[CentOS-devel] Is it possible to merge elrepo.org contribute to centos main repository?

Fri Feb 28 13:53:55 UTC 2014
Lamar Owen <lowen at pari.edu>

On 02/26/2014 05:02 PM, Alexander Arlt wrote:
> Actually I followed the discussion you mentioned but I don't really 
> think that a lot of CentOS-/RHEL-User really care about the 
> Desktop-Ramblings. Still, of course, those are just my assumptions. ...

And, in my opinion, that is an incorrect assumption.  I have about an 
even mix of EL desktops and servers, and this machine I'm using right 
now is a CentOS 6.5 laptop, and I'm very happy with it, just adding a 
few  third-party repos (ELrepo, EPEL, and nux-dextop are the top three 
for the desktop experience).  I for one care a lot about the CentOS 
desktop experience.

> I'm not really getting the point of the Stability-thing if you have to
> do so much to turn the cow into a bird. Especially when reading the
> paragraphs above. If stability means your desktop being stable and not
> crashing - remove skype (there are a lot of other reasons for doing this
> besides stability) and be happy. Yet it still will not be 'stable' in
> the sense of enterprise-usage.
>

Stability in this context means keeping essentially the same version of 
core libraries and the kernel across the release lifetime.  It means 
when you do a yum update and the kernel gets updated you don't have to 
go rebuild (or wait for the third-party repo) to rebuild on a completely 
different (ABI-speaking) kernel version than before, or rebuild due to 
some library getting an uprev, etc.  Stability means as the system is 
updated through the entire support lifecycle a program built on the 
initial release should run, without rebuilding, patching, or otherwise 
modifying, on the final release ten years later.  There are a few 
exceptions to that (anything built against xulrunner, for one example), 
but for the most part a single compile run and the program will run from 
now on on that major version as long as it's supported.

It also means, for the enterprise desktop at least, that the UI isn't 
changing, sometimes drastically, every six months, and so help desk 
scripts don't become obsolete before they're out of QA.  I support a 
couple of end users as clients who are running C6 as their _home_ 
desktop right now, and the low rate of change was one of the strong 
selling points.

That is of course a two-edged sword, as I have to tell them that if they 
want something really bleeding edge, like pitivi, they're going to have 
to accept some other major changes.  So far they've chosen to stay 
stable rather than get the latest and greatest (other than Firefox and 
Thunderbird, but the ESR line is pretty good about changing slowly).

We also have a scientific instrument here (the Dedicated Interferometer 
for Rapid Variability (DIRV), which uses our two 26 meter diameter radio 
telescopes together as an interferometer) where the analysis 
workstations are RHEL5, and they're not being used as servers.  I would 
hazard to guess that many if not most of the Scientific Linux installs 
are done for use as workstations and not servers, but I reserve the 
right to be wrong.

Further, not all things that ELrepo puts out is for desktop reasons.  
Same with EPEL.  Nux-dextop..... well, the name tells you the focus, and 
I thank Nux for that repo.