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Posted Jul 28, 2007 8:46 UTC (Sat) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091)
In reply to: Taking more bait? by dowdle
Parent article: Fedora's mid-life crisis

Your message reads like a lot of excuses about why Fedora upgrades do not work and why it is so hard to do. But it sidesteps the real issue, which is that in Debian and in Ubuntu it works, so it can be done both by volunteers and by paid professionals. And Ubuntu doesn't have long release cycles. And Debian has major updates.

Sure, it is not a trivial problem, and every time I upgrade my debian-based machines I am amazed that it works. And it is probably a lot of work. We already know that. But it works, while in Fedora people are complaining about it. To me it looks like poor engineering, and it reflects badly on Red Hat.

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Bait taken

Posted Aug 2, 2007 7:38 UTC (Thu) by yeti-dn (guest, #46560) [Link]

> in Debian and in Ubuntu it works

I'm sorry, this is just propaganda. I have upgraded between Fedora releases with yum update many times, and it always worked, possibly with a few packages requiring manual handling. Whereas when I upgraded Ubuntu, it was one-click, proceeded smoothly -- and the system did not boot afterwards. So, as everything, it works for someone, sometimes.

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Posted Aug 2, 2007 8:38 UTC (Thu) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link]

It is not just propaganda; at least dowdle said above:

The Fedora project has chosen to make yum based distro upgrades a low priority.

And that does not happen in Debian land. Of course it will have flaws, but if it does not work, it is considered a serious bug.

Maybe that is not the official position anyway, and that would be nice. I don't know, I have never installed or upgraded Fedora or RH.

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Posted Aug 2, 2007 14:33 UTC (Thu) by dowdle (subscriber, #659) [Link]

man_ls,

I am not am not an official Fedora representative... just a user and community member since like... Red Hat 3.

Just ran across a posting by Kevin Fenzi on the Fedora People site where he talks about his recent experiences upgrading three machines from FC6 to F7 via yum... so I thought I'd pop back here and post it and I see that there have been a couple of additional comments added since I last checked.

Yeah, I considered mentioned the fact that (according to one source I read a while ago) the failure rate for one Ubuntu upgrade was 40%... but I didn't previously mention it for two reasons:

1) I didn't feel like hunting down the article I read

2) It was from release before last I think

3) Unlike you, I don't get pleasure from ripping on things

4) Since you've been in the Ubuntu/Debian community, I'm sure you were familiar with it already... and I didn't want to have to listen to your reason it failed... because it is a past release anyway... and who cares... they've done better since and will continue to do so

You seem to think that if Fedora doesn't recommend yum based upgrades that it is a major flaw... and say that the Fedora community is clammering for it. Hmmm, I'm like... a member of the Fedora community and I really haven't heard a lot of clammering. I've considered doing yum based upgrades (because it is possible) but the last few releases, I've not bothered... because doing a fresh install is a lot quicker and easier for me (can't speak for others).

Oh, almost forgot... here's Kevin's posting about his recent upgrading via yum:

http://www.tummy.com/journals/entries/kevin_20070801_113809

Whoopie. Who cares... some people do like to upgrade via yum.

I do think it is rude of you to invade this topic with your negative message. I do NOT go into Ubuntu related stories and talk bad about it... but there seems to be a pattern where Ubuntu people invade Fedora topics and post anti-Fedora stuff. Oh well, I'll get over it.

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Posted Aug 2, 2007 15:24 UTC (Thu) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link]

Sorry if I have bothered you, I can assure you that it was not my intention in the least. I don't expect anything at all from any distribution that I may or may not use; I don't even pay for them, so I am grateful for what I receive in any case.

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Posted Aug 3, 2007 1:32 UTC (Fri) by dkite (guest, #4577) [Link]

Thank you for exposing the Ubuntu propaganda. I have a metric
called 'mean time to command prompt' when installing or upgrading a
distro. Ubuntu was second to Gentoo.

Suse was quite good, although the end result was quite heavy. And the rpm
management was glacial. I didn't try Redhat or Fedora.

I'm not suggesting that others have not had easy or flawless upgrades. I
consider myself outside of the Ubuntu user profile. Obviously, because
they wouldn't have released it if my experience was common.

Derek