Proposal: Rolling Release

[Michael Schwendt]

On Tue, 11 Nov 2008 10:06:56 -0600, Les Mikesell wrote:

> All I can say is that with Ubuntu you can pick vendor drivers and Sun 
> Java 1.5 from the software management tool and you almost never have to 
> worry about conflicts among packages from the different repositories. 

"Almost never"? How many external repositories have you tried? Dependency
problems and inter-repository issues are not specific to Fedora or RPM.
Experimental upgrades/replacements/alternatives, orphans, and poorly
maintained packages do exist for other dists, too, not just in 3rd
party repos. Just talk to open-minded (!) Debian/Ubuntu followers.

And what has this to do with your earlier claim anyway? (the "horribly
fractured 3rd party situation")

> > There simply is not enough man-power
> > to spend additional time on coordinating between 3rd party packagers.
> 
> That's something that potential users have to take into account when 
> choosing the distro they are going run.

"Potential users" don't and can't know about such things. It's nothing
that plays a role in dist advertising yet. 3rd party repos are
_independent_. They are not controlled by the Fedora Project. They may
choose to follow project guidelines and contribute inside the project, but
that still may be too limiting. Sure, you can have a repo like Livna say they
are a pure add-ons repo for Fedora, but other repos might not do anything
like that since they want to upgrade/replace or conflict with Fedora
packages whenever they feel that's necessary. There are no guarantees
especially not with regard to mixing multiple repos, who probably don't
even know eachother.

Users switch dists out of many different reasons anyway. Some stick with a
dist for several years till they run into a problem that isn't solved
quickly (perhaps with exotical hardware). It's not unusual for users to
return after some time or to try another dist. It's also not unusual for
users to gain experience and notice that a lot of dists have many problems
in common (in particular everywhere where the same upstream software is
used unmodified), sometimes only with a delay due to a different release
cycle.

> Which make the effort that Ubuntu (with the help of the underlying 
> debian packages) makes particularly outstanding. 

Is a distribution war your only interest? I don't share your view.
So, no comment on packaging quality or repo quality here.
"the help of the underlying debian packages" is a funny phrase, btw.

> The point of using any 
> distribution instead of rolling your own linux from scratch is that 
> others theoretically have worked together to make sure that everything 
> is compatible.

And the context of this sentence is what?

> If a distro doesn't arrange for this kind of cooperation 
> it can't provide what users need and expect.

Apples and oranges. A discussion thread on this level only scratches
the surface. It won't be fruitful at all. Not enough substance.