Andrew Wyatt wrote:
First, I think a rolling release Fedora is a fantastic idea.
I'm
certain that it's possible, since I've been pulling packages from 15,
16, and Rawhide downstream to Fuduntu
You can make your fork of Fedora roll all you want, but please leave us in
peace!
which still has a lot of 14 left at it's core with much success.
Yikes! Are you SURE your fork is not full of unfixed security holes?
Some potential reasons why it would be a good idea.. A lot of us
don't
like to risk a major upgrade every 6 months to a year, or reinstall. We
can always save a dump of rpms, and not format /home but still, that's a
lot of unnecessary work. If you aren't in a position to do a full
backup (right or wrong) it becomes even more of a challenge.
You don't need a backup to do an upgrade. Sure, it's recommended, but an
upgrade actually does not attack your data in any way. (A reinstall does if
exercised poorly. But IMHO upgrades are the better option anyway. I
personally like the direct yum method.)
It's also very convenient to upgrade to Firefox 9 for example
without
having to go to Remi, or spend hours upgrading everything.
Firefox 9 was also pushed as an update for Fedora 15, which was the oldest
Fedora release supported at the time of its release.
(It's time to get used to the fact that Fedora 14 is DEAD. If you're still
shipping Fedora 14 packages to your users, YOU are responsible for
backporting all the relevant security fixes!)
If you were interested in going forward with a rolling release
model,
your community is large enough that it doesn't have to be your core
product. It could though be the foundation for your core product.
… which would mean older packages in our stable releases, because they'd
first have to go through the rolling release, whereas currently we branch
the stable releases directly from Rawhide.
It also neglects the fact that it's actually MORE work to prepare a major
migration for a rolling release than to prepare it for a new release, where
users are prepared for having to manually deal with migration issues and
where they can decide to hold off upgrading until the warts are fixed. (And
that's assuming that the migration issues can be solved in a way which makes
it safe to push such a change as a routine update at all. IMHO, things like
GNOME 3 won't ever qualify.) If such troublesome migrations didn't exist,
you wouldn't still ship "a lot of 14" in your fork! So it'd be entirely
counterproductive to require the changes in the rolling release first, and
it'd hold back the progress of our regular releases.
Rawhide IMHO is "rolling", but it's also very unstable,
as you all well
know.
And I think this cannot be "fixed".
As for the comments about users upset that they suddenly get GNOME 3
via
a rolling upgrade, that's a communications issue and also what spins and
remixes are for.
So it's fine if I magically morph your Rolls Royce into a Trabant after
putting some fine print on some web site "communicating" the change? ^^
In case you don't understand the comparison:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_Motor_Cars
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trabant
That is my $.02. I really hope to see Fedora go this route, but if
Fedora decides to stick to the current release model (which is already
excellent) those that want an RPM based rolling release are welcome to
come help out at Fuduntu. :D
Good luck! ^^
Kevin Kofler