Fedora, The best Linux distributions Ever! But...

[Dark_Fire]

Hey there...

I was wondering if someone could answer me a few questions...

I been using Fedora for quite some time now. I'm currently using Fedora 8 and very happy with it. It seems to suite all my needs as a web developer and more! I think that Fedora is one of the best Linux distributions. but...

Now I realized that this forum ain't part of the actual fedora, but I'm sure that there is someone here that can help me.

At present I am very happy with Fedora 8, it has everything I need. So I don't have a huge reason to switch to Fedora 9. Will see when I have enough Internet to download it... :P

But now I heard allot of people talking about a Fredra 10? Are they already working on the next one? Fedora 8 has allot of small problems. Sound that gets screwed due to access rights, etc... Will they ever fix this?

Then updates! Everything is SO out of date.
OpenOffice 2.4 is out. Its on Ubuntu but Fedora seems to be happy with 2.3.
GPhoto2-2.4.1 is out. The old one doesn't support my camera. Where's the update?
Ubuntu runs Clock 2.22.2 While we are on 2.20.3.
We had wine 0.9.58 till yesterday, Ubuntu had 0.9.59.
Now we have wine 1RC3 and Ubuntu has had 1RC4 not long after it was released...
We still run Firefox 2.0.0.14 While Ubuntu installs with FireFox3Beta5.

And the list goes on. This is only to my knowledge, there might be a ton more things that I am just not worried about...

Then for errors, AdobeFlashPlayer seems to crash under Opera. I cant seem to get it to work under Firefox as I can't install firefox3 under wine yet. So I cant get flash to work under Firefox because the proxy server I use only supports HTTP (port 80) connections. Not evin https. So I cant evin complain on bugzilla because it uses HTTPS ONLY! So yea.

The other thing is I had clients over when I showed them my work. This one thing required sound, and guess at what time my sound permissions quit on me... Its one simple line to fix it and if I knew it was it I would have just logged in with root. But there was no time to Google errors and I was in trouble. Thanks to Ubuntu I was saved. How hard wont it be to write a fix for when that happens it simply asks for root password and run “chmod -R a+rwx /dev/snd/” or just give a message that says, permissions not allowed, please use “chmod -R a+rwx /dev/snd/” under root. Because when I Googled this, it seems to be something thats wrong since Fedora 6... Is it really that hard to fix?

Then there is also something I found. When booting since I updated to the xen core, I realized that the text gets screwed up. The boot loads over the xen messages making it look very weird. Its not a major error. Just looks crappy and the “Welcome to Fedora” is hard to read. Makes me feel unwelcome. hehe. (See attached photo's. If someone wants to add this to bugzilla be my guest. I cant do https and last time I tried I paid a fortune! So not again)

Then as I said earlier, im very happy with my current version of Fedora, IF IT WHERE UP TO DATE! So why make a next version? Why keep climbing in numbers? Why don't they just keep the current ones secure and updated?

I really don't want to move to Ubuntu! Its not strong enough! Its like a normal desktop PC. I don't wanne program on that... Then I can almost just as well use Windows... I want to use Fedora, but I'm starting to get fed up with all the errors and late updates etc...
I don't know what else to say... All im asking is, is there a way to stop making “new Fedora versions full of bugs and errors” and make our current versions up to date.

Im really not dissing Fedora. If I didn't like Fedora I would have sit back and laughed at their “out of dateness”. But I don't. I love Fedora and I want everyone to agree. Thats why Im asking how can we change this...

Guess my post is getting long and boring... esp for a 1st post on a forum. Hehe.

Thanks to all you guys who are making this possible. I know it takes hard work to compile a package (esp wine thats going thru allot of rc's now). So to everyone involved in that im not dissing you ether. Its a great job you are doing! But why can Ubuntu and why cant we?

If im talking a bunch of crap please tell me, but im quite curious to see what the rest of you guys think.

Thanks again

[ivancat]

well, if you took a look at other distros you would also notice that they do not get these kind of updates as well.
That's why you have gnome 2.22 in Ubuntu 8.04 and not in 7.something and so on.
So, if your goal is to have the latest software available you may either try to compile yourself (Gentoo) or upgrade to the latest version.

[Dan]

Dark_Fire:

Welcome to the forum.

I offer four thoughts, not all of which are going to be comfortable to live with.

1) This is a user support forum, not the developers list. there are several links in my signature line. I recommend you visit all of them.

2) You tell us you have these concerns, yet will not file a single bugzilla. Please understand, in that single comment you have pretty much torpedoed any and all credibilty you were alloted in the eyes of many of the users here on the forum. You may wish to reconsider your decision.

3) Fedora is NOT recommended for a production environment. It is a rapidly changing product which is generally not suitable for use in an environment where longevity and stability are paramount. Consider Redhat Enterprise Linux, or perhaps CentOS for this role. Bluntly, going into a client interview with a known unresolved issue in the software you are using doesn't look any better than the example given of a client seeing a broken application.

4) By your own comparison, many, if not most, of the issues you refer to here could well be addressed by simply switching to Ubuntu. I personally recommend MINT. If you are not prepared to do some tweaking and fiddling, fedora is just not the best choice. It changes rapidly, and will not follow the same path Ubuntu does.


Dan

[JN4OldSchool]

lol, first the OP complained that the apps are outdated then complains that Fedora advances too fast. This is actually Fedora in a nutshell! The point is Fedora is more interested with the OS itself and not the apps it runs. it is not meant for a well rounded end user experience. That is up to YOU to provide if you choose to use Fedora as the base.

Dan is right, Fedora is NOT for you. Sure, there are things you like about it. But Linux is linux and you can install the SAME exact development tools in Ubuntu as you can Fedora as you can any other Linux. I suggest Gentoo also. It might be tricky to learn, but it sounds like what you want. the OS stays fairly static but since you compile all apps anyway you can keep up with the latest versions.

At any rate, you are ...spitting...in the wrong pot here. You can complain, but it wont do any good. Fedora has a secret agenda all its own and many times we are all left wondering what is going on. Just the way it is.

[A.Serbinski]

Originally Posted by Dark_Fire

At present I am very happy with Fedora 8, it has everything I need. So I don't have a huge reason to switch to Fedora 9. Will see when I have enough Internet to download it... :P

I think that the above line is VERY key for this discussion. I will refer back to this statement as (A).

But now I heard allot of people talking about a Fredra 10? Are they already working on the next one?

Of course. F9 is out, what are the developers going to do if not develop the next version?

Fedora 8 has allot of small problems. Sound that gets screwed due to access rights, etc... Will they ever fix this?

Its fixed. The fix is Fedora 9. See (A).

Then updates! Everything is SO out of date.
OpenOffice 2.4 is out. Its on Ubuntu but Fedora seems to be happy with 2.3.
GPhoto2-2.4.1 is out. The old one doesn't support my camera. Where's the update?
Ubuntu runs Clock 2.22.2 While we are on 2.20.3.
We had wine 0.9.58 till yesterday, Ubuntu had 0.9.59.
Now we have wine 1RC3 and Ubuntu has had 1RC4 not long after it was released...
We still run Firefox 2.0.0.14 While Ubuntu installs with FireFox3Beta5.

I really must stress (A). F8 is NOT CURRENT. You want these updates? You need F9.

And the list goes on. This is only to my knowledge, there might be a ton more things that I am just not worried about...

Then for errors, AdobeFlashPlayer seems to crash under Opera. I cant seem to get it to work under Firefox as I can't install firefox3 under wine yet. So I cant get flash to work under Firefox because the proxy server I use only supports HTTP (port 80) connections. Not evin https. So I cant evin complain on bugzilla because it uses HTTPS ONLY! So yea.

