I'll say it again: Fedora Core is beta-quality at best [LWN.net]

I'll say it again: Fedora Core is beta-quality at best

Posted Nov 22, 2006 7:13 UTC (Wed) by pr1268 (guest, #24648)
Parent article: Notes from the leading edge

I said it two weeks ago: Fedora Core is beta-quality software. My post was meant to actually defend Fedora, a Linux distribution which I can't stand.

Someone disagreed with a couple of the generalizations I made (That's fine - I try to respect others' facts and opinions), but I stand behind my convictions (and smirky comment) that Fedora users need to wear "Beta Tester" in scarlet letters written across their shirts. ;-)

Fedora's efforts to make open-source software more stable and reliable whilst pushing the envelope of current software technology incur the penalty of making its users' lives miserable (if I'm to understand my editor's remarks above). That being said, I still admire and respect FC's efforts to make the software issues/bugs more visible so as to improve all the FLOSS packages that come together at Fedora.

I'll say it again: Fedora Core is beta-quality at best

Posted Nov 22, 2006 10:31 UTC (Wed) by jonth (guest, #4008) [Link] (5 responses)

Well, compare and contrast with Debian unstable. I've _never_ had an apt/dpkg database get corrupted like this, even with unstable (which I've run daily on my laptop for many years). Packages occasionally break, but the system never gets in a state where you can't re-run apt to pick up fixes.

It's too easy to hide behind "it's beta software, what do you expect?" and anyway, that's not the quality level you expect with beta software. Beta software is expected to work with a few glitches. The sort of thing our editor is seeing is pre-alpha quality, and just smacks of a lack of care.

I agree with Jon - rpm/yum needs some love.

I'll say it again: Fedora Core is beta-quality at best

Posted Nov 22, 2006 10:50 UTC (Wed) by jospoortvliet (guest, #33164) [Link]

i think debian-unstable is very well comparable to Fedora core's final
releases. you should check debian-experimental to get the rawhide
feel... ;-)

anyway, i've been running testing and development packages all my life (i
don't mind an occasional crash) and i can tell you - sure you'll get into
trouble, but it'll be a learning experience. it's mostly fun, and you'll
have what others will have to wait for for another 5 or 6 months ;-)

i now run arch-linux. rolling release, stable, always up-to-date. you
shouldn't be afraid of the commandline, but if you're not, it's a great
distribution... no need for development versions of distributions to keep
up-to-date.

I'll say it again: Fedora Core is beta-quality at best

Posted Nov 23, 2006 8:48 UTC (Thu) by brother_rat (subscriber, #1895) [Link]

Maybe this rumoured "RPM announcement" is they are going to junk the lot and switch to apt/dpkg? ;-)

Now that would be news!

I'll say it again: Fedora Core is beta-quality at best

Posted Nov 25, 2006 23:39 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link] (1 responses)

The sort of thing our editor is seeing is pre-alpha quality

We can't say that. It may well be a bug that is exposed only with a certain combination of environmental factors that don't exist on the developer's system, or even any alpha test system. Beta test is the appropriate way to find out about those things.

It appears to me that it's customary in the open source world to do beta testing where proprietary software developers would normally use alpha testing instead. Sun would spend a lot of money testing Solaris before any user gets access to it, and the users would ultimately pay for that testing in money. You really have to have money to do alpha testing, because it is boring and people do not volunteer for it. So an open source project instead skips the alpha testing and puts the code out for people to try. Consequently, open source beta test code has plenty of bugs compared to proprietary beta test code.

(Clarifying some terminology: alpha testing is simulating use of a product for the sole purpose of finding bugs; beta testing is using a product to do real work, with the immediate goal of getting a job done and a side goal of finding bugs).

I'll say it again: Fedora Core is beta-quality at best

Posted Nov 27, 2006 15:16 UTC (Mon) by jonth (guest, #4008) [Link]

Sorry, I don't buy that - there's an existence proof that we can do better than Fedora-rawhide and that is Debian-unstable.

I can just about buy the idea that Fedora-rawhide is the equivalent of Debian-experimental, but if that's the case, where's Fedora's equivalent of unstable or testing? There doesn't appear to be one. How Fedora approaches stability I really don't know - which lines up with my experiences of Fedora core 3 and 4 at work, where we had a huge number of stability and consistency problems on laptops (Vaios and Thinkpads). As a result of this, we've voted with our feet and moved all our laptops over to Ubuntu (Dapper), with an instant, noticeable improvement in stability.

I'll say it again: Fedora Core is beta-quality at best

Posted Nov 28, 2006 0:53 UTC (Tue) by malor (guest, #2973) [Link]

Many, many years ago, I was running an Unstable box, and something was damaged in an upgrade to perl. This appeared to completely break the package management system. I don't remember exactly what broke, but I was completely stuck and unable to do much of anything. Dpkg seemed to be in some bizarre half-installed state. It wasn't fixable because the broken dpkg wouldn't run, and no other packages could be added or removed because of the broken installation program. I couldn't fall back perl versions without doing it manually. I wasn't particularly good at Linux yet, and this was way more than I could handle. Ended up reinstalling the box... which fortunately wasn't too painful, as it was just a toy workstation anyway. I avoided unstable for a good long while after that. :)

I haven't seen a dead-end like that in all the years since. Unstable is indeed unstable, and it's not at all uncommon to have a broken package for a week or so while some incompatibility gets worked out, but I've never again been jammed into a corner where the package system itself was compromised. There has always been a shovel available to dig me out of holes.

But it did Really and Truly Break one time. :)

Ubuntu blues

Posted Nov 22, 2006 23:40 UTC (Wed) by alspnost (guest, #2763) [Link]

Maybe true, but even Ubuntu has its problems. I recently tried to set it up on a friend's mondo-gaming 64-bit box. Neither Dapper not Edgy would even boot - at all - in either 32 or 64-bit guise, with no clues as to the problem. Fedora 6, on the other hand, just installed and worked without a hitch from the first attempt.

It's all rather strange. I myself have had "issues" with Edgy, whereas Dapper was totally solid. But other people have different experiences. To be honest, my best experience so far was with Gentoo - whenever there was a problem, the forums helped me fix it within minutes. The same is *not* true with Ubuntu, despite the huge user base!