FC2 Issues

[Mark Eggers]

Periodically there are people who scream about a particular Fedora Core
release.  I simply do not understand this on several levels.

The objectives are clearly stated on the web site.

http://fedora.redhat.com/about/objectives.html

Given the above, I would have to be willing to undertake the following
in order to run a production system on Fedora platforms.

1) Be willing to live with a short lifespan.  The current lifespan of a
particular Fedora Core environment looks to be about 1 year.

2) Be willing to actively participate in the improvement of the Fedora
Core environment.  This could be done by submitting DETAILED bug
reports, suggested code enhancements, test comparisons, etc.

3) Be willing to exist in a more or less continuous technology refresh
environment.  Personally, I get concerned if I don't see something that
should be updated on my system at least three times per week.

>From a production standpoint, here is the path that I take to maintain,
evaluate, and upgrade production, development, and test systems.

a) Read the release notes and determine if there are business,
technical, or cultural requirements for the change.

b) Compare the bug reports to my environment to see what the potential
risks are.

c) Plan for the potential risks.  This includes making backups, various
boot disks, and a back out plan should all else fail.

d) Plan for the change.

e) Execute the change on a test system that has the appropriate
configuration.

f) Evaluate the results of the change.

g) Make a go / no go decision.

h) Execute the roll out.

In other words, this is standard industry practice for infrastructure
configuration management and technology refresh.  If you don't do this
for your production environment, be prepared to get bit, and get bit
hard.

One of the great aspects of open source software is the OPEN part. 
Information is readily available concerning the advantages and the
pitfalls of various releases.  Critical fixes are usually rapid and of
high quality.

This openness comes at a price.  It requires the consumer to be a bit
more knowledgeable about the environment.  If you want to delegate
responsibility for this knowledge to someone else, then you should go
with a commercially supported distribution with service level agreements
AND penalty clauses.

However, I happen to enjoy taking responsibility for this knowledge. 
That's one of the reasons I've chosen to run on open source software.  I
also want to run in an environment that operates within well-defined
publicly available standards.

I do not want to be held captive to another corporation's business,
technical, or cultural directions.  I do not want to delegate authority
for critical business functions to someone else.

I do not have the purchasing power to influence large software or
hardware corporations.  I doubt that anyone has the purchasing power to
influence the biggest players.

Make your choices, and the play by the rules.  One of the great aspects
of open source software is that you can help set the rules.  Along with
the capability comes the responsibility.

As for Fedora Core 2, yes there are some issues.  I did create a rescue
disk for my Windows/2000 Professional environment before moving from
Fedora Core 1 to Fedora Core 2.  I did back up my information.  I did
document everything.

My initial problems included some USB challenges (I have a USB keyboard
and a USB mouse) and some acpm issues (monitor will go blank even if I'm
using the system).  I still don't have a NVidia driver, since the closed
source driver does not currently work with 4K kernel stacks.  The
improved memory management and performance is well worth the lack of
hardware-accelerated graphics.

All of those issues were noted in the bug reports.  I chose to live with
occasionally  having reboot twice in order to pick up both my keyboard
and mouse.  The current kernel seems to have solved that problem.  I
chose to live without an accelerated graphics driver since playing games
is not a prime purpose of this machine.

In general, I am very pleased with the Fedora Core 2 environment.  I run
4 databases (mysql, postgres, hsqlb, and xindice), an apache web server,
tomcat servlet container, jonas 4.1, subversion, and one of several
development environments.  I do this while listening to music, writing
mail using evolution (which is a pig), having three different browsers
open (Firefox, Konqueror, IE 6.0 under CrossOver standard) on a 2 GHz
Dell 8200 with 768 MB of memory and a 60 GB hard disk (Linux side).

Yes, I abuse systems.  However, that's the nature of what I do.

Sorry for the rant . . . . In short:

1) Live with the rules
-- or --
2) Work to change the rules
-- or --
3) Or go play in another sandbox

Anything else is just a recipe for high blood pressure, anger, and other
general unpleasantness.

/mde/
just my two cents . . . .