[OT]: RH Whoredom [ was Re: OT: I feel vindicated ...]

[A. Khattri]

On Wed, 23 Feb 2005, Chong Yu Meng wrote:

> As for their insane release schedule, I'm not sure if it is such a bad
> thing. Let me explain:
>
> Each release of FC has some new feature or quirk in it.

I found each release to have something broken in it from RH8 onwards.

> FC1 had SELinux,
> FC2 had the 2.6 kernel, FC3 had HAL, just to name a few. Sure, there
> were problems : SELinux didn't work in FC1 initially and the 2.6 kernel
> in FC2 had problems with certain hardware configurations and broke IBM's
> Java (at one time) and FC3's HAL together with the kernel caused lots of
> problems for those of us with Symbios SCSI controllers (is it fixed
> yet?). I'm not calling them features or excusing them, but each new
> technology or feature needs to start somewhere.
>
> By putting these "bleeding edge" features inside each release, lots of
> people have a preview of the technology. SELinux, the 2.6 kernel and HAL
> are some of the BIG changes IMHO that Linux is seeing, so I think we
> should expect problems. But with time and testing by users, these
> features inevitably become stable and usable, and that is a good thing,
> though it comes through pain and frustration.

Yeah but I have thousands of customers to think about - I would never use
FC on production servers... they are not beta testers.

> I run a FC1 server, and Aurora Sparc Linux (similar to FC1) on a Netra
> T1, and I don't even think of upgrading to FC3, because I don't need the
> features in FC3. My notebook is a different story: I'm running FC3 and
> very happy that they put HAL inside, because now I can interface with my
> HP PSC1350 without tweaking CUPS or anything. I'll probably stick with
> FC3 for a while. What I'm saying is : you don't have to upgrade if you
> don't want to.

No you're right we don't have to but if you're an ISP, security is top of
the list and without updates I would worry. Those of us that used RH6 and
RH7 got used to long release cycles with good stability. Then RH8 came out
and had some welcome features, but RH9 came out less than a year after
RH8. And then they announced end-of-life for RH8 a few months later. So,
either you upgrade to keep up with security and bug fixes, or you end up
rolling your own bug fixes (a maintenance quagmire) or you go use
something else. I was pissed off enough to go look at what alternatives
were out there and found something I liked more than RH.

Remember this is all just my opinion - security and maintenance are
important to ME but not necessarily for others.


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