[CentOS] Fedora bugs and EOL [was Re: CentOS users: please try and provide feedback on Fedora] Boltron

[hw]

Matthew Miller wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 28, 2017 at 06:13:42PM +0200, hw wrote:
>> What?s the point of doing this with Fedora?  It?s not like bugs
>> were fixed before Fedora is EOL and all reports are forgotten.
>
> Many bugs are fixed in Fedora. Many more bugs are fixed in the
> upstreams. Please remember that Fedora is primarily an *integration*
> project, and the best way to get bugs fixed is for the developers of
> the code in question to be involved. Many Fedora maintainers help
> facilitate this for users, which is awesome, but the sheer number of
> bugs exceeds what even our large contributor community can address.

Contributions are usually not wanted, despite what all projects tell
you.  I have given up trying to make any and keep things to myself
instead.

> I know it sucks when an issue that affects you doesn't get fixed in a
> timely manner, but we really do appreciate reports and it's helpful if
> you can retest and reopen EOL bugs if they do indeed still happen in
> the newer version.

It is discouraging to see bugs closed all the time not because the bugs
are fixed but because Fedora has gone EOL again.  When the policy is to
have bugs fixed upstream, it might be a good idea to have them reported
upstream and to restrict Fedoras bugzilla to bugs actually introduced by
Fedora.  In any case, I have given up reporting bugs a long time ago,
especially with Fedora.

However, I´m seeing the same bugs from years ago still unfixed in Centos.
That refers to libreoffice being unusably slow.  This still doesn´t seem
to be fixed for Fedora, either, because it went EOL --- but I don´t know.

What is the fix for Centos?  There used to be a package you could install
which made libreoffice work at normal speed, and that package seems to
have disappeared.

> Of course, if you _really_ need something fixed and want someone on the
> hook to do it for you, I suggest Red Hat's commercial offering.

I usually end up finding another solution, perhaps fixing the problem
myself, or not having a solution at all.  And for example, I doubt that
RH would be inclined to come up with a CUPS filter that allows to print
files created with lyx directly because it´s not possible to use lyx to
convert them without running a GUI.

>> Now Fedora goes Gentoo, which I moved away from because of exactly
>> what Fedora finally goes for.
>
> This is nothing like Gentoo.

Sure is:  You get to manage your distribution yourself by picking the
versions of packages you figure might work together, which you are
supposed and required to do with Gentoo, especially when you run into
yet another dependency conflict.  Only --- I guess --- you don´t get
the same level of control over the packages as you get with Gentoo
because there aren´t any USE flags.

I understand that the idea is probably to make it so that you don´t
have problems like you can have with Gentoo because the packages are
isolated in such a way that there are no dependency conflicts.  So you
end up trying to figure out for every package which version you want and
which version brings about the minimum overhead you can get away with.
That is not substantially different from what you do with Gentoo in that
you are faced with having to find answers for questions you know you
shouldn´t need to ask in the first place.

In case I really need a particular version of some software, nothing
really prevents me from installing it myself.  It´s rare enough that
this happens.  In my case, that´s once in 30 years --- twice if you
count the perl version in Centos being too old, but that can be worked
around.

Are you sure that all the added complexity and implicitly giving up a
stable platform by providing a mess of package versions is worth it?  How
are the plans about dealing with bug reports, say, for squid 2.7, for
those who need that version for a feature which hasn´t been included in
current versions yet?  Just wait a bit until the distribution goes EOL?
Is RH going to fix them once someone has bought their support?