[CentOS] Re: Will CentOS 6's upstream be based on Fedora 10?

[Scott Silva]

on 7-30-2008 4:29 PM Les Mikesell spake the following:
> Scott Silva wrote:
>>>
>>> I have always wanted a distro in-between long term support and 
>>> cutting edge.
>>>
>>> Say one that uses the kernel/command line part of a long term distro 
>>> and the gui and gui apps of a cutting edge distro (maybe 1 back from 
>>> the cutting edge).
>>>
>>> An kernel upgrade cycle of say 3 years, but a GUI that stays current 
>>> within it's release.
>>
>> Current within the Distro's release, or current to the GUI's release?
>> Cutting edge is sort of the middle. On both sides you have bleeding 
>> edge and Enterprise stable. Then on the bottom you have stale and locked
> 
> At least with Centos getting a fairly current firefox and OOo in the 5.2 
> update things aren't quite as stale on the desktop as usual.
> 
>> I think the API's and ABI's change radically in the two mainstream 
>> GUI's (Gnome and KDE). It would be a juggling act to balance their 
>> upgrades and the re-compile and re-download of all the binaries that 
>> hook into them. I think Gentoo is much closer to this then anything 
>> else, but if you leave a system too long, they can get so out of sync 
>> that they won't upgrade through portage anymore. But Gentoo upgrades 
>> the kernel along with everything else.
> 
> Couldn't it be mostly-automated to build a just slightly outdated fedora 
> desktop (everything that depends on the KDE or GNOME libs) on top of an 
> otherwise stock Centos?
> 
You can get a fairly current KDE from their repo, but it will change base a 
lot. There are surprisingly a lot of packages in RHEL and CentOS that are 
linked to libraries that Gnome and KDE change with new versions. So you would 
either need a bunch of compat-xxx rpms or new binaries of all that. It could 
be automated, but you better have a good buildserver and someone to test what 
comes out. And as always, you would get to keep any broken pieces. GTK libs, 
gnome libs, kde libs all change often. And newer versions are usually tested 
with newer versions of compilers and base libs, so you would need to update 
those too. I have seen bugs appear just with new versions of the GCC compiler, 
and they can be hard to track down.

It would be a project for more than one person, and it would be a busy one for 
all of them. I see how much work the CentOS team puts in, and they are 
starting from a fairly complete and tested base. Just imagine if they went in 
and "poked the bear with a stick" a lot.

If you have the time, give it a try. But be prepared for a lot of work and 
little help. Long nights and thankless users that whine at everything (it only 
takes 1 or 2 to get your blood boiling, I've seen it happen here). No free 
time and no money to pay for hosting bills. Angry wives and children that feel 
neglected. Bad breath... Warts... Flatulence...   The list goes on and on ;-P



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