On Sat, 2006-08-19 at 22:48, Jeff Vian wrote: > 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. I can and did say that. If an interface or documented behavior changes, it is unstable. > 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. If that package is the reason you have the machine, it won't matter much what caused it to break. > > 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. There are updates you have to do. Nobody expects code to be perfect and you do have to apply fixes to the parts that are broken as shipped. However, on production machines you want to minimize introducing new problems. > 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. Agreed - and that is exactly what I have been saying. > 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. Exactly: distributions suitable for use as production servers separate bug/security fix updates from behavior-changing updates. However, with behavior-changing development inherent in the 2.6 kernel, not even the enterprise distributions can assure stability. > 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. Yes it does - it serves as a warning to others not to use whatever just made you complain, at least under the same circumstances. -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
