On Sat, 2006-08-19 at 16:55 -0500, Les Mikesell wrote: > On Sat, 2006-08-19 at 14:24, Timothy Murphy wrote: > > > As I have explained, I would not use the word "unstable" to describe this. > > I would say "the update does not work". > > If you bought a new car and it did not work, > > would you say that it was "unstable"? > > That's not the situation I'm describing. You have something > working, apply what you expect to be updates and what > worked before no longer works. That's unstable. > Stable means that without changes nothing bad happens. Applying a change that does not work is not instability, it is an update of a program that failed to function properly. You cannot say that a distribution/OS is unstable because you did an update to printing and the printing now does not work. The machine still works and the only errors are occurring in the package that was changed. This is not OS instability, it is a package error. I have seen many such problems with various packages on Windows as well as on Linux. > > Incidentally, I have never known a Windows-2000 or Windows-XP upgrade > > not to work. > > I've known them to do things I didn't want them to do, > > eg add unwanted "security" features, > > but I've never known them to stop the machine working. > > They many not stop the machine from working, but they can > and have stopped previously working applications from > working. If that application is the reason you have the > machine in the first place, the effect is the same. And > if your job depends on the applications running, you learn > to be cautious about making changes. On the other hand > you can't ignore security-related updates and certain > bugfixes. Again, this is package related and not OS related. > > > >> When you use the term "unstable" would you mind explaining > > >> what you mean by it, please. > > > > > > With a unix-like system, stability means that you can write some > > > scripts to perform certain functions and go away for a few > > > years doing nothing but system bugfix and security updates > > > and come back to find it still doing its job. > > > > That seems to me yet another meaning. > > I don't think "stable" is the same as "unchanging". > > It means that interfaces don't change and existing documented > behavior doesn't change. > > > To me, "instability" means that something bad is occurring > > in an unpredictable way, eg if the computer sometimes boots > > and sometimes does not. > > If your application runs before an update and doesn't > afterwards... > > > > That's worked > > > for me so far with RH 7.3 and CentOS 3.x, and not much else. > > > The need for the bugfix/security updates is the killer here > > > because other distributions have allowed additional changes > > > that affect behavior to be slipstreamed into the updates that > > > you must apply. In fedora these changes are an expected feature, > > > not a bug... > > > > I'm not sure what you mean by this, > > but if an update did not work I would say that the update > > did not work, not that the system was unstable. > > I mean that there are times you want new features and changes > but you don't want them as a surprise along with things you have > to apply like security updates. > Then don't do updates. Fedora is *supposed* to be bleeding edge and has a rapid rate of change across the board. If you are not willing to accept the risk of changes (everywhere -- packages and OS) then do not use it. Instead use one of the stable distributions that only receive the security changes and not the rapid feature updates such as Debian, Centos, RHEL, or similar. If the new features are important to you then _do not_ complain when changes occur. Instead it is helpful if you have a problem with a specific change to identify exactly what went south and to file a bugzilla so the developers can fix the problem. Complaining does no one any good. Constructive criticism with recommendations and facts is of benefit. > -- > Les Mikesell > lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx > >
