Dave Ihnat wrote:
The problem is that the only way to get current applications which are
evolving rapidly and have the cool stuff you want is to get them bundled
with a wildly experimental kernel and device drivers that will regularly
die underneath them.
Ah...well, as has been noted, you can selectively accept or reject updates.
And remember--*everything* can be built from source. If there's a particular
package you want to have the latest'n'greatest, and they're not moving it
fast enough to suit in the test and repository cycle, you _can_ just build
that one for yourself.
Is that something you'd suggest that your clients do for their desktops?
Or are you recommending Linux at all?
Because of that, I won't run Fedora as a server; I don't want to have
to monitor my server closely to make sure wonky updates don't bring it
down, and I don't want to be forced to upgrade to the next--possibly
very wonky-- release as they push the older version of Fedora out.
OTOH, it's on my dual-boot laptop, and I enjoy poking at the new stuff.
Yes, there's a need for experimental things and a sometimes-booted
partition is a suitable place for them. But that's not going to replace
Windows in the mainstream.
I realize that fedora isn't the distribution I wish it were, but I think
everyone would be better off it there were a way to have Red Hat style
administration, a stable kernel and device drivers, and up to date apps
all in one distribution.
Frankly, this was the argument that was held back when RedHat stopped
their normal distribution and went to Fedora.
Their old model clearly couldn't be sustained - they were backporting
every critical fix into every previous release in non-behavior changing
ways.
They deliberately pushed
it right to the bleedin' edge, while pulling back and offering "stable"
business releases. Unfortunately, their business offerings are too
expensive for the very small business or hobbyist. Where simple pricing
was a differentiator before, the current supported price is so close
to that of Windows that you have to find some other differentiator,
such as FOSS applications that meet the client's needs.
And of course, the free clones are also high quality, but that comes
with the open source territory. But, I just think there is a product
missing for desktop use although regardless of the quality I don't think
I'd want to be in the paid Linux desktop support business.
I think there's probably a niched for something between Fedora and RHE
Server or Workstation. But RedHat already *had* something that fit
there and clearly decided it didn't fit their business model. Ok, so
that means if I need something cheaper than RHE, and more stable than
Fedora, I go to CentOS, or SuSE, or Ubuntu, or--well, pick your distro.
I think it will be really interesting when distros built on OpenSolaris
with a userland similar to Linux distros have some traction.
http://www.nexenta.org looks promising and zfs would be fun to play
with. At least maybe they will be able to keep the kernel working.
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
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