Stability and Release Cycles - An Idea

Kevin Kofler kevin.kofler at chello.at
Mon Dec 22 18:47:03 UTC 2008


Les Mikesell wrote:
> I don't think you understand the concept of alpha/beta phases.  Alpha is
> when a developer 'thinks' something is ready.  Beta continues until this
> has been proven correct.

That's what updates-testing is for.

> There is no value in testing something that is just going to have new
> wild and crazy changes before you get any use out of the tested copy.

You could keep a local mirror with the updates you're testing, then update
the non-test machine(s) to those, not to the very latest. But I don't see
that as being necessary at all.

>> And what were you doing running FC6 very near the end of its life? You
>> should have upgraded to F7 or F8 by then. :-)
> 
> I'm not completely insane.

;-)

Upgrading is the sane thing to do when your distro is nearing EOL...

> Now even that is gone and I don't see a trend heading anywhere toward a
> stable version that would make a reasonable RHEL6 either.

F10 is pretty stable, as is F9 with the current updates, the problems it had
when it was released are all fixed now. Rumors are that RHEL6 will be based
on F11, this should work out pretty well.

> Good luck with that.  I hope you keep copies of your work on the spare
> machines.  Or your work isn't important enough that downtime matters.

I do keep backup copies of my work (I have 3 copies of most stuff: on my
desktop, on my laptop and on a university machine or some other server),
it's always a sane thing to do no matter what OS you run. But I never had
Fedora destroy my data.

> Also, think about how much time you spend re-installing and grooming
> fedora. I used to think that if you only had to do something to a
> machine once a year it was a good thing.  But, as soon as you manage
> more than a few hundred of them, that turns into having to deal with
> some problem every day and getting nothing else done.

Don't worry, I'm not planning to buy 97 additional machines any time
soon. ;-) I'm not adminning a large installation.

        Kevin Kofler




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