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Potato....Potato....Posted May 22, 2005 15:55 UTC (Sun) by kmself (subscriber, #11565)In reply to: Linux Desktop needs less commercialism by micampe Parent article: What the Linux Desktop Needs (OS Views)
Red Hat 6.2 and SuSE 6.4 are supported (more than five years ago, IIRC). Just try installing that on Potato or whatever came before it... Point is that Debian does (and has) offered a transparent upgrade process, while RH and SuSE tend to require a wipe-and-rebuild update. Which is sold as a commercial product. Just ask those who were bit by the 7.x / 8.x / 9.x upgrade / EOL switcheroo. RH burned through a hell of a lot of goodwill with that. Yes, it addresses their (current) business need, but ... While it's quite possible that there are folks still stuck on RH 6.2 (and I've seen recent postings on both support and job boards suggesting just that), it's vastly easier for a Debian-based distro to be kept constantly current. The real point here is that both NoMachine and Red Hat are running into the problem that proprietary interests, at least as dictated by their chosen business model, are not aligned with good software practices. My perspective is Debian (others will point to Gentoo, Slackware, or the BSDs which function similarly), and it's interesting how ~1000 part-time volunteers manage to provide some 18,900+ packages, when a company with dedicated staff can't keep a handful of distros straight. I'd say it's time for NoMachine (and other ISVs) to learn to use the synergy rather than fight it. --
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Potato.... Posted May 22, 2005 20:31 UTC (Sun) by socket (subscriber, #43) [Link] I don't know about RedHat, but in defense of SuSE, my main desktop and laptop were installed with 9.0, upgraded to 9.1, and again to 9.2. I'm about to upgrade to 9.3 in a few hours here, and I'm not expecting problems.
I've yet to have a SuSE upgrade fail (knock on wood).
There's no need for a "wipe and rebuild update" with SuSE. Your examples mainly mention RedHat, please clean that brush before painting SuSE with it.
Potato.... Posted May 23, 2005 1:37 UTC (Mon) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link] > Point is that Debian does (and has) offered a transparent upgrade process, while RH and SuSE tend to require a wipe-and-rebuild update.
My main desktop at home started off as a Red Hat Linux 5.0 machine. Then it went to 5.1, 5.2, 6.0, 6.2, 7.2, 7.3, 9, FC1, FC2 and FC3, all with the upgrade options. Hardware has been changed a few times as well - I even flicked between ext2/ReiserFS/ext3 (cp -xa works great :-). Yes, when packages get upgraded to an incompatible version (in terms of configuration directives), you usually have to adjust you configuration to the new format (e.g. Apache 1.3 to Apache 2.0), but in general things work OK.
Soon, it will be FC4 and I'm not expecting to wipe any data off the machine before doing so. Sure, everything's always backed up, but that a different cattle of fish.
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