You are of course free to do this if you choose, but Fedora is a package managed system. Doing this you lose a number of benefits of a package management system.
For me the most important benefit is OS independent software, especially web browser.
For me the most important benefit is OS independent software, especially web browser. -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Debates like this expose a weakness in packaging philosophy. The current philosophy seems to be all packages are equal. An update to Open/Libre Office is handled the same as an update to the kernel or glibc. It seems like in mainstream Linux distros your options often are:
1) Wait 6 months for new software. 2) Download / build from source and deal with system integration issues. 3) Download unofficial package.
The reality is that not all packages are equal, and some could/should be pushed faster than others. Firefox and Libreoffice are good examples of this. If parallel installs of Xulrunner are needed, in my opinion, so be it.
Ultimately, packaging philosophy could hold back/prevent mainstream (i.e. non power user) Linux adoption. These users will ask themselves "I can get the latest version well integrated on release day using Windows or Mac, why not Linux?". Ubuntu is moving (once again in my opinion) in the correct direction with its combination of LTS (a stable base) and PPAs for more rapid updates of things like Firefox. The fact that they have LTS tagging also prevents the question of "How many versions to support?". The answer is clear: two, the current LTS and the latest 6 month release.
Finally, with packaging cycles changing might it be time to revisit the decision to merge Fedora Core and Extras? Creating separate repos with different goals might be wise.
I apologize for the long rant.
On 06/27/2011 07:52 PM, Mark Bidewell wrote
Debates like this expose a weakness in packaging philosophy. The current philosophy seems to be all packages are equal.
It really isn't
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Critical_path_package
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Updates_Policy
Rahul
On Mon, 2011-06-27 at 10:22 -0400, Mark Bidewell wrote:
I apologize for the long rant.
Well...trying to think of a diplomatic way to put it, but I'd say the long rant is fine, but we've had the same discussion at least five times over the last couple of years and your post didn't seem to bring any new arguments, so I'm not sure we're going to reach any conclusions we didn't reach the last five times :) We _did_ come out with the personal repos - http://repos.fedorapeople.org/ - which can be used quite easily to do backports.
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Adam Williamson -
Lucas -
Mark Bidewell -
Rahul Sundaram