On 11/07/2009 06:51 PM, Timothy Murphy wrote:
I upgraded from CentOS-5.3 to CentOS-5.4
(and earlier from CentOS-5.2 to CentOS-5.3)
just by running "yum update".
Why can't I upgrade to Fedora-12 like that?
Is it just that the CentOS makers are cleverer...?
While others have pointed out the similarity between upgrading fedora and
upgrading CentOS releases (as opposed to upgrading CentOS point releases), allow
me to defend fedora against the last comment that you made (maybe in jest, but
just the same :))
a. The number of packages in Fedora are larger than in CentOS (I don't know
absolute numbers but I'm willing to bet fedora has at least twice the number of
packages as CentOS does). This implies that theoretically fedora has at least
twice the number of possible points of failure during an upgrade -- of course
with good packaging polices this is contained and one barely ever notices the
differences between CentOS and Fedora upgrades.
b. One of the things Fedora aims for, is to include new technology and innovate
as early as possible. This necessarily implies that some things might change
drastically between releases. However, the effect of this too is contained by
proper packaging policies.
c. Fedora is what Red Hat decides to base it's RHEL platform upon. RHEL is what
CentOS distributes (after cleaning out the legal hassles to allow them to do so,
for instance Red Hat trademarks). So, basically the 'cleverer' CentOS makers are
building on top of the work of the Fedora makers, /including/ the tests and bugs
coming out of the Fedora community as well as Red Hat's QA team.
d. RHEL (and so also CentOS) is designed to be run on production systems, so
upgrades (using either yum upgrade or otherwise), undergo more rigorous testing
compared to Fedora (which relies on people like us to test at least the beta
releases and file bugs, if we expect upgrades to just work).
Hope that clarifies a few things about the cleverness of the Fedora 'community'. :)
cheers,
- steve
--
random non tech spiel: http://lonetwin.blogspot.com/
tech randomness: http://lonehacks.blogspot.com/
what i'm stumbling into: http://lonetwin.stumbleupon.com/
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