WHY would you install firefox under wine? Use the NATIVE VERSION!! You are aware that flash is available for linux, aren't you? And in F9, you can even use OPEN SOURCE swfdec or gnash!

The other thing is I had clients over when I showed them my work. This one thing required sound, and guess at what time my sound permissions quit on me... Its one simple line to fix it and if I knew it was it I would have just logged in with root. But there was no time to Google errors and I was in trouble. Thanks to Ubuntu I was saved. How hard wont it be to write a fix for when that happens it simply asks for root password and run “chmod -R a+rwx /dev/snd/” or just give a message that says, permissions not allowed, please use “chmod -R a+rwx /dev/snd/” under root. Because when I Googled this, it seems to be something thats wrong since Fedora 6... Is it really that hard to fix?

This problem is specific to F8. EVERY install of F8 that I've seen has had this problem. Its related to pulseaudio. The problem is fixed in F9.

Then there is also something I found. When booting since I updated to the xen core, I realized that the text gets screwed up. The boot loads over the xen messages making it look very weird. Its not a major error. Just looks crappy and the “Welcome to Fedora” is hard to read. Makes me feel unwelcome. hehe. (See attached photo's. If someone wants to add this to bugzilla be my guest. I cant do https and last time I tried I paid a fortune! So not again)

I really don't see any problems there except that the output isn't synchronized.

Then as I said earlier, im very happy with my current version of Fedora, IF IT WHERE UP TO DATE! So why make a next version? Why keep climbing in numbers? Why don't they just keep the current ones secure and updated?

Thats not feasible. You need to look at the bigger picture... DEPENDENCIES! If you want to update package A, it may require an update to package B, which could break package C requiring it to be updated as well, but it also depends on package D, E, and F.

I really don't want to move to Ubuntu! Its not strong enough! Its like a normal desktop PC. I don't wanne program on that... Then I can almost just as well use Windows... I want to use Fedora, but I'm starting to get fed up with all the errors and late updates etc...

THEN UPDATE!

I don't know what else to say... All im asking is, is there a way to stop making “new Fedora versions full of bugs and errors” and make our current versions up to date.

No.

If im talking a bunch of crap please tell me, but im quite curious to see what the rest of you guys think.

Yep.

You have alternatives;
You can go with stable, debugged, and somewhat old-feeling -- that would be RHEL, and your second choice is cutting/bleeding edge, that would be Fedora. There are other distributions, and things in between the two extremes, but thats really what it comes down to. Within a single version, you mainly get MINOR updates and bugfixes. Between versions, you get a major overhaul and a new set of bugs.

The other thing to consider is that the distinction between two versions is not quite as you think....
The difference between F8 and F9 is just in the packages. They can be update to the new versions in the same manner as you go about your weekly (or whatever) yum updates. The difference is that it has to do them ALL at the same time in order to ensure compatibility. There are threads around related to this procedure, so I won't go into the details. I will say though, that its generally not recommended, since broken things (like your sound permissions) may ride through.

[Dark_Fire]

Hehe, *feels stupid now*

Well thanks for not killing me.

"Firefox as I can't install firefox3 under wine yet." I ment YUM, dunno where my head was...

And yes I do understand that Fedora 9 has the newer things, but why cant Fedora 8 be updated to that level? Its just dependencies? Its not like it needs an entire new structure or whatnot. And I doubt OpenOffice or gPhoto2 has that many dependencies that it cant run on Fedora 8...

Why cant the small things (like the sound) be in a simple update for Fedora 8? I agree that all the new things moves to the new versions etc etc... But im sure its not that hard to keep Fedora 8 uptodate with just a few small bug fixes?

I live in South Africa and internet isn't the best here. And if I use a secure connection it can cost me ALLOT of money. So thats why I cant file bugs. I have tried a few times and I ether end up paying more than I can afford living on bread alone for the next few days (SA Internet is really expensive sometimes) or my connection just wont accept it at all.

And downloading Fedora 9 would take me a few weeks, so I still need to ether make time for it or find someone that has it...

Thats why I would enjoy simple updates for simple things... Im not asking for an entire new whatever. im asking for a 0.1 version update on most products... OO2.3 - 2.4...

Am I still talking crap and "torpedoed any and all credibilty".

Thanks again for all your fast replies...

[JN4OldSchool]

Originally Posted by Dark_Fire

Hehe, *feels stupid now*

Well thanks for not killing me.

"Firefox as I can't install firefox3 under wine yet." I ment YUM, dunno where my head was...

And yes I do understand that Fedora 9 has the newer things, but why cant Fedora 8 be updated to that level? Its just dependencies? Its not like it needs an entire new structure or whatnot. And I doubt OpenOffice or gPhoto2 has that many dependencies that it cant run on Fedora 8...

Why cant the small things (like the sound) be in a simple update for Fedora 8? I agree that all the new things moves to the new versions etc etc... But im sure its not that hard to keep Fedora 8 uptodate with just a few small bug fixes?

I live in South Africa and internet isn't the best here. And if I use a secure connection it can cost me ALLOT of money. So thats why I cant file bugs. I have tried a few times and I ether end up paying more than I can afford living on bread alone for the next few days (SA Internet is really expensive sometimes) or my connection just wont accept it at all.

And downloading Fedora 9 would take me a few weeks, so I still need to ether make time for it or find someone that has it...

Thats why I would enjoy simple updates for simple things... Im not asking for an entire new whatever. im asking for a 0.1 version update on most products... OO2.3 - 2.4...

Am I still talking crap and "torpedoed any and all credibilty".

Thanks again for all your fast replies...

I apologize for everyone if we are seeming a little hard, but you need to understand we see these comments a lot and most times the poster will not listen to what we tell them, wanting to instead believe things work like THEY think they should.

Since you mention your internet problem this adds a new dimension to what you are saying. You may need to just be content using older apps if you do not have a good broadband connection. The only alternative would be to freshly install distros as they are released. Most distros prefer to upgrade the distro before they upgrade the individual apps as was mentioned. I think, in your shoes, stability is the key feature. Because of this I will change my recommendation to debian etch. However, be aware that the distro hardly ever updates, but the apps wont either. It is designed for well rounded stability and not the latest and greatest. Without broadband I just fail to see how you are going to keep up with the latest app versions though. Debian could be Fedora's twin sister except that it is based with .deb packages instead of .rpm. This aside though, they feel remarkably alike.

Whatever you decide, I really think Fedora is not going to be the right distro for you.

[Dark_Fire]

I have been happy with Fedora 8 so far. I keep up to date with all my packages, my internet is good enough for that. I also set up my own local repo so I dont download things twice. This helps allot to, esp if I have to format and re-install...

And no hard feelings, you guys attacked with knowledge and well sustained answers. The person wasn't really (well maybe a lil) directly attacked. Thats called ether a debate or just answering a question in a straight forward way.

Ill try and get Fedora 9 and check it out. But I heard Wine doesnt work 100% on that and a few other apps. Thats what I ment on going to Fedora 10. Why dont everyone help in getting all the software to work first. Spending another month or 3 making Fedora 9 stable, instead of focusing on Fedora 10.

But I guess this has already been answered. I just hoped there was a way to update my current fedora instead of getting a new version every time.

I think this should maybe looked into, updating at least the 3 newest versions (7,8 and 9)...

Im a PHP developer so I dont know much about Linux software, but is it really that hard to get these small things working?

But I think most of my questions have been answered.

Is there a way to maybe recommend this? And what is the chances of this actually happening? I doubt im the only one who feels this way...

Speaking of the devil, I just got a few updates :P Not the ones I want but o well... lets see. hehe.

Thanks allot for your replies...

[Dan]

Dark_Fire:

Let me clear up a few things.

1) Fedora is still not the best choice for you. When dealing with limited bandwidth issues, hard copy delivery is a much better idea. See this link. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Distri.../OnlineVendors

Specifically, I do business with this firm, and have never had cause to regret it. http://www.thelinuxstore.ca/ There is an updates DVD available too.

2) You have never been personally attacked here. You presented straight forward problems, asked straight forward questions, and were given straight forward advice and answers.

3) If you need to file a bug report, and find it is not possible or too expensive to do so on your own connection, Starting a thread here on the forum, politely asking for help getting that done, would likely get instant and expert help. Just be sure to give a good explanation of why you can't do it yourself. Simply complaining that you can't ... likely won't get much help. Start a specific thread on the issue, give a ton of details. When preparing the information, follow these guidelines and procedures. http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html You will need to include your real email address. It will be used to file the report and see to it you get feedback on your bugs through the email.

4) Lastly, whereas I may (or may not) agree with JN4's sentiments, it is probably better not to speak for others when apologizing. There be dragons there. Big ones.


Dan

[JN4OldSchool]

Originally Posted by Dark_Fire

I have been happy with Fedora 8 so far. I keep up to date with all my packages, my internet is good enough for that. I also set up my own local repo so I dont download things twice. This helps allot to, esp if I have to format and re-install...

And no hard feelings, you guys attacked with knowledge and well sustained answers. The person wasn't really (well maybe a lil) directly attacked. Thats called ether a debate or just answering a question in a straight forward way.

Ill try and get Fedora 9 and check it out. But I heard Wine doesnt work 100% on that and a few other apps. Thats what I ment on going to Fedora 10. Why dont everyone help in getting all the software to work first. Spending another month or 3 making Fedora 9 stable, instead of focusing on Fedora 10.

Your questions have been answered but you are asking them again. Let me try to explain a little further, you are just not following what Fedora is all about. You might, just for kicks, scroll up to Dan's post and follow the link in his sig concerning the Fedora mission statement. I will say though, that F9 was rushed out. It should have been stabilized much better and many of us feel it was a mistake. Many of us, me included, have installed other distros until F9 can be fixed correctly. Many old timers here have done the same with previous versions, this is the first time I have had to resort to this measure. That is what Fedora is about, pushing the envelope. Period. Stop. It is not designed for what you are intending. I realize that is hard for people to comprehend, but Fedora is not a business, it is not making money, it is not pushing for market share. It is a development platform to advance the state of the packages that surround the Linux kernel and make up the OS commonly known as Linux. Things developed by Fedora (and Novell, debian and others) will be sent downstream in time, as they are tweaked and polished and will end up in the end user distros designed for the average person for whatever niche that particular distro is geared for. The simple fact is Fedora will NEVER be stable, which is what someone alluded to above. Just as the kinks get worked out of one version the corrected packages are added to the next version along with the newer, cutting edge pieces, which brings a whole NEW batch of bugs. This is what Fedora is.

But I guess this has already been answered. I just hoped there was a way to update my current fedora instead of getting a new version every time.

Not like you want to do, no. There is not.

I think this should maybe looked into, updating at least the 3 newest versions (7,8 and 9)...

Im a PHP developer so I dont know much about Linux software, but is it really that hard to get these small things working?

Why should it be looked into? It IS what Fedora does. YOU are using the WRONG distro!!!

But I think most of my questions have been answered.

Yes.

Is there a way to maybe recommend this? And what is the chances of this actually happening? I doubt im the only one who feels this way...

It is like talking to a wall, you can recommend all you like, but no one will listen. YOU are using the WRONG distro. Let me reiterate, Linux is Linux. I am currently using debian Lenny and Linux Mint. These are fine distros that fit perfectly with what I need on an individual basis. They are Linux, and Linux is Linux. I will eventually go back to F9 because I like the fast pace. I enjoy all the things you are complaining about. It keeps me sharp, I like to roll up my sleeves and dig in. But, I also have a business to run and schoolwork to complete. F9 is just too rough at this point. I was unhappy with it and I moved on. I will return!

You are NOT the only one who feels this way. Too many people just do not get it. I blame much on the Fedora developers themselves, who advertise each new release as the next best thing to sliced bread. They make it sound so good, so easy and user friendly and advanced and friendly...But they dont mention the bugs, the problems, the fast pace, the limited ability to upgrade preferring clean installs every six months. They wont mention the 50MB of updates every other day, with many updates seriously breaking things. They dont tell you that you are, in essence, a guinea pig. This is why I blame the developers, for misleading people on what Fedora actually is! But we do NOT want to see Fedora changed!!! YOU have OTHER distros that will do what YOU need them to do.

Speaking of the devil, I just got a few updates :P Not the ones I want but o well... lets see. hehe.

Thanks allot for your replies...

I hope some of what I have said makes sense to you. You will probably find F9 totally unusable at this point. It will come together fast though, within 3 months it will be solid. But in 3 more F10 will be released and it will bring a whole new bunch of bugs with it. Fedora will continue to be at the forefront of Linux development and will continue to pave the way. You will either learn to enjoy Fedora for what it is or you will find another Linux distro that suites you better. Last I checked there were OVER 300 separate Linux distros! Every one just a little different, but every one capable of using any app any other distro can use and doing the same job any other distro can do. Linux is Linux.

edit: Let me clarify point 4 in Dan's last post then. I am sorry that you might think some of us are being harsh. I do not intend MY posts that way, I am simply giving straight forward, honest answers to the questions you are asking. I FEEL the others are doing the same.

[A.Serbinski]

Originally Posted by Dark_Fire

"Firefox as I can't install firefox3 under wine yet." I ment YUM, dunno where my head was...

Thinking of firefox3.... I really don't think you want it.

I'm actually finding F9 to be quite good. F8 was a disaster. There are, however, still some nasty problems. One example is Firefox 3B5. Its a true disaster. If your system is completely unloaded, it's not such a big problem, but if you have any heavy disk activity happening, then every minute or so, firefox forces an fsync(), which causes all the system's buffers to sync to disk. The effect is a freezup that can last upwards of 30 seconds. For this reason, I've switched over to seamonkey for the time being. Seamonkey is more or less equal to FF2.

[Thetargos]

Originally Posted by JN4OldSchool

Fedora has a secret agenda all its own and many times we are all left wondering what is going on. Just the way it is.

Just some comments about this...

There's a not so secret agenda, and it is called the development and contributors channels, i.e, the mailing lists and IRC channels devoted to Fedora's development. Even when there is a LOT of people from Red Hat involved, they are more kin to listen to feedback given (with reasonable and backed up arguments) with regards to what Fedora should include or should avoid. However, seldom any of us can fathom those discussions, and much less frequent such channels of communication. I am a subscriber to some of these lists (mainly the art and Desktop list) which focus more on the development of what we mortal users actually get to see in the distribution and are less focused on getting patches in, code and merging lines and patches, and all that -devel stuff. So in a nutshell, we all can influence on the general direction of Fedora (which, if you haven't noticed, and I'm speaking openly here, not just to JN) has had a bit of a deviation in recent releases, focusing more on Desktop users than server or "lab-rat" users. This shift has been the norm since F7 Moonshine, and that's (ironically) when most of the growing pains actually started. For many of us the last "smooth" Fedora version was FC6 Zod (and I quote that, as it was the case with the usual RHL mind-set). F7 started to focus more on the Desktop and usability and a lot of stuff, but in the process managed to brake even MORE stuff (or so we old timers felt), Werewolf (F8) was an improvement of that, and Sulphur (F9) is also a further refinement. We are not "there" yet, and never will, given the very nature of Fedora (see what JN said about the whole Fedora deal, which is still true).

F10 is already in the planning an already in early stages of "implementation", Rawhide, where all the work gets done for both the next release and possible updates, has already a few commits regarding features that might make it into F10 or be part of both F9 and F8 as updates. Generally while Fedora is very quickly advancing and moving forward, it is very weary of updates, and hence that is the reason why you see some stuff not fully updated on the "current" releases. Traditionally there are no updates for GNOME (for major version changes, at least, so no official update from 2.20 to 2.22, though it is a feasible task to do), nor are there updates for OpenOffice.org with major releases (2.3 to 2.4, for example) and many other components, however most of the time the efforts for getting these updates into the distribution go into the next version of Fedora, in this case F9, if very early after the release of a version of a Fedora, another major release of a program happens, chances are that Fedora will include it for its most "current" distro (F9 in this case), like it was the case back in the early Firefox days, and it will most likely be with Firefox 3, however these are not the norm.

Other distributions (like Ubuntu) may get updates for their older versions of current software, but most of the time, you don't see this happening. In Ubuntu for example, they are not getting as updates the software for 8.04 onto 7.10 or 7.04, they might include some for their LTS releases (Long Term Support), but as a general rule they don't do that... However, on Debian distributions it is possible to carry out an apt-upgrade of the distribution, while Fedora is still in the early implementation of a way to have something like with YUM.. not that it is not possible, however many argue that there are many "residual" files that may and do interfere with performance (and possibly stability) after the upgrade, so there is no way of a clean upgrade regardless of the distribution, except maybe Gentoo, and I'd have my reserves even with it, however measures have been taken to at least try to get an upgrade as clean as possible to Fedora, this technology is debuting in F9, and probably will mature to the point of being actually useful in F10 and beyond.

As always, what I intended to be "just a comment" to a few lines of a post, spawned a huge reply on my part... Maybe I should spend a bit more time organizing my thoughts!

[Dark_Fire]

Thanks to everyone! esp JN4OldSchool...

Just to say, I dont have a problem with the "fast pace" but then according to you Fedora 8 is "old" and it still has its bugs... Some that seem easy to fix...

But yea, I get the entire idea. And thanks so much for helping...

Ill try out some other distro's...

Im currently using Ubuntu and Puppy for my laptop... Someone recommended Gentoo and Mint.

Any other that you think is worth looking in to? Im trying to get Suse 10.3...

Thanks again! You really helped allot

[JN4OldSchool]

Just to comment on the upgrade thing, I did use preupgrade to go from F8 to F9 and considering the number of packages, with many orphans, that I had installed it went remarkably well! But, the very nature of the changes in Fedora make this risky and I dont think I would upgrade more than once, alternating with fresh installs every other release. I completely agree with what Thet says on this subject.

edit: And, to address Thet's quote of what I said: You said it yourself Thet, you mention that the objective of Fedora is changing and leaning more towards a separate, usuable desktop and not a platform for RHEL development. I agree, this is what one side of the Fedora project is saying. This is what I meant when I said I blame the project for advertising this, yet they release F9 with NO 3D capabilities, a broken GDM, a half-baked KDE4 and a FF3 beta that many complain about (though that is the one piece that did NOT give me any problems). Then they forge ahead with F10 at what seems to be an ever quickening pace. Ah, these seem to be drastic extremes to me? Oh, I can understand WHY F9 was done like it was, but I think it was very self-defeating. Just my HO anyway.

[Thetargos]

Interesting to hear about your preupgrade experience, JN. I'm sure that in time it is going to actually be feasible to carry out a full upgrade of a distribution, but the tricky part will (as always) be those pesky details such as user data (user names, passwords, groups, etc, and differentiate those from "system" users and groups), and the hardest of them all: Program preferences and settings, especially true for servers, services or deamon programs... There is simply no simple way to deal with these, and any wrapper you use is prone to failure. Not to mention potential configuration incompatibilities across versions.