I am seeing a LOT of confusion about what Alpha, Beta and Release levels. Several people saw the world GOLD and thought that it meant this was the final release.. other people saw Alpha Release Candidate and got the same impression. Some of this may be user education and some of this is our naming conventions. I don't know how to deal with the naming conventions so leave that bikeshed for someone else to paint. Here is my view of what the release levels mean to me. It probably doesn't follow the official guideline but it helps me figure out where and what to do with it. Alpha -- Is not a reliable OS for production or for long term development purposes. In the old parlance, will eat kittens and laugh when told not to. It is meant for testing only in order to get people to find the obvious bugs and such. Use on spare hardware or hardware that you have made a complete backup before and then can reinstall afterwords. Upgrades from Alpha to any other release may work or they may choke and die. Beta -- is not a reliable OS for production but more reliable than Alpha. In the old parlance, it may eat a kitten and then look remorseful afterwords. It is meant for testing but should be able to be used for day to day usage til the release candidate comes out. Upgrades from Beta to Release may work or they may choke and die. Upgrades from an old release to Beta should work. Release (or Gamma in my head) -- a reliable OS for production usage but may cough up a furball or two. It can be used for day to day usage and should be good til the next Release or 2 if you want to take a break from testing. Upgrades from Release to Release should work. -- Stephen J Smoogen. "Don't derail a useful feature for the 99% because you're not in it." Linus Torvalds "Years ago my mother used to say to me,... Elwood, you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant. Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. You may quote me." —James Stewart as Elwood P. Dowd -- test mailing list test@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/test
