Fedora Core 3 updates - breaking the camels back?

[vinu]

Fedora Core 3 was released yesterday. And there is already 370 MB :eek: worth of updates available for it just one day later. It makes one wonder if the release date could have been a little more well planned....

For example, KDE 3.3.1 was released on October 12th, while FC3's absolute devel freeze was on October 20th and upload to mirror master was on November 5th. Even if the developers couldn't make the November 5th deadline, they could probably have delayed the deadline a little, in order to integrate the new kde 3.3.1 update into the main distro. That would have saved users the trouble of having to download over 200 MB worth of KDE 3.3.1 updates just one day after FC3 was released..... a waste of time and resources (not everyone can afford a fast internet link).

I'm not saying that updates should not occur.... the initial delay in the release of updates for FC1 for a few months just after FC1 was released, had me very worried and even looking for an alternative distro, but since then, to the credit of all the FC developers concerned :D , the availability of prompt updates has not been an issue. I only wish we did not have to download 370 MB worth of updates just a single day after the release of FC3, especially when some of those updates were available well before release date and could have been integrated into the base distro before final release.

Cheers,
Vinu.

[Shadow Skill]

Makes sense to me although I personally don't use KDE so it didn't affect me, I am sure it was a hassle for the many that do..

[Bradlis7]

Thankfully I have cable connection. Even though I do not use KDE, I still have it installed, so I did have to update. It seems kind of unprofessional to me too to have to update it after you get the cd's downloaded and installed.

[crackers]

In case you've forgotten - Fedora is not a "professional" distribution! This is a beta/testbed for the actual RH products.

The base images for the CDs were probably set in stone a couple of weeks ago, so the integration/installation team had plenty of time to work their bugs out (so to speak), while the rest of the packaging teams went on and started working on the update packages. Obviously, the packaging teams found some issues, but the integration/installation team was already "frozen" - so you end up with updates that come out at almost the same time.

RH/Fedora is not a tiny operation and there's lots of moving parts and teams.

[Jman]

The schedule is fixed and does not deviate much except to wait for a really major release. (See the objectives (http://fedora.redhat.com/about/objectives.html). For FC2 it was kernel 2.6 and for FC3 it was probably Gnome 2.8. I can see how KDE is important, but it was not enough to push the whole project back.

Actually, by Oct 11th most of the new features were frozen and it was mostly bugfixes from test3 out. See the schedule (http://fedora.redhat.com/participate/schedule/).

You're right that the size of updates is an issue. A broadband connection is definately preferred.