Sadly, To Not Much Surprise, Fedora 24 Alpha Has Been Delayed

[omer666]

I've been using Arch for about 8 years now, with other distros like Ubuntu, Fedora and Mint here and there. While any distro that uses software before any other could be considered as testing, Arch itself has testing repositories and software gets tested before it gets delivered to stable users. In Arch DE could break for some users, depending on how you handle upgrade, but any Arch breakage is less severe and easier to fix that that of 'stable' distros.

Yes Arch has testing repos indeed, which doesn't prevent the user from experiencing the bleeding edge side of things completely. Lookslike you've been lucky with your Arch updates, good for you ;-) On another hand, I never had any breakage upgrading Ubuntu or Fedora either. Depends on your own lineage, I guess.

[AdamW]

And for the last time (because I'm not really getting through), the longest delay there has been to an announced schedule since Ubuntu 6.04 is zero days.

And for the last time (because I'm not really getting through), so what? When I asked why it actually mattered if we were a couple of weeks out, your response was "that "week or two out from the dates we aim for" has turned into "I have no idea if there's one or two Fedora releases each year" (to quote myself)." Only that's inaccurate, which is what I was pointing out.

I don't follow Ubuntu's schedule closely, and I'm sure I've heard of them being a few days or weeks out before, but OK, let's say for the sake of argument they never miss a release date. Fine, good for Ubuntu. My point is still this: it doesn't matter a great deal if Fedora releases are out by a week or two or three, and we explicitly say that they might be up front. We're not trying to do a strictly time-based release and we've never said we are. It is *inaccurate* to say that Fedora releases are as unreliable as "I have no idea if there's one or two Fedora releases each year", looking at the facts.

[bug77]

The longest delay there has been to an announced schedule since Fedora 18 is three weeks. The F21 cycle was unusually long (a year), but that was planned and announced well ahead of time. The last two releases, 22 and 23, were delayed by one week each.

And for the last time (because I'm not really getting through), the longest delay there has been to an announced schedule since Ubuntu 6.04 is zero days.

[magika]

You must not have been using Arch for too long to say that. There were and there are still very famous breakages with Arch updates, not to mention software migrations requiring manual interventions that can sometimes become tedious. Of course everything is documented and it is a very good way to learn Linux internals and the way it works (or sometimes the way it doesn't).

Also when you use GNOME or KDE they will more often than not release versions that are not stable yet. Every time I had a desktop environment update it would become almost unusable for 3 weeks.

Of course it's not their fault and some would argue that it's the DE's fault, but at the same time those need to be tested and Arch is one way of testing it, that's the bleeding edge philosophy. Arch advocates contributing, and is more directed towards users that know how to use gdb and report bugs. Yet again, it's very instructive but not what I would call stable.

As my free time is progressively going away, I don't have enough time for this any longer. I switched back to Fedora two months ago after some 6 years using Arch.

I've been using Arch for about 8 years now, with other distros like Ubuntu, Fedora and Mint here and there. While any distro that uses software before any other could be considered as testing, Arch itself has testing repositories and software gets tested before it gets delivered to stable users. In Arch DE could break for some users, depending on how you handle upgrade, but any Arch breakage is less severe and easier to fix that that of 'stable' distros.

[AdamW]

Because there's value in having predictable releases.
For 10 years (I think) I have known that April and October is the time for a distribution update. Fedora initially has tried to do the same, but that "week or two out from the dates we aim for" has turned into "I have no idea if there's one or two Fedora releases each year" (to quote myself).
Seriously, there's no harm in having feature-based releases instead of time-based. Just be upfront about it and stop publishing dates before you know you can keep them.

The longest delay there has been to an announced schedule since Fedora 18 is three weeks. The F21 cycle was unusually long (a year), but that was planned and announced well ahead of time. The last two releases, 22 and 23, were delayed by one week each.

[King InuYasha]

Because there's value in having predictable releases.
For 10 years (I think) I have known that April and October is the time for a distribution update. Fedora initially has tried to do the same, but that "week or two out from the dates we aim for" has turned into "I have no idea if there's one or two Fedora releases each year" (to quote myself).
Seriously, there's no harm in having feature-based releases instead of time-based. Just be upfront about it and stop publishing dates before you know you can keep them.

There is serious value to having approximate dates, because it allows people to try to judge the appropriate timescales to get something done. Everyone knows that software is infinitely mutable, but what people don't understand is that the mutability has a cost: stability wavers with every code change.

Fedