[lug] Old copies of Fedora?

[Kevin Fenzi]

On Thu, 22 Jul 2010 13:48:35 -0600
Davide Del Vento <davide.del.vento at gmail.com> wrote:

> > "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.

Yeah, sorry to hear it. There has been talk of making it longer, but
it's hard to change. 

> > 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:

Yes, it's around 13 months currently. 

> 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!

I'll just say here that I usually update my machines to the new fedora
around release time, it usually takes me a day or two. ;) 
In recent years yum upgrades have just worked for me. No particular
issues at all. 

> 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!!

Sure, understandable. 

> 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).

Right. But IMHO upgrades are getting a good deal more smooth... 

> 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.

Agreed. 

...snip...

> 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.

I doubt there will ever be a LTS version. The release cycles may extend
a bit or otherwise make the lifecycle 18monthsish, but there are just
not enough people willing to do the work for a longer term release,
IMHO. 

kevin
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