[lug] RedHat Improvement Suggestions

[Tom Tromey]

>>>>> "Rob" == Riggs, Rob <RRiggs at doubleclick.net> writes:

Rob> I think that most production sites have gotten into the habit
Rob> (since RH5.2) to not upgrade production servers until the .2
Rob> release.

Yes.  I do this just for my home machine (I work on it, so I guess
that makes it a production box.  Weird).

Rob> 1. Open-source software development progresses very rapidly, and
Rob> there is little respect for backwards compatibility. If Red Hat
Rob> waits too long to adopt newer versions they will be hopelessly
Rob> behind.

This reminded me of something I forgot to mention in my last (already
long) email -- there's a certain catch-22 that Red Hat (and other
system integrators) face.  On the one hand, if you update all the
packages, it creates difficulty for users because everything is
changing all the time.  On the other hand, if you choose not to update
then you get complaints from users because the package that they care
about hasn't been updated.

In neither case here are the users being unreasonable.

To me this seems like an unsolveable problem, just because of the
distributed nature of Linux development.  A company like Sun or
Microsoft can exert a lot of control over their OS releases.  That's
because they control every single piece; nothing escapes without their
approval.  For a Linux distributor, life is different.  Everybody
knows if you didn't update some package.

Tom