Meta-cycles: 2-3 year major cycles for free software? (Here Be Dragons)

Posted Apr 21, 2009 20:35 UTC (Tue) by allesfresser (guest, #216)
Parent article: Meta-cycles: 2-3 year major cycles for free software? (Here Be Dragons)

I just want to point out a great idea that was posted as a comment to Mark's article: when doing a long-term release like an Ubuntu LTS, your marketing copy should compare the new release to the previous LTS, not the previous incremental release (e.g., compare 10.04 to 8.04, not to 9.10.) Permalink for comment.

Meta-cycles: 2-3 year major cycles for free software? (Here Be Dragons)

Posted Apr 21, 2009 21:48 UTC (Tue) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (14 responses)

Red Hat and I assume Novell do this already. Since the long term variants of Fedora and SUSE are branded differently, the material associated with them compare it to their equivalent previous versions. It is a very obvious thing to do.

Meta-cycles: 2-3 year major cycles for free software? (Here Be Dragons)

Posted Apr 22, 2009 17:09 UTC (Wed) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link] (13 responses)

Well, Fedora/RedHat makes an admin *choose* between "too cavalier to use in a server and still sleep well at night" and "so old and creaky that packages he needs aren't even available anymore". It is highly annoying, but necessary for Red Hat's purposes.

One *really* nice thing about Ubuntu is that when you put a new server into operation, you have the option of using LTS, or if your server hardware is too new to be supported by that, you can use whatever the current release is. The current release is still not intended to be as experimental as Fedora. And has long enough support to get you to the next LTS without an upgrade. Conversely, if you are on LTS and there is some pressing reason to temporarily move to the regular releases to get some feature you need, you can easily do that to, in a supported way.

It's a major advantage. And I'm surprised it doesn't get more attention.

For my customers, Fedora is "too hot", and RHEL is "too cold". But Ubuntu is usually "just right". And if it's not, I can adjust it at any time.

And in that case, it makes sense to make separate comparisons. But it is not immediately obvious that is makes sense to. The extra flexibility that Ubuntu gives to the administrator makes for slightly different strategy when publishing information about it.

Meta-cycles: 2-3 year major cycles for free software? (Here Be Dragons)

Posted Apr 23, 2009 2:36 UTC (Thu) by me@jasonclinton.com (subscriber, #52701) [Link] (12 responses)

FUD. When can we get a moderation system? I'd love to -5 this fanboy.

Meta-cycles: 2-3 year major cycles for free software? (Here Be Dragons)

Posted Apr 23, 2009 19:37 UTC (Thu) by malor (guest, #2973) [Link] (11 responses)

He's right -- RHEL is sort of like Debian Stable. It's exceptionally stable, but has old software. There are times when you want stuff that's both newer and auto-updating, so compiling it yourself isn't always an option. In Debian, you can update to Testing or Unstable, but the long release cycles tend to make very large changes between versions, particularly late in a Testing cycle. RHEL, from what I can see (I mostly use Debian) pretty much just goes straight to Fedora (the unstable branch), so there's no interim Testing step. I've used Debian's Testing on production servers in the past, and it's been pretty good, but there's no way I'd use Unstable. Likewise, I suspect trying to run your enterprise database on Fedora is going to be a Bad Idea.

Sbergman is pointing out that, because of the fast release cycles on Ubuntu, going from an LTS to a normal release is a much smaller jump than RHEL->Fedora, and then you can convert it back to the next LTS that ships quite easily, without having to do all that much. This is sort of like Stable->Testing on Debian, but the LTS releases seem to be more frequent, so you end up back at long term stability faster. And the interim stable distros seem prety good... they're just not supported as long as the LTS versions are. (caveat: I haven't used Ubuntu on production servers: I'm assuming they retain most of the Debian quality. This could be wrong.)

I'm not sure you can easily convert a Fedora system back to RHEL... is that even possible? And can you keep yourself patched during the months or years you're running the less stable flavor, without impacting your ability to move to the next long-term version?

BTW, your 'fanboy!' comment is absolutely useless on its own, and is itself deserving of the killfile. There is no signal in your noise. Tell us why he's wrong, include actual useful data, not just that you don't like what he has to say.

