[CentOS] Re: Contemplating Move -- [OT] Fedora Core

[Mike McCarty]

Bryan J. Smith wrote:

Thank you very much for your kind response.

I'd like to re-iterate that nothing I have posted
is intended to be a criticism of the Fedora Core
Project, or any of the people working on it.

I've found the FC people to be very cordial.
(I've been somewhat active on the FC mail echo.)

However, I'm rather tired of the continual pressure
applied by them to "upgrade" to the next "level".
I'd like a stable platform which doesn't shift around
underneath my development. I'm more interested in
Linux as a tool, than as an object of interest in
and of itself. I'm more interested in using it than
in getting it to work.

> Mike McCarty <mike.mccarty at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> 
>>I am doing contract work, and was requested to install FC2
>>on my machine (last October). Since doing that, I have
>>tentatively concluded that the Fedora Core Project is
>>more or less beta test, and not really suitable for
>>development work. Please anyone correct me if I am wrong.
> 
> 
> First off, understand Fedora Core 2 was a "new version."  It
> was a radical change from Red Hat Linux 8, 9 and Fedora Core
> 1 which made up the previous version.  Fedora Core 3 is far
> more reliable, because it is the next revision of the same
> version as Fedora Core 2.

Actually, my comment applied to the Fedora Core Project, not
to FC2 specifically. The releases take place based on epoch,
and not on stability, and it is definitely considered that
the users are also testers.

> 
> It's like saying Red Hat Linux 7.2 is beta based on only
> using Red Hat Linux 7.0, Red Hat Linux 5.2 is beta based on
> only using Red Hat Linux 5.0, etc...  Revisions meant
> everything in Red Hat Linux, and I now they are gone with
> Fedora Core.

I wouldn't call any of those beta. They are products, not
test versions. I was using the "alpha test is done by the
engineers, beta test is done by the users" distinction.
Some might call it "acceptance test" rather than beta.

I don't want to be a tester, I want to be a user.

> 
> So it's not that you are "wrong," it's more like "you weren't
> warned."  With Fedora Core, they've taken away revisioning,
> so there's just no way to know.


AFAICT, every release of FC is, and is intended to be, a beta
test.

> 
> I purposely did _not_ upgrade to Fedora Core 2 from Fedora
> Core 1 until Fedora Core 3 was almost out, and in some cases,
> I waited on Fedora Core 3.  Same deal now for Fedora Core 4,
> I'm waiting on Fedora Core 5 instead, sticking with Fedora
> Core 3 for now.

I found that FC3 was unable to install on a machine last Sunday.
It apparently is completely unable to deal with a disc which
has an existing partition, and unallocated space. That does
not seem reasonable for an installer.

> 
> It's no different than when people waited for Red Hat Linux
> 5.1, Red Hat Linux 7.1, Red Hat Linux 9 (being the next
> revision after 8), etc...  You almost _never_ run the "first
> .0 revision" of any new 6-month Red Hat release.

That's pretty much been true in the industry. Some of us
remember MSDOS 4.0 and the revision to 4.1 which came out
less than six (6) months later.

> 
> 
>>So I am considering a hop to a more stable environment.
> 
> 
> Fedora Core 3 is typically a "yum upgrade" away.  Just
> install the new "fedora-release" RPM for Fedora Core 3 and
> run "yum upgrade" (not "yum update").  There can be a few
> issues, but for the most part, it works well.

Really? I use this machine for my job, doing software development.
I want something which works, not something that, for the
most part, works. Not a criticism of FC in general, nor of
FC3 in particular.

>>Since CentOS is akin to The Product Produced By A Major
>>Vendor Of Linux Software Who Shall Remain Nameless,
> 
> 
> So is Fedora Core.  Make no mistake, the people paid by Red

I am aware of that. That is the reason I stated it. My
presumption (and it *is* a presumption) is that it would
be much easier to "upgrade" (if that is what it is) from
the Fedora Core Project to RHEL than to some other package.

> Hat who work on Red Hat Enterprise Linux packages _also_
> maintain the _same_ Fedora Core packages.  Red Hat Enterprise
> Linux is just what we get after several revisions of Fedora
> Core, and the focus is far more static when they do.

My point exactly. FC is a sort of pre-QA "release". I'd like
something a little more "post-QA" and also changing much
less frequently. I'd like something which I could run for
a couple of years before feeling an urge to update. If even
then.

> If Red Hat didn't pay people to work on Fedora Core as part
> of their regular function for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, as
> the quality of the former suffers, so would the latter. 
> Because Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the 18-month version,
> based on the 2-3 revisions of the 6-month released Red Hat
> distribution fka Red Hat Linux now Fedora Core.
> 
> Most of the early naysayers on Fedora Core have been silenced
> by the quality of Fedora Core 1 and, even more so, Fedora
> Core 3.  Fedora Core 5 should be an improvement from Fedora
> Core 4, just as Fedora Core 2 was.

We'll see. I am somewhat resistant to "churn". I want a stable
development environment more than I want the latest shinyest
bugs. Not that I claim that FC is buggy. There are some show-
stoppers for me in re. FC4. SELinux is part of it. Also,
the firewall prevents sharing with WinXXX, unless it is
disabled. I prefer not to run without a firewall.

If I want to "play" with a different version, I'll burn Knoppix
or Kanotix and fiddle. But not with my development machine, thanks.

>>I was wondering if the transition might be easier to CentOs
>>rather than, say Debian. (Makes me feel like I'm reading a
>>Harry Potter novel about He Who Shall Not Be Named.)
> 
> 
> Oh, definitely.  I maintain Debian and Gentoo systems, but if
> you're coming from a Red Hat distro, RHEL/CentOS is virtually
> *0* change from RHL/FC.

I had hoped that might be the case. But on the FC echo, I was
warned away from that. I was strongly advised to backup, clean
the disc, and re-install from scratch, or consequences too
terrible to contemplate might happen. Because it's a totally
different thing.

Didn't make sense to me, but anyway...

>>Is there any reasonable hope of an "upgrade" from FC2 to
>>CentOS 4.1 or should/must I backup, install, and restore?
> 
> 
> You'd want to upgrade to FC3 before attempting an upgrade to
> RHEL/CentOS.  The latter are _subsets_ in packages compared
> to the former, so you're going to have issues.

Erm? What do you mean by "issues"?
In what way is CentOS a subset of FC2 or FC3? I didn't do
an "everything" install of FC2. I did include several of the
development packages, and the OpenOffice package, along with
both GNOME and KDE. So far, I've only used GNOME on this machine,
though I have used KDE on a Debian release.

I'd rather not run SELinux at all. I spent a few tens of messages
on why to run SELinux, and the upshot of it was that the answer
was "Because it is there."

I also didn't like the fact that the FC4 install I did on Sunday
(on a machine I built up just for the purpose of experimenting
with upgrading from FC2) put my single disc into a virtual volume
without even asking.

Most of the "extra" features seem not to be something I have
much desire for. The extra security especially is mostly useless
for my desktop which sits behind a router firewall, and nothing
else connected to the "lan" side. I understand the need for
such types of things in servers, especially those with external
connections which are open, but my single-user deskto system
has much more relaxed requirements.

So, what issues do I need to investigate?

Mike
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