FC3rc5

[Kim Lux]

Thanks for replying. 

Comments below. 

On Fri, 2004-10-29 at 17:44 -0400, Jeff Spaleta wrote:
> On Fri, 29 Oct 2004 15:19:23 -0600, Kim Lux <lux at diesel-research.com> wrote:
> > I'm a bit choked about something: I posted issues to the list for a day
> > and repeatedly was told that the problem was because I UPGRADED from a
> > stable FC2 to FC3T3.  
> 
> Step back a second... take a deep breath. 

OK. 

> Please realise that this is an open community forum. The ability to
> speak and to give suggestions as to resolutions and workarounds is not
> dependant on how knowledge the person giving the suggestions is. Nor
> can it be assumed that anyone making suggestions as to workarounds and
> resolutions on the list, speaks for the maintainer or developer of the
> affected package or for fedora leadership.

Agreed and understood. 

>  As valuable as community
> input on problems can be, the same community can be exceedingly
> unvaluable as well. Real fixes concerning upgrade issues come from
> developers and maintainers via bug reports and interacting with the
> package maintainers and developers via bugzilla. Take the comments in
> this list with a grain of salt, and focus more on the comments from
> developers in bugzilla about your upgrade and install bugs.

I learned that today.  Yesterday and today were my first days on the
list.  First of all, I enjoyed myself.  I used to be involved in large
Windows development efforts and this kind of reminded me of that. 

Secondly, I kind of thought, rightly or wrongly, mostly wrongly, that
speaking to the group was like speaking to the developers.  It kind of
is, but on an issue like the sound problem or missing open office file
associations, it isn't.  I should have been reporting those to
bugzilla. 

> I will point you to the fedora core list of objectives, for
> reassurance that smooth upgrades from core release to core release is
> considered important as a matter of fedora core policy. While I
> personally avoid doing upgrades and I personally prefer fresh
> installs, you shouldn't take my personal preference nor any other
> community member's personal preference as a statement of upgrade
> policy by fedora core. It's important to be able to seperate random
> community input from project policy.

I too prefer fresh installs and now that I've got USB drives working so
well (which allow me to easily back up /home)  I probably will do more
fresh installs.  However, when one has a computer loaded with data and
configs from several years, one is reluctant to abandon all that with a
fresh install.  That is the situation with one of our server
computers.  

I also agree that good upgrades should be the goal. 

Here is the rub: several times over the last few days people have come
on to the site and asked if they could update from FC2 to FC3T3 and then
to FC3 Final without "repercussions".  Nobody has come out and said
"yes".  I question why nobody is saying yes ?  Are we not sure that our
upgrade process replaces everything ?  Are we not sure how it handles
already installed config files ?  Shouldn't an upgrade be an upgrade no
matter where it starts from ?

I guess my whole thing is that I think the developers and the group
should take an issue seriously, whether it comes from a fresh install or
from an upgrade. 

Anyway:

a) I enjoyed myself here today (I won't be a regular participant here,
btw.)  I'm only here until kdevelop works...

b) I hope I've contributed.

c) I think FC3 is going to be an awesome product.  There are many good
things that I found while using it over the last week. 

d) I think the open source software effort is in great hands. 





> 
> -jef
>