Meta-cycles: 2-3 year major cycles for free software? (Here Be Dragons)

Posted Apr 23, 2009 20:16 UTC (Thu) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link] (1 responses)

"""
I'm not sure you can easily convert a Fedora system back to RHEL... is that even possible?
"""

It is not supported. But it is possible. It's amusing that the comment above yours accuses me of being a fanboy, as I have extensive experience with all the distros I mentioned. Probably a lot more than he has. After 12 years experience mostly with Red Hat-centric distros, I am admittedly gravitating strongly toward Ubuntu because the advantages are just too substantial for me, as an admin, to ignore.

There are only certain windows of time in which you can convert from Fedora to RHEL/CentOS. The Fedora release that the RHEL version is based upon must be *later* than the version of Fedora you are running. So you have to hang back on your Fedora upgrades and wait the 18-24+ months that it might take for that window to open. (Or even longer, as the RHEL6 cycle demonstrates.)

To make matters more complicated, Fedora releases are dropped like a hot potato 13 months after their initial release. (I've long suspected that the Fedora devs would like to trim that to 0 months if they could only figure out a way to get away with it.) So you *have* to upgrade to maintain security support. RHEL releases lag the Fedora release they are based upon by several months. So it can be a *really* short window of time in which you can both maintain security support *and* be able to do the side-grade to RHEL or CentOS. There is often no time to give the RHEL or CentOS a chance to shake themselves out. You are trusting that they are ready and stable upon release. Which with RHEL/CentOS is usually a pretty good bet.

During that fleeting window of time, you can do a regular RHEL/CentOS upgrade with a boot prompt option whose name eludes me right now. Something like "distro=any". Then when it looks for existing installations to upgrade, it will recognize the Fedora installation and offer to upgrade it.

After the upgrade is complete, you can run:

rpm -qa --last

which shows all the packages in order by their installation dates. Scrutinize the older packages to see if they might be detritus from the old install which can be removed with "rpm -e <packagename>".

And then handle all the little odd lot upgrade problems that are hard to predict. It's usually not too bad.

Meta-cycles: 2-3 year major cycles for free software? (Here Be Dragons)

Posted Apr 23, 2009 21:48 UTC (Thu) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link]

BTW, the boot string isn't distro=any, as I guessed, above. It is:

linux upgrade any

This was relatively tricky to find in google, even knowing pretty much what I was looking for. So I figured it was worth a quick reply to myself here.

Meta-cycles: 2-3 year major cycles for free software? (Here Be Dragons)

Posted Apr 23, 2009 20:33 UTC (Thu) by me@jasonclinton.com (subscriber, #52701) [Link] (3 responses)

I was bemoaning the lack of a moderation system; not trying to start a debate with an uninformed, ahistorical lunatic. I suggest that you never visit a city in which there are roaming, homeless, crazy people about; I think you'd not be able to make it down the street without stopping to argue with each of them.

Meta-cycles: 2-3 year major cycles for free software? (Here Be Dragons)

Posted Apr 23, 2009 20:38 UTC (Thu) by jordanb (guest, #45668) [Link] (2 responses)

LWN doesn't really have a slashdotesque culture to require a "moderation system." If you don't like what someone's said, use your words and disagree with them (and it works better if you come up with decent arguments rather than rely on name calling).

Meta-cycles: 2-3 year major cycles for free software? (Here Be Dragons)

Posted Apr 23, 2009 20:46 UTC (Thu) by me@jasonclinton.com (subscriber, #52701) [Link] (1 responses)

> LWN doesn't really have a slashdotesque culture to require a "moderation system."

Apparently it does now.

Meta-cycles: 2-3 year major cycles for free software? (Here Be Dragons)

Posted Apr 24, 2009 6:54 UTC (Fri) by hppnq (guest, #14462) [Link]

Ah, I love the Liar paradox! Thanks!

Re: Meta-cycles: 2-3 year major cycles for free software? (Here Be Dragons)

Posted Apr 23, 2009 21:08 UTC (Thu) by nevyn (guest, #33129) [Link] (4 responses)

RHEL, from what I can see (I mostly use Debian) pretty much just goes straight to Fedora (the unstable branch)

That's the kind of thing that the original reply was talking about. You admit you don't know "much" about RHEL/Fedora/etc., as you use Debian. That's fine, you are entitled to your opinion and feel free to talk about what you like. But then when you make arguments based on the assumption that RHEL is the same as Debian Stable (or, ha, Ubuntu LTS) and Fedora is the same as Debian testing ... I just want to "-1, troll" your entire comment.

Re: Meta-cycles: 2-3 year major cycles for free software? (Here Be Dragons)

Posted Apr 23, 2009 22:13 UTC (Thu) by malor (guest, #2973) [Link]

Well, you could actually, you know, inject some signal and add some facts to your post, instead of just being insulting.

