Les Mikesell <lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Thu, 2005-06-30 at 15:27, Richard Kelsch wrote:
I still stand by my claim that FC4 fails
the intentions of the project. Nevertheless, I know it will be fixed
eventually, perhaps FC5.
But you could bet that it would not be fixed if it wasn't released in
its current state so people could fix it. That's the point of the
fedora releases - it is supposed to meet the usability intentions
by the *end* of a release, when the effort shifts to a new batch
of code and the updates to this one stop. Since there are 3 prior
releases you can get a pretty good idea how this works by looking
back at the updates that made the other versions usable.
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Actually, you get a far better idea from looking at the RHEL releases.
Upgrades from say RHEL 3 to RHEL 4 are not recommended nor were they
recommended from 2.1 to 3. To "ensure a consistent user experience" Red
Hat recommends a clean install. Given this, is it really that
surprising that upgrades from FC3 to FC4 are at best marginally supported?
Now, take a step back and consider that Red Hat will continue to support
a version of RHEL for something like 5 years. If RHEL 3 fully supports
a particular hardware platform, what incentive do you as a user have to
upgrade to RHEL 4? Other than, "Oh, cool. I'm running the latest
version of <fill in the blank>?" This is especially in the corporate IT
world. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
This is in marked contrast to a certain company in Redmond, WA that
wants to keep everyone upgrading to the latest and greatest version
mainly because they've sold their product based on a different support
model that costs them for every year they continue to support an older
version. Finally, consider all of the things that can go wrong on an
upgrade (e.g., third party packages) and the support costs associated
with trying to provide a "consistent user experience." Red Hat has all
sorts of incentive to keep people on the version of RHEL that they
bought and a lot of reasons for discouraging people from upgrading for a
given piece of hardware.
BTW, I'm not complaining. I have an Athlon 1700+ box that I use for my
gateway/server and it does just fine with White Box Linux 3. There is
really no reason for me to upgrade it to WB 4 since WB 3 mirrors RHEL 3
and continues to be fully supported. It has nothing to do with cost and
a lot to do with, "What do I get that's better after an upgrade?"
