On Mon, Nov 08, 2021 at 03:11:55AM +0000, Rick Marshall wrote: > I'm trying to understand why we have to have Fedora versions. > > Fedora is a my favourite Linux however the version upgrade is > problematic when managing large numbers of machines. I have my > reasons for using it in production as a desktop, but not as a > server. > > Why do we have versions instead of constant updates as happens > within a version? We try to concentrate large, planned changes on the release boundaries. Hopefully that means that we can make the user-impact of those changes smooth, but it does mean that they tend to be all concentrated at one time. However... the way we do things lets you choose when you want to absorb that change. You can see the changeset in advance: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/35/ChangeSet https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/36/ChangeSet and plan around that, as well as look out for common problems at https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Common_F35_bugs . If we did a perpetual ("rolling") release, there would be the same amount of change, but you'd get it sporadically -- maybe some Thursday morning suddenly becomes a lot of work. And, of course, if we just had one supported release, you'd be stuck with needing to do upgrades in April/October, on our schedule. But, we intentially have two supported releases, with 7 months of overlap. That way, you can schedule when you want to do the bigger updates — including deciding to entirely skip a release if you like. Like all Linux distros, we're always absorbing a lot of change coming from thousands of upstream projects. We (Fedora) think this approach is the best one for delivering that change to users in a polished, friendly way (on desktops _and_ servers). In the past few years, we've put extra work into making sure the upgrade process is painless — _usually_ not much different from a really large regular update. What are the problems you are encountering with managing this on large numbers of machines? (What is the value of "large" in your case?) Do you deploy with golden images, via pxe and kickstart, or by some other method? Do you use ansible or some other config management tool? > Happy to ask elsewhere if this is the wrong place. This probably isn't the best place, because it's not really a test / QA decision. FESCo is the governing body for the overall release schedule (which is then implemented and managed by the Program Manager). -- Matthew Miller <mattdm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Fedora Project Leader _______________________________________________ test mailing list -- test@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe send an email to test-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/test@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Do not reply to spam on the list, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure
