Talk Of Fedora As A Rolling-Release Distribution

[Nevertime]

Fedora already supply's an up to date kernal about a week after a new one's released. It also sometimes updates the gui and the web browser. Basicly, by default it's as much of a rolling release as opensuses tumbleweed ever was. As an ocasional fedora user it seems like it already updates the things i care about. Bigger changes i can comfortably wait six months for for the sake of stability. I understand someusers may have had bad expiriance with fedora and I'm not currently an active fedora user but i can't think of a single issue I've ever had with fedora (might be my poor memory) in the past... other than it not working with my proprietary printer driver, which is why I won't put it on my laptop. Basicly, for my hardware at least, things seem good the way they they are.

[AdamW]

I predict that before long, all desktop distros will adopt a rolling-release model. Maybe they will update the plumbing only in set intervals. But all the user-facing stuff is developed in a speed which makes a period of several months between releases seem unsuitable. This is most apparent with web browsers, where Mozilla and Google have a release cycle measured in weeks, not months.

If I understand correctly, Fedora is already a partially rolling release today (the kernel package).

It becomes kind of a matter of semantics. Simply put, we update 'stable' Fedora releases to the latest stable upstream kernel, we no longer leave them on the kernel branch they were on when they were released. F16, F17 and F18 are all on kernel 3.6.5 right now.

We do the same for Firefox too, we follow the upstream releases. It's not feasible to do anything else, really. F16, F17 and F18 all have Firefox 16. We don't officially package Chrom(e/ium), so that's not a problem.

[disi]

I always have troubles seeing Rawhide as a rolling-release-thing. This since Rawhide for me is where people commit anything, no matter how broken it is. There is no quality control. And once in a while it is branched and worked into something that actually starts and more or less works once in a while.
If Fedora really had something useful as rolling release, they would have a branch following Rawhide, which did, for example pull a package from Rawhide when its bohdi-karma got good enough, or when it had been in Rawhide without bad karma long enough.
That way Fedora would also have something rolling release like, that was probably more stable and tested when it was time for a release-branch, letting the devs focus more on the release-things (i.e. Anaconda).

It could be done similar to Gentoo. rawHide as the testing branch and next to is a 'Stable' branch.
Once a package is stable enough in rawhide, it moves into stable.

To be honest Fedora release is not the most stable distribution to me either.

netbook: sometimes it reboots and sometimes it hangs with a black screen
laptop: once had this problem with gdm not starting for ~2 months with an external monitor attached, if I copy larger files over the network or if I copy large files on the SSD, the system hangs. I guess it is the scheduler e.g. right now ~10GB DDO installer files, flash sometimes crashes in firefox (OK, this is a feature of flash)

A couple of more minor glitches but not what I would call a super stable release?

[chithanh]

I predict that before long, all desktop distros will adopt a rolling-release model. Maybe they will update the plumbing only in set intervals. But all the user-facing stuff is developed in a speed which makes a period of several months between releases seem unsuitable. This is most apparent with web browsers, where Mozilla and Google have a release cycle measured in weeks, not months.

If I understand correctly, Fedora is already a partially rolling release today (the kernel package).

[Xake]

I always have troubles seeing Rawhide as a rolling-release-thing. This since Rawhide for me is where people commit anything, no matter how broken it is. There is no quality control. And once in a while it is branched and worked into something that actually starts and more or less works once in a while.
If Fedora really had something useful as rolling release, they would have a branch following Rawhide, which did, for example pull a package from Rawhide when its bohdi-karma got good enough, or when it had been in Rawhide without bad karma long enough.
That way Fedora would also have something rolling release like, that was probably more stable and tested when it was time for a release-branch, letting the devs focus more on the release-things (i.e. Anaconda).

[Sidicas]

My mail comes off as rather negative, but that was more a rhetorical tactic than anything. I would say that my mail could apply equally well to most Linux distributions that release on a six month cycle. The only major distros that I'd say are 'serious stable general-purpose OSes' by the definition I was using in the post are maybe RHEL, SLES, Debian stable, Ubuntu LTS possibly. That kinda thing.

Yes, I agree. Running a rolling release is for people who like to tinker with their software on their PC all day long... For people who actually need to get work done, a rolling release is insanity rolled into a package.

KDE 4.9 is nice, but it's got some regressions that make me glad I'm not using it.
I'm running Debian Wheezy (testing) now, which has KDE 4.8.4 and I've already backported a patch from KDE 4.9.1 to KDE 4.8.4 because the KDE devs really don't seem to care much about backporting major bugfixes.

Most distros give you the choice between Stable&Buggy or Unstable&Buggy.. Debian stable is, in general for me, less buggy and more stable than anything else out there.

FFS, the unofficial "Debian Multimedia" has been doing "rolling releases" of their packages for Debian Wheezy and it's starting to break stuff all over the darn place.. I had "Debian multimedia" in my apt sources and forgot.. Next thing I knew, I've got all these corrupted video files coming out of an automated encoding process that hasn't changed in years, and those corrupted video files started crashing all my other apps that I used to edit video files as well. Had to purge all my unofficial "Debian Multimedia" packages and now I'm back to something that seems workable again. Even when you try to stay "stable" and "unbuggy" it's like "bleeding edge" crap always has a way to come in the backdoor, break all your toys and then run away cackling.

I just can't comprehend why people would think rolling releases is better than backporting bugfixes to make something more stable and less buggy.

[AdamW]

Just as a gloss...though I suspected Michael might pick this up, I was writing to fedora-devel, not Phoronix. If I was writing to Phoronix I'd be a bit more diplomatic. =)

My mail comes off as rather negative, but that was more a rhetorical tactic than anything. I would say that my mail could apply equally well to most Linux distributions that release on a six month cycle. The only major distros that I'd say are 'serious stable general-purpose OSes' by the definition I was using in the post are maybe RHEL, SLES, Debian stable, Ubuntu LTS possibly. That kinda thing.

I think Fedora is doing a good job of being Fedora, and all the negative stuff in my post really means is what a lot of people say about rapidly-iterated Linux distributions anyway; they're not really suitable for use by 'normal people'. Which shouldn't be news to anyone. We're enthusiasts, no shame in that. Really what I'm trying to say is we can achieve an appropriate level of stability and quality for Fedora - equal to the level we currently achieve - without the onerous release cycle.

[a2r-l]

No need to turn fedora into rolling release.

Here's a better solution:

Kill fedora, rename arch to fedora, and ... profit!!! Arch is eating up everything redhat is shoving down its throat anyway. Arch is becoming a lot like fedora, so there is no point in having 2 similar distributions.

[pipe13]

I agree to leave Fedora's release mechanics as is. It ain't broke. Release when ready, not before. Let those who desire a rolling release, use a rolling release distro. I suspect most who use Fedora use it as a bleeding-edge *production* environment. I know I sure do.

[F i L]

I don't see the problem with rolling release. Manjaro Linux has the right idea. Take a "low level" rolling distro like Arch Linux, which sometimes requires a lot of manual labor to update (like with the switch from initscripts to systemd), then stagger key software a little while the devs write update-scripts to handle peoples machines correctly so users don't have to be Linux Gurus to use it. Easy to use, always up-to-date.. best of both worlds for the end user.