new daylight savings time

[Benjamin Franz]

On Fri, 23 Feb 2007, Les Mikesell wrote:
>
> I think it is intelligent to look the expected supported lifetime before 
> installing an OS to see if it matches your intended usage.

Agreed. I was stunned to discover a hosting company offering FC1 as their 
Linux platform last year that was completely unaware that FC1 was already 
End of Life. I asked them what they were intending to replace it with and 
they were completely unable to answer, instead assuring me that it was 
still supported. :O

> Fedora has always been very clear about the life cycle of each release.

Clear, yes. Smart, no.

It is clear from watching Google Trends 
<URL:http://www.google.com/trends?q=ubuntu%2C+fedora+%7C+fc6+%7C+fc5+%7C+fc4+%7C+fc3%2C+RHEL+%7C+redhat+%7C+red+hat%2C++suse%2C+debian&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all> 
that Fedora (and even maybe Redhat itself) is dying. Not quickly, but the 
trend is clear and reaches back years now. I *hope* F7 will reverse that, 
but without a willingness to support Fedora for more than 12 to 18 months 
it simply isn't worth the hassle for most people.

Despite Redhat's protestations that Fedora isn't just RHEL beta/technology 
testbed, in practice that is how it is perceived. Each Fedora is supported 
just long enough to 'get stable' and transfer technology to RHEL, and then 
the end user is forced to do an OS upgrade. There just aren't enough 
people who love reving the OS every 12 to 18 months to a newly unstable 
release make that viable.

I'm running FC5/FC6 on my desktops right now: I've been running RH since 
the RH4/5 days (I used Slackware before that back to 1995). But my next 
upgrade will probably not be Fedora but either CentOS5 or Ubuntu7 
(assuming an LTS version is released by then).

If Redhat really wants their technology testbed for RHEL to reach an 
expanding rather than a shrinking audience, they are going to have to bite 
the bullet and provide some method for inexpensive support for at least 
security patches for an extended time ala the old RH boxed sets. I realize 
they have a problem with it cannibalizing RHEL (which is their cash cow), 
but CentOS and Ubuntu are already doing a great job of that right now.

-- 
Benjamin Franz

"It is moronic to predict without first establishing an error rate
  for a prediction and keeping track of one’s past record of accuracy."
                     -- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Fooled By Randomness