[CALUG] irc client in Fedora 12

[Walt Smith]

see inline ...

Celebrating over 13,000 emails in my Yahoo Inbox !

--- On Sat, 7/23/11, Bryan J Smith <b.j.smith at ieee.org> wrote:

From: Bryan J Smith <b.j.smith at ieee.org>
Subject: Re: [CALUG]  irc client in Fedora 12
To: waltechmail at yahoo.com, "Jeremy Bicha" <jeremy at bicha.net>
Cc: "calug at unknownlamer.org" <calug at unknownlamer.org>
Date: Saturday, July 23, 2011, 12:38 AM

From: Walt Smith <waltechmail at yahoo.com>
> I would disagree that I need to update F12.

I also noted you talking about issues with repositories.  That's because many 
mirrors have dropped the older, discontinued releases.

Of course.
But, and here's the but... I don't any reason not to have a reasonably simple
page ( from a single link at some level 1-2-3 page) with a list of previous
releases.   Not having it is more of a marketing decision.  Specially on the
fedoraproject.org site.   And I can't image for the repositories having some subset
with older software is a bad thing ??   (Obviously I'm not saying ALL the repose
should have ALL the software.. and 2 years old is not THAT old !!!  )


> Frankly, I don't see a great deal in Fedora-12 that I didn't see/need
> in a desktop back to Fedora 3.

Then why aren't you running Red Hat Enterprise Linux, or a rebuild of it?  You 
are the person it is well designed for.  ;)


--

Probably.  But each new release of Fedora gives me something to ponder--
whether it *might* have something of interest.  And I lose nothing by sticking
with an earlier Fedora.   I'm obviously not paying monetary for the distro...( errr. 
well, I did on several occasions pay for a DVD from someone ... )..
So the support I'd get from RHEL is the same as support from Fedora.
no difference.


> However, I'm fascinated by the continous betterment without th
> "better" part called "changes" for lack of a better description. 

Has nothing to do with it.

Upstream (community) changes force the updates/upgrades.  The Fedora Project 
merely repackages those.  Yes, there are some upstream projects by the Fedora 
Project itself, at Fedora Hosted, Red Hat, etc..., but many things are outside 
of Fedora's control, just like any other distro.  It's upstream (community).



--

I wasn't blaming Fedora for particular program changes, but Fedora
does select which apps to include in a distro.  And they change them often.
So I blame upstream for specific app changes and Fedora for selecting the apps.

edit note:
(doing a backspace in a yahoo html compose window doesn't remove the
indicator for original message lines.   I suppose I COULD edit in text rather
than html )

( yahoo also has a security hole thats been there forever:  during login,
after you type the username, wait for the page to FINISH D/L before entering
the password. If you don't wait, you COULD type
the password in the password text box.  BUT AFTER the page has completed
D/L, it puts the curser back into the username box and the password is then
displayed there adjacent to the username in plain text.     And shows up in
future page accesses due to "completion" persistence. )

--------
It takes a lot of time and money to do sustaining engineering, backporting 
security fixes from newer releases to older ones, and ensuring full ABI/API 
compatibility.  That's what Red Hat Enterprise Linux is.  Consider it instead of 
Fedora if you would prefer to stay on the same software for many years.

That's where the Enterprise Linux model came from.  Corporations needing 3, 5, 7 
and even now 10 years of fixed software ABI/API compatibility, instead of newer 
features.  It's not cheap to do, but corporations and government is willing to 
pay or someone to do it.

-- Bryan

P.S.  The side-effect is that as part of their sustaining engineering efforts is 
that as they track backports, they are also working with upstream fixes.  I.e., 
people who work on maintaining older Red Hat Enterprise Linux packages are also 
maintaining Fedora packages and upstream changes.  So the money paid to them for 
sustaining engineering is, in turn, used to fund upstream development.  It's a 
win-win situation for everyone, and flips the commercial software model.

I.e., instead of paying for new releases and features, people are paying for 
sustaining engineering of old ones.  The new releases and features are the 
"bonus" that everyone gets, and no one needs to pay for.  Red Hat has not found 
a sustainable, commercial interest for doing such, even if they crank out a lot 
of new code (along with others) at FreeDesktop.org, GNOME, etc... that goes into 
all leading edge distros beyond just Fedora, as a by-product.

------
My bigger problem is one app that simply doesn't work.
Never has.    It could very well be "my fault".  But fault tolerance
( errr... user tolerance ) is really not something any linux is known for.
When it works, it works well, as long as you don't break it.
In my experience, Windows is generally more fault tolerant.
And better at recovery in normal use.   


Everything is moving from 2D apps to 3D apps.
( and I have not even seen a 3D app personally yet..
I just read about it in the posts ).
But old user problems are still there.
Am I pissed.  no.
Am I disappointed? yes.
Am I still using linux after all these years ?   yes.
But if someone occasionally doesn't tell the emperor he
has no clothes, next years fashions won't mean a whole lot.
Specially to a new buyer.

I'll be looking at F16.   I see several changes that are mentioned in
news items, but would like to see more discussion here as to pro's and cons
of coming changes.

By the way, from what I've seen, there's a lot of disappointment
with Ubuntu using the Unity, even though you can supposedly use a gnome
desktop in 11.04 (?).   Haven't seen much discussion here,  but there's a lot of
verbosity elsewhere.

 

 Walt..............

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