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Fedora and long term supportFedora and long term supportPosted Oct 17, 2008 21:57 UTC (Fri) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639)In reply to: Fedora and long term support by sbergman27 Parent article: Fedora and long term support It is (unofficially) possible to "side-grade" between them. But to go from Fedora to RHEL/CentOS you can only do it by hanging back (as much as you can without sliding out of the security update window) on your Fedora upgrades until a window opens in which the new RHEL/CentOS packages are newer than your current Fedora packages and you can do it. And that right there is the challenge to rise to. Can this be handled better? Is there the community interest to make room for a better way to do that transition? Can things be more structured to create better understood transition windows? Quite frankly is a totally unexplored area of discussion. -jef
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Fedora and long term support Posted Oct 17, 2008 22:54 UTC (Fri) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link]
"""
Quite frankly is a totally unexplored area of discussion. """
And I'm quite glad you are exploring it. But I'm not sure that simply providing a more serviceable corridor between Fedora and RHEL will get you the same thing. With the Ubuntu upgrade path you have a continuous thread you can climb, in a release by release fashion, or in a skip one/take one/skip three/take one fashion. But each release is intended to be production ready. The support schedule is what varies. With Fedora/RHEL you have a somewhat larger gap. Fedora (as a technology showcase) can say "Hey, Look! We've just dumped cool new Feature X into the distro!" (crash). Meanwhile, RHEL/CentOS are chugging along with very serviceable and reliable, yet somewhat behind the the curve, offerings.
Some of us would like choices that a little more in between.
Fedora and long term support Posted Oct 17, 2008 23:03 UTC (Fri) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
I'd love a pony! A purple pony!
There's what people want, and there there is what is sustainable...I'm only interested in exploring ideas which have a potentially sustainable future. I am not interested in figuring out how to make sure everyone gets the pony they really want. If your version of a purple pony happens to be something in-between, but ultimately unsustainable, then I guess you'll be as disappointed as I am every morning when I don't find my purple pony standing in my front yard.
-jef
Fedora and long term support Posted Oct 17, 2008 23:12 UTC (Fri) by kragil (subscriber, #34373) [Link]
You tried to avoid the subject (and kinda failed if I may say so).
Fedora cannot be deployed in production from my experience. When it is released it is way too bleeding edge ( buggy ) and after 3 to 5 months when most bugs have been squashed it has only 10 to 8 months support.
That is way too fast for almost everybody!
Ubuntu on the other hand really accels in this scenario.
That was the point.
Fedora and long term support Posted Oct 18, 2008 0:01 UTC (Sat) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link]
"""
You tried to avoid the subject (and kinda failed if I may say so). """
Indeed, he did. That's what people do when they've promised purple ponies in the past... and then some other distro actually delivers them.
Fedora and long term support Posted Oct 18, 2008 18:22 UTC (Sat) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link]
One issue that I see a lot of is "Ubuntu is great! Everyone should use Ubuntu!!! It has a long term support plan etc etc." If one asks them "Do you pay for that Support?" I get back 90% of the time "Oh no.. they give it away for free!" which is nice, but only a short time outlook. A capitalistic/social commons needs a larger percentage of the people paying for its upkeep to maintain itself.
Unless you are paying Canonical, and convincing other Ubuntu users to pay for LTS.. you will not see it last. The reason LTS exists is because Shuttleworth is paying for people to work on fixing old crap. When Shuttleworth runs out of money (which depending on how much he had invested in the Stock Market/Icelandic banks could be pretty quick).. the free ride is over and people will have to find someone else to fix the stuff because most developers don't like trying to figure out if some 5 year old program can be fixed against some new style of attack.
So my main statement is if you are for Ubuntu. PAY FOR IT if you want to PROMOTE IT so it will be there 10 years from now.
Fedora and long term support Posted Oct 19, 2008 1:29 UTC (Sun) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link]
"""
When Shuttleworth runs out of money (which depending on how much he had invested in the Stock Market/Icelandic banks could be pretty quick).. """
While I certainly support the idea of investing in a distro one believes in, I don't appreciate the campaign of spreading Fear, Uncertain, and Doubt against Ubuntu. Regarding your specific concern, let me remind you that Mark's fortune was built upon knowing what to invest in and *when to get out*. He sold Thawte in December 1999. The dot-com bubble burst 3 months later.
I would like to see Canonical turn a profit. But the situation is not so dire as you make it out to be. If the worst should happen, and the paparazzi photos of Mark in line at the soup kitchen begin appearing in the supermarket tabloids (BTW, did you know that Britney is having Elvis' baby?) then the Ubuntu formula *will* be replicated. Because Ubuntu has clearly demonstrated a formula that attracts users better than the formulas used by other distros. Whether it is a formula that other distros want to follow is another matter. For example, it would be a terrible fit for Fedora. The Fedora devs want to present the bleeding edge of Linux development. They would never be happy cultivating a large user base. Some in the Fedora community seem to *think* that they would. But that is, in my opinion, a case of "be careful what you wish for".
Ubuntu attracts many users Posted Oct 19, 2008 3:49 UTC (Sun) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458) [Link] So what? If the result isn't a self-sustainable business model, it is of no real importance. AFAIU, Ubuntu has yet to show a profit, even with its massive user base coupled with few full-time developers.
Ubuntu attracts many users Posted Oct 19, 2008 4:52 UTC (Sun) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link]
"""
even with its massive user base """
And the even more massive "sour grapes" phenomenon it has generated among fans of the less popular distros.
"""
Spoken like a true FOSS devotee.
Ubuntu attracts many users Posted Oct 19, 2008 17:44 UTC (Sun) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458) [Link] """ If the result isn't a self-sustainable business model, it is of no real importance """ Some way of paying for build servers, distribution, bug handling, ... has to be found. Last but not least somebody will have to cough up the paychecks for a few key people. If all that is just "provided by $MECENAS, until his patience runs out", it is not a sustainable model.
Ubuntu attracts many users Posted Oct 19, 2008 20:45 UTC (Sun) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link]
"""
it is not a sustainable model. """
I get the impression that the FOSS community (or is it the RedHat/Fedora community?) is really reaching here. Who pays those bills for Debian? I guess Debian is "unsustainable". And has been for the last 15 years. Yes, Red Hat has found a way to make money... lots of it... from FOSS. I applaud them. And I am pretty much in the Red Hat camp. Used RedHat Linux from 4.2 on, 1997, use CentOS today, yadda, yadda, yadda... But Ubuntu is an impressive new force which is causing people to sit up and take notice. I wonder why we are so resistant to it? Could it be that we hate it when our friends become successful?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fb1uytt7zaM
Ubuntu attracts many users Posted Oct 20, 2008 10:35 UTC (Mon) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]
Debian pays its bills. There's no reaching here, Debian's model involves large numbers of volunteers. We know it works because - voila, Debian. But it's also clear that this model doesn't produce Ubuntu, it produces Debian. Which is nice, if you like that sort of thing.
But you can't say "I will take this distro's resources, and assert that it could be combined with this other distro's philosophy and produce this third distro's product" because there's no reason to believe that works.
The existence of Ubuntu doesn't prove that Debian style volunteers could produce a Fedora alternative but with long term support, any more than the existence of oil-rich Saudi Arabia proves that desperately poor Ethiopia could become lush green New Zealand.
Maybe that's not a great analogy, but hopefully it makes my point.
Ubuntu attracts many users Posted Oct 20, 2008 16:20 UTC (Mon) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link]
Either Debian is the Rock of Gibraltar or it is not. I think we can consider Debian to be reasonably permanent. Ubuntu, standing on the shoulders of Debian might be considered permanent in the way that, say, the Hawaiian islands are permanent. Sure, they might fall below the waves someday. But no one worries about visiting there or moving there. My analogy fails at the point that it does fall below the waves. Because Ubuntu has revitalized the concept basing distros upon Debian. Debian, due to Ubuntu, has regained its position as a substantial force in the Linux world. If Ubuntu were to fail, a new Debian-based distro would take its place. I am probably making myself look like a Debian fanboy. And I am not. I rather dislike Debian. I'm a Red Hat/CentOS/Fedora guy! But I like what Ubuntu has done with it. And now the world has seen what can be done with Debian. That genie cannot easily be put back into the bottle.
Shareware? Posted Oct 20, 2008 8:00 UTC (Mon) by michaeljt (subscriber, #39183) [Link]
That sounds a bit like shareware to me. While I like the idea of it, I would not feel happy depending on voluntary contributions to run a software business, since they are something that can come and go. For a business model, I prefer the idea of selling something that people would not have if they didn't pay for it. (Of course, free software has shown often enough by now that it can be sustainable even when it isn't a sustainable business model).
Fedora and long term support Posted Oct 17, 2008 23:57 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
> Some of us would like choices that a little more in between.
Well Debian gets close to that somewhat.
As you know there are three main branches of Debian at any one time.. Stable, Testing, and Unstable.
With Debian's package management system is fairly flexible when dealing with those sorts of things. You can optionally configure 'apt-pinning' which gives different weights for different branches.
For example you can configure apt-get to always pull packages from Testing, but if they don't exist in Testing apt-get will pull them from Unstable.
If you configure Stable + Testing + Unstable in your system you can give the greatest weight to Testing. This way you can avoid a lot of the churn that comes into play when using Unstable. That way if you want to use OpenOffice.org 3, for example, it's avialable for Unstable, but not testing. So you can pull that specific package down and give it priority.
This sort of thing is what I do to get buy with Debian. My work system uses testing and my home systems use unstable. I'll use approx (a package proxy) to cache packages so that I don't waste bandwidth on copying down multiple copies of the same packages.
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The major suckage about Testing, however, is that directly after a release it's mostly useless. Unless your involved in development your far better off tracking stable for some time, after a release, before switching up.
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Now if you want to track 'Stable' and backport packages it usually takes a bit more effort.
For doing that your better of just leaving your apt-get stuff configured to use stable only for binary pakcages, but track testing or unstable for source packages. Also tracking backports.org is a good idea.
This way you can recompile packages from source specifically for stable. Almost all packages should backport themselves with little to no effort. Sometimes you have to recompile some dependences, but that's not usually much.
This is because if you pull binary packages from Testing then it has the tendency pull many more dependences then it actually needs. So you end up with a hybrid testing/unstable/stable system, which defeats the whole point of running stable.
But by recompiling packages you get the ability to benefit from stable systems, but get the newer versions of software you need for your production system.
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This sort of approach is largely unsuccessfull with Ubuntu, unfortunately. This is because Ubuntu is much less disciplined about packages and backwards compatability. The only reason it works as well as it does in Debian is just through brute force developer hours.
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However even if you use pure Unstable system you won't be able to keep up with Fedora. Fedora's a developer's playground and has the cutting edge features before any other system.
Debian benefits from this hugely. If it wasn't for Fedora being cutting edge and thrashing out bugs and doing all that sort of work.. that work would fall to Debian which would consume massive amounts of resources and manpower. I don't think Debian, as a orginization, would be able to cope with what Fedora does.
Without Fedora (and Ubuntu) Debian would be much more of a mess to deal with.
(and visa versa.. without Debian working on multiple arches and making sure that all the diverse software options worked with one another cleanly (for example: With Debian I can equaly choose between using Sendmail, Exim, or Postfix without breaking stuff badly.. and I can choose equaly between KDE, Gnome, LXDE, or XFCE, and even others. Everything 'just works', mostly.) then Fedora and others would be worse off)
Debian mix and match, long term support Posted Oct 19, 2008 0:02 UTC (Sun) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458) [Link] That is a lot of work for the user of such a mongrel... and the idea of using a distribution is precisely to avoid such labor-intensive setups. Besides, if you want rock-solid stability, you won't get any guarantee for such a mix-and-match setup. On the distribution side, keeping stuff backward compatible (in a fashion) for who knows how long is a resource drain that I'd prefer see spent on moving forward.
Debian mix and match, long term support Posted Oct 19, 2008 20:51 UTC (Sun) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
Beleive me.. Maintaining a working 'testing' distribution is much much much easier then maintaining a latest Fedora setup.
The way things work the packages are designed to work like this. In fact doing what I described works better then trying to be a 'pure' testing user. If you 'pin' packages so that you tell the OS to prefer 'testing' over 'unstable' but allow you to install 'unstable' packages then you avoid a lot of pitfalls that go along with package management.
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And back porting newer packages from testing to stable, by recompiling packages from source packages allows you to use a stable distribution, but selectively upgrade the specific peices of software you need that may be too outdated for what you need. For example: if your tying to run a PHP website you downloaded off the net, but the mysql PHP packages from Debian stable are not new enough then it's easy to selectively upgrade those specific packages you need.
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Basically: If you think this sort of thing is very hard to run and maintain then you have not done it.
Fedora and long term support Posted Oct 19, 2008 2:49 UTC (Sun) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link]
"""
As you know there are three main branches of Debian at any one time.. Stable, Testing, and Unstable. """
Yes. The Debian Shell Game.
Dialog:
"Debian's old and moldy compared to Distro X".
"No! It's not! It's cutting edge! Use Testing!"
"I couldn't get 'Testing' to install."
"Then try 'Unstable'!"
"OK. Unstable installed, but it has problems 'A', 'B', and 'C'."
"Well, I've just checked and I don't see a bug report from you. Why did you not complete your assignment?"
"I wasn't really thinking of it as an assignment. It's just that everyone was telling me how great Debian was and stuff.
"Well... I still don't see a bug report. You are making me vewwy angwy!!! Try Unstable NOW and file any bug reports!"
But now Linux has trashed my computer. I'm having to post from my girlfriend's Vista box. The word "GRUB" is covering my screen and scrolling up fast. I'm starting to get a little agitated myself.
"Well, it's called "Unstable" for a reason! You should have used stable if you wanted stable! Doofus!"
Fedora and long term support Posted Oct 19, 2008 20:53 UTC (Sun) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
> "Well, it's called "Unstable" for a reason! You should have used stable if you wanted stable! Doofus!"
At work I have friends that use Fedora, just because that is what they want to use. The amount of times that he has a non-working box (ie: something he depends on is broken) after a upgrade with Fedora is considerably more often then what I have to deal with on any of my machines.
Fedora and long term support Posted Oct 19, 2008 21:38 UTC (Sun) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link]
"""
At work I have friends that use Fedora, just because that is what they want to use. The amount of times that he has... """
Friend or friends? You are not clear on that point. Yes, Fedora breaks a lot. RHEL and CentOS are substantially more reliable. The Fedora guys do play something of a shell game. Nominally, Fedora is Red Hat's alpha, or beta, or whatever you want to call it. Fedora fans will try to trick you into thinking that Fedora is production ready. After all, they are not the ones who have to deal with the problems.
In general, I prefer CentOS. But if my life depended upon OS reliability, and I could only choose between Debian and Fedora... I'd choose Debian. Without the constraints, I'd choose CentOS.
Fedora and long term support Posted Oct 20, 2008 14:46 UTC (Mon) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]
> ....The amount of times that he has a non-working box (ie: something he depends on is broken) after a upgrade with Fedora is considerably more...
Are you referring to upgrades from Fedora X to Fedora X+1 here, or are you referring to the nightly-ish "download and apply the latest set of updated packages to Fedora X"
From my experience, the latter breaking things is quite rare, usually due to an upstream bug, while the former is more common, but at the same time, is to be expected.
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