[CentOS] Re: Demonizing generic Linux issues as Fedora Core-only issues -- WAS: Hi, Bryan

Tue May 31 17:42:53 UTC 2005
Bryan J. Smith <b.j.smith at ieee.org>

On Fri, 2005-05-27 at 22:37 -0600, Collins Richey wrote:
> I get a chuckle out of this. You may not have actually said that the
> RedHat enterprise releases are better than other distros, but you have
> vigorously sought to prove RedHat totally blameless when confronted by
> the effects of their release choices (inclusions and omissions).

Poor assumption.

If you read back through the thread, you note people using the terms
"broken" or "stupid" or "adopted too early" or other rhetoric.  I merely
tried to explain how things aren't.

> When anyone dares to complain, SLA is offered as a panacea for all
> supposed failings.

By "failings," what do you mean?  That's the problem.

> I find RHEL/CentOS to be a blessing and a curse. It's certainly
> reliable (my desktop system has encountered no significant problems)
> and the CentOS list is a real gem, but what's going to happen when the
> next round of 2-2-2 6-6-6 hits? Actually, it's already underway.

Correct.

> Will there be just as many functions dropped that people know and love and
> cannot relinquish without a lot of extra rework, and what new (only
> partially backwards compatible and perhaps still in their infancy)
> functions will be added that cause real grief and more rework for some
> portion of the community?

As always.  This isn't new in the Red Hat world.  If you don't like the
approach, then don't use RHEL/CentOS -- look for something else.

Even *I* don't deploy RHEL/CentOS or even Fedora for everything.

> One thing that would help would be a roadmap. It shouldn't be
> necessary to pore over change logs to get an idea what is coming.

The roadmap is Fedora Core.  And things change as Red Hat finds things
unmaintainable.

If it doesn't ship in Fedora Core, Red Hat doesn't care about it in
RHEL.  Red Hat only regression tests the included packages with
themselves as well as against popular, binary-only programs.  That's
part of the problem.

And it's _never_ going to change.  It's just impossible to regression
test all sort of 3rd party packages and guarantee SLAs.


-- 
Bryan J. Smith                                     b.j.smith at ieee.org 
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