[lug] Old copies of Fedora?

[Davide Del Vento]

> "Long term", same definition, but there is no Fedora LTS. Never has been.

I think nobody is complaining about "broken promises" from Fedora. The
complaints from many people (including myself) is that they had to
give up a distribution they really liked (namely Fedora), because the
support window is absolutely too short.

> Support window is 18 months
My understanding is that it's 13 months, not 18:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/LifeCycle namely 1 month after the
release of 2 newer ones. If it had been 18 month, I'd be probably
still using Fedora. 13 months might be a lot for you or for the Fedora
maintainers, but it's not for many users (including myself). Consider
the following:

1) a release comes out, say Fedora 10
- you might install it right away, but I usually have to wait several
weeks before finding the time, actually do it, possibly solving open
issues, migrating the old data, etc. Replicate that on 5 machines. If
I am done in 2 months I consider that really quick, 3 months is a fair
case, sometimes I was late and it took 4 or more!

2) the next release comes out, say Fedora 11
- given the comments on the previous point, I don't even consider it,
in the worst case I completed my work just 2 months ago and I'm
supposed to restart? NO WAY! I have some work to do, I cannot spend my
whole life just installing!!

3) the next release comes out, say Fedora 12
- now, after a year, I consider it, but I have to rush: I have only
one month for my all 5 machines. Impossible, as you can imagine from
what I wrote in 1).

Conclusion: I gave up on Fedora. I don't blame Fedora, their policies
or the maintainers. I'm only sad that I had to left such a good
distribution for such a (dumb) reason, and I think the same is true
for others.

RHEL or CentOS are practically useless to me, since they are always so
outdated that I don't have the needed packages needed for my work.

On the other hand, Ubuntu LTS worked fine for me, great compromise
between "new packages" (actually leading edge for about 1 year from
the release - after that only security, no other updates).
Unfortunately, Ubuntu recently decided to chase Mac UI, and to do
other useless stuff, instead on concentrating on their strengths, so I
won't go with them anymore.

If Fedora comes out with a LTS, I will give them another try,
otherwise my next distro (when Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy is close to expiring)
will be Debian testing or sidux.

Bye.
;Dav