On Thu, 2007-01-04 at 14:31 +0000, Anne Wilson wrote: > > > > That's what the 'enterprise' distributions like RHEL and Centos are > > all about. However, in my opinion the application versions get too > > far behind for desktop use between releases. > > I don't quite agree. Enterprise distros are perfect for situations such as > offices, where stability is all and needs are relatively basic. That's OK for servers, but what enterprise do you know that needs nothing better than firefox 1.5.0.8, evolution 2.02, and OO 1.1.5 on desktops (that's just what happens to be in Centos 4.x). > As you > remark, application versions are likely to be too far behind to be satisfying > to a home user, who will probably want multimedia, for instance, and probably > 3d graphics. The problems here are GPL related and aren't going to be solved by any number of revisions. I gave up and bought a Mac so as to get the stability of a unix base but one that does not come with restrictions that prevent the vendor from shipping it with the components you need to make it usable. I don't expect a Linux system to do that in my lifetime, since the concept of software patents has to go away first, then someone has to catch up with free/legal versions of everything previously covered and not possible to combine with GPL'd components. > My thinking was that, assuming that the version installed by > the release works reasonably well, it would be fairly up to date and could > therefore be left alone. There is a lot of difference between OO 1.x and 2.x and that update wouldn't be likely to render your system unusable even if it has a bug. > I'm not suggesting that it should not be possible > to update such applications, of course, just that any 'automatic' updates > could be limited to security fixes - 'could be', mind, not 'must be'. Anything to fill the large gap between RHEL and fedora would help. -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
