[1] does state:
While the objective page does say these things, the fact is some of
those objectives are in conflict.
"leading edge" software is rarely "robust" or "stable."
"leading edge" compilers likely implement new algorithms, some of what
are flawed and some of which are implemented badly.
"leading edge" compilers often implement new semantics & syntax, perhaps
for compilance with new standards. This can cause problems with existing
software, and is the reason RH shipped two C compilers for a time - one
for the kernel, one for everything else.
Whatever one's objectives are, it's the nature of things that they will
often not be met: if they're too easy, there's no challenge.
The problems I've had and which I've seen reported here suggest that on
FC3 and FC4, the robustness objective is not met, and least, to
everyone's satisfaction.
If stability and resilience are important, then I still say FC is not
the platform of choice.
Now, for those with imbedded projects, I think FC and *EL are not good
choices. The RH-based packages are created for general-purpose
application with many facilities & features not required for many
specialist tasks. For those, I suggest looking for a distro targeted to
those needs, or building from source. That way, you get to enable the
features you want and eliminate much unwanted bloat.
I used to run RHL 6.2 on a Pentium with 64 Mbytes of RAM, but these days
my Celeron 1300-based laptop with 256 Mbytes struggles.
And, I used to run a webs server on a 486, 8 Mb RAM and 170 mb of disk.
It's probably still possible, provided that I build from source. If I
tried to use RHEL or FC, the dependencies would kill me.
* "Provide a robust development platform for building software,
particularly open source software." - Implies some modicum of
stability.
* "Establish and implement technical standards for packages to ensure
quality and consistency of the operating system." - A clear nod to
stability.
* "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.
* "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).
* Fedora does not want to be "a dumping ground for unmaintained or
poorly designed software." - This also implies a robust quality
assurance process.
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
--
Cheers
John
-- spambait
1aaaaaaa@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Z1aaaaaaa@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Tourist pics http://portgeographe.environmentaldisasters.cds.merseine.nu/
