Lamar Owen wrote:
If its come down to ABI stability in the
kernel, then we are at an impasse.
Just because there is an impasse doesn't mean that users who despise this
political motivation in kernel development should just shut up. I think the
kernel developers (and perhaps the Fedora developers) should hear what users
think about the system in this area. Users want to use the system, and they
don't want it to break mysteriously due to one CRITICAL-FOR-SECURITY update
that also happens to include a new 'feature' that breaks what was working.
I personally don't think the Linux kernel would be usable for any
purpose other than the educational/testing environment Linus set out to
write if it were not for the stabilizing bugfix backports that that
enterprise versions provide. This is not necessarily because any of the
stock versions are bad, but because the time an end user needs to
spend dealing with the changes and re-installs will quickly outweigh the
cost of the proprietary alternatives that don't have this problem.
I would not dare use it as a server. Too fragile when it comes to updates.
If you never had to update, sure, it's a great server OS. Just don't connect
it to the Internet without updating. CentOS or RHEL is a much better choice
here.
I would not dare put it into nontechnical users' hands as an enterprise
desktop, either. I have enough user service requests to deal with without
dealing with the regressions introduced by a newer kernel version.
And if you can't deal with it in an environment with experienced help,
where does that leave end users on their own?
> CentOS or
RHEL plus KDE-RedHat fills that niche for my uses.
Does that provide a current firefox, evolution, thunderbird, OOo?
If Fedora wants to be a server-grade distribution an enterprise desktop
distribution, then kernel module ABI stability should be a goal. If Fedora
doesn't want either of these, and wants to ignore the module ABI problems,
then, Ok, that's fine. Just don't misrepresent Fedora's suitability for
those uses. If it's a bleeding edge enthusiast's desktop, then bill it as
such.
Exactly - a realistic estimate of the end user's time that will be spent
_just_ maintaining a working system and keeping stored data intact
over the span of a few years would be a good truth-in-advertising move.
The OP's point was trying to debunk the idea that Fedora is just a beta
testbed for RHEL (of course, the point of the thread has morphed since then).
Playing the devil's advocate for a just a moment, ask yourself this question:
would it be in Red Hat's interest for Fedora to really be update-stable on
either the enterprise desktop or server?
Red Hat does an enormous amount of open source development work that goes
unrecognized; the Fedora distribution is part of that (PostgreSQL is
another), and I for one am thankful and grateful for all Red Hat does. And I
don't think Red Hat intentionally 'cripples' Fedora, even though it may
appear that they do.
I recognize the work they do, but how hard it is to do the bugfix
backports really depends on how broken the product was as shipped in the
first place and whether the developers care about backwards
compatibility. And whenever discussions come up about development,
someone always points out that many of the developers are employed by
RedHat, so I'd expect them to have some amount of say in the matter.
I just wish we had a real competitor based on opensolaris with an up to
date userland environment (Solaris being backwards compatible more or
less forever...). Nexenta looked promising but hasn't had an update for
a long time. Are there any similar projects?
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