If I'm substantively wrong, I'd be interested to know how. "RHEL = Debian Stable; Fedora = Debian Unstable" both seem to be fair comparisons to me. Do you disagree? If so, why?

Re: Meta-cycles: 2-3 year major cycles for free software? (Here Be Dragons)

Posted Apr 24, 2009 6:12 UTC (Fri) by malor (guest, #2973) [Link] (2 responses)

Oh, you know, I worded the bit you quoted very poorly, and you might have misunderstood my intent. What I meant was that there doesn't seem to be an interim step between RHEL and Fedora; either you're super stable or super bleeding edge, and forced into constant upgrades with fairly frequent breakage.

That's what I meant by 'goes from' -- the spectrum of stable to unstable appears to have only two major entries on the Redhat side of the fence, where there are three on the Debian side. Debian Testing is sort of a middle ground that blends features from both extremes. And then Ubuntu has even more shades of gray. (from other comments here, those shades may tend toward black... most of the comments don't seem to think much of Ubuntu stability. I'll reserve opinion until I've tried it in a large-scale installation.)

I didn't mean that RHEL turns into Fedora or anything silly like that. And I'm not knocking the distro; I used RH from, geeze, some of their earliest releases, on through to the 7.X series, and I know it's good. I've just come to prefer Debian, because it feels more elegant to me, and I'm quite fond of Ubuntu as a desktop.

Re: Meta-cycles: 2-3 year major cycles for free software? (Here Be Dragons)

Posted Apr 24, 2009 17:39 UTC (Fri) by nevyn (guest, #33129) [Link] (1 responses)

Ahh, ok, I see what you were trying to say. So I'll just mildly disagree :)

For instance taking today as a baseline you have (saying this entirely as myself, I do not speak for anyone, etc. etc.):

RHEL-2.1: Basically in high security errata only mode (for another couple of years, or so, I think)
RHEL-3: Needs to be "significant" secrutiy/bug
RHEL-4: Some new HW/etc. stuff makes it, basically between 3 and 5.
RHEL-5: Stable, but still gets significant changes (no new python, but new firefox, lots of kernel backports, etc. etc.). This will probably change significantly after 5.4, as RHEL-6 will be the new "head".
Fedora-9: Not as many updates anymore, goes EOL in a few months
Fedora-10: Still getting "firehose" updates anymore, slowing down now that F-11 is soon
Fedora-11-beta: Still beta for a bit, will be getting "firehose" updates for over 6 months (assuming historical Fedora norms.). But even at this point it's more stable than testing, IMO.
Fedora-rawhide: Aka. debian unstable, will probably be "unusable" for the next couple of months now that F-11 has forked and then slowly works toward "testing" as F-12 nears.

Now, from what I've seen of debian it has the changes of maybe RHEL-4 (but was branched at a newer point in time). So saying that with the RHEL/Fedora combination you just have a choice of either RHEL-4 or Fedora rawhide is not true.

Now Ubuntu seems to be much closer to the old RHL model, which is closer to the change level of Fedora-9 but for it's entire lifetime (but probably not directly comparable). And I think that is a nice advantage, in some ways, but if it's economically viable I'm less sure about.

For sure people complain about both the lack of change in even RHEL-5 and the "firehose" of updates in Fedora-10, but almost none of those people are willing to pay money/time to change the available options.

Re: Meta-cycles: 2-3 year major cycles for free software? (Here Be Dragons)

Posted Apr 24, 2009 19:31 UTC (Fri) by malor (guest, #2973) [Link]

Thanks for the excellent reply, and sorry for the confusing wording in my original post.

I hadn't realized that the continuum was so broad; that's what I get for not tracking RH for so long. It looks like my analogy was, indeed, over-simplified.

From your explanation, I'd say Debian Stable is probably a little behind RHEL5 for content, but has an update policy similar to RHEL3 -- they don't change anything unless it's security- or stability-related. Testing is somewhere between F9 and F10, and Unstable is somewhere between F10 and F11. The nice thing about using Testing is that it becomes Stable like magic, as long as you track by name ('lenny', say, instead of 'testing').

The great-something-grandparent post was pointing out that this same feature applies in Ubuntu -- you can move to a less stable release if you need extra features, and then end up back at a good level of stability before too long, with minimal effort, just by running your updates regularly. The 'granularity', as it were, is very good. It's a nice setup, at least in theory, but it really doesn't sound like others are terribly impressed with their release quality.