a modest proposal for fedora 13

[geolab]

hi everybody. today I was thinkin that the last fedora stable enough for everyday use was fedora 10. Infact I'm using it for my server at work. My proposal is simple. wouldn't it be nice every 3 fedora releases have one stable and reliable and solid both for desktop that for servers? Fedora 13 could be the one with the latest gnome with the old architecture before the big jump to gnome 3.0 and with all the subsytems (like xorg, pulseaudio, network etc etc) stable enough for desktop users.. I tried both fedora 11 and fedora 12 but they are so buggy in audio , with the nvidia drivers etc etc that I had to switch back to the hated ubuntu distro.

[CSchwangler]

While I understand your pain and that you want a long term support version of Fedora, I think it is not what Fedora is targeted at. I think the intention of Fedora is to provide a showcase for RedHat, which allows them to test new technologies and a LTS releas would contradict that. Additional ressources would be required to maintain that release and it would be kind of rival to their enterprise product.
However, if Fedora is not stable enough for you, why don't you use CentOS. It is basically the RedHat enterprise product with LTS but without the paid support.

[geolab]

why pay money for red hat when all others distro are stable and free? I can understand to pay for support but not for have software that other distro release for free... I'm not asking for the perfect distro, but just a decent one for everyday use and Fedora is not good at it in the last year. . it's not a distro, it's a showcase of future development.. and it's getting worse in terms of usability and stability at every release...

[vallimar]

You clearly don't know what Fedora is about.. if you want that kind of stability, there are many other options. It's silly to suggest Fedora change to match something else when it's you that should be switching to something that meets your needs. Get one of the LTS ubuntu's, or try CentOS if you don't want to pay for RHEL. Or pick any of the dozens to hundreds of other distros whose intended purpose is not to be a revolving showcase of current and advancing linux technologies.

[bodhi.zazen]

I think the problem is with your definition of "Stable and Free". Obviously Fedora is stable enough for some people and to be honest I do not see that it has any more difficulty with stability then say Ubuntu. If you look at the Ubuntu forums, problems with sound is one of the most common posts right now. With my nvidia cards I do not have any more or less problems with the Nvidia drivers, which are maintained by Nvidia and not Fedora or Ubuntu anyways.

If you find Fedora does not fit your needs, based on your post, I suggest Centos, Debian stable, Ubuntu 8.04, or Slackware.

If you with to stay with Fedora, perhaps it would help if you were to start a support thread ?

[Dies]

...
Fedora is not good at it in the last year. . it's not a distro, it's a showcase of future development.. and it's getting worse in terms of usability and stability at every release...

Yup, I agree completely. But I would go back further than a year.

To be fair though, Fedora 12 is an improvement in my opinion. But still not stable enough for me, not for everyday use anyways... :(

It's a shame too, I like Red Hat based distros, I would use CentOS but the packages are so old that by the time I got it up to a usable state it would probably resemble the mess that is Fedora anyways so why bother. :D

[CSchwangler]

why pay money for red hat when all others distro are stable and free? I can understand to pay for support but not for have software that other distro release for free... I'm not asking for the perfect distro, but just a decent one for everyday use and Fedora is not good at it in the last year. . it's not a distro, it's a showcase of future development.. and it's getting worse in terms of usability and stability at every release...

You don't pay money for the RedHat distribution, you pay money for their support. If you don't need/want their support, go for CentOS. Its the same packages that RedHat uses except that any traces of the RedHat trademark are removed.

I disagree with your point that Fedora is getting worse with every release. For me, the opposite is true. I think its getting more stable with the last couple of releases and F12 runs without any problem on my machine.

[hephasteus]

No need. 10 was very good very stable. Linux is jumping to a far off point. Kernel mode setting. Using GPU's as processors sucking the whole thing into the kernel. You can either hang with Core 10 or go along for the bumpy ride. I don't think this things going to settle down till 14. If you don't want to be hassled stick to 10.

[Jaguar07]

No need. 10 was very good very stable. Linux is jumping to a far off point. Kernel mode setting. Using GPU's as processors sucking the whole thing into the kernel. You can either hang with Core 10 or go along for the bumpy ride. I don't think this things going to settle down till 14. If you don't want to be hassled stick to 10.

For me 11 was/is one of the most stable releases I've ever used. I've been using Fedora, Fedora Core and Red Hat for over 15 years. Fedora 12 is finally ready for prime time. I doubt I will get the 210 day uptime on a LAMPs I did with F11 but that's the breaks. You can choose stability and reliability with CentOS or you can have the glory and the power with Fedora. That or you can go for the eye candy with Ubuntu.

I prefer Fedora. Your mileage SHOULD vary.

[jvillain]

Along those lines 12 was probably the most stable non-server release I have used. My servers are so stripped down that I seldom have problems with them no matter what I throw at them. The only time I run into problems is when I go wading into rawhide but that is the whole point of rawhide. For me the release versions of Fedora are so stable I find them boring.

Thats just my take.

[Simian Man]

I find that 12 is the best, most stable Fedora release ever. I think that every release of every distro has bugs. It's just a matter of how many of those affect your hardware and/or usage patterns. And I use Fedora because it's kept very up to date - unlike most other distros out there.

[AdamW]

"I think that every release of every distro has bugs. It's just a matter of how many of those affect your hardware and/or usage patterns."

Exactly right. If you ask any random group of forum members for any distro, they will all resoundingly agree that some releases of their distribution were awesome and stable, and some of the others were awful and sucked. What they won't agree on, ever, is which were which. :)

[mh3rn4nd3z3]

This last comment by AdamW reminds me of these:

If debugging is the process of removing bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in.

My software never has bugs. It just develops random features.

[Bender_Unit#21]

I would LOVE to see just one thing, modular KDE in Fedora, i've been using Arch/openSUSE earlier and there you don't have to install whole package group if you just want one particular application. Why buy a cow if you just want a cup of milk right :)??

Also i am not sure if it is because of that but Fedora is VERY memory hungry (though i can't say it is a problem for me because i got 8GB of memory but it may be a problem for others? ).

Is there any chance of introducing modular KDE in fedora?? I understand it is easier and less time consuming when building whole package group but it is annoying when i just want one application and it pulls the whole group of apps i DO NOT need. I know i could compile it myself but i just have more important things to do than to compile it by myself.

[Jaguar07]

There are many KDE packages that I might want one or even two apps from but have the whole group required to get those one or two apps for. I'm also a bit irritated with dependencies that show that I need an MTA to use an application that has no such requirement. Or dependencies that show a MySQL-server requirement for an app that can use something else. Another one is the OpenOffice.org apps requiring the OpenJDK or old 1.5 Java when I have Sun Java 1.6.0_18 installed. Gets a bit frustrating.

[Bender_Unit#21]

Unfortunatelly i talked with KDE developers on #fedora-kde and they are not going to do this since it would be too big problem for them, (repo download process flawed/too complicated? to introduce such change?), of course they look from THEIR point of view that it would be hard/too much work/etc. and as a point they say that there was a poll about that and that the majority didn't want the apps split up.
I remember from old times that linux is all about modularity right??
Then why bundle so much crap i don't use/need.

I would move back to Arch or openSUSE BUT i like Fedora for it's security (SELinux), openSUSE is a no go for me after they sold to M$ and try to introduce patent encumbered mono crap, Arch was a pretty nice but it's a pain in the ass to have selinux working in there :(

[mh3rn4nd3z3]

I would LOVE to see just one thing, modular KDE in Fedora, i've been using Arch/openSUSE earlier and there you don't have to install whole package group if you just want one particular application. Why buy a cow if you just want a cup of milk right :)??
.

I'm going back to Arch Linux or Gentoo soon :cool:

[AdamW]

I would LOVE to see just one thing, modular KDE in Fedora, i've been using Arch/openSUSE earlier and there you don't have to install whole package group if you just want one particular application. Why buy a cow if you just want a cup of milk right :)??


Fedora has a policy of staying as close to upstream projects as possible - see http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackageMaintainers/WhyUpstream for the reasons why. It would not be appropriate under this policy to chop up KDE into little bits.

[Bender_Unit#21]

Under the policy it wouldn't be appropriate but it would be great for the end users (the opposite for developers although other distros do it so it seems it's not so hard to achieve or is it :)?

[AdamW]

In the short term, maybe. In the long term, no. The reasons in the policy aren't just relevant to developers.