On Thu, 2006-08-17 at 21:54 +0100, Timothy Murphy wrote: > > > >> > FC5 is not a production type software, its probably meant for hobbyists > >> > or someone who is experimenting with things that are not mission > >> > critical. > >> > >> I don't agree with that. > >> In my experience it is neither more nor less "stable" > >> than any other Linux distribution. > > > > You are lucky or you haven't followed the list very long. Fedora > > intentionally stays close to development and thus pushes out a > > lot of code that has not previously been tested in a lot of different > > environments. Whether you measure stability in terms of rate-of-change > > or updates that cause crashes, fedora doesn't fare very well, but as > > a tradeoff you get to try all the nifty new desktop stuff. > > I've actually been reading the list since it started. > I've often seen this mantra that Fedora is "bleeding edge" > and not to be trusted. > But that is not my experience. How many hardware platforms are you using? > I have used all (or virtually all) Linux distributions, > and found no significant difference between them, > as far as "stability" is concerned. > I used to run various versions of RedHat, I think starting with 5, > and again I have not found FC any different from RedHat > as regards reliability. You have to compare it to something like the current RH enterprise versions or the free CentOS distribution to see the difference. You are right that fedora is very much like the earlier RH fast changing versions (up to RH9). > 90% of the problems I have encountered > involve either X or WiFi, > and don't really have anything to do with distributions. Did you use firewire drives with FC4? There was about a 6 month period when they weren't recognized as drives. People also have lots of trouble with SATA with about every new kernel. I have an IBM x86 225 eserver that I'd consider fairly mainstream with the MPT scsi controller running FC5 and it hasn't booted with anything newer than kernel-2.6.16-1.2133_FC5smp and that was several updates back. The current 2.6.17-1.2157_FC5 does see the the SCSI drives but hangs when initializing the broadcomm gigabit NIC. Fortunately it keeps the running kernel, so the intermediate ones have been deleted instead of the last working one, but if it had been updated and rebooted in a remote site where no one could power cycle after a hang and select the alternate kernel in grub it would be dead now. > I usually compile the kernel for various reasons. > (I don't think any of the supplied FC kernels have worked > with my USB WiFi device.) > So this again is independent of distribution. > > That just leaves non-X applications, > and my impression is that the Fedora RPMs > are nearly always well-tested and reliable. Just not on a lot of hardware.... I have another box with an older adaptec SCSI controller and a really old DEC chip netgear NIC that never has problems. -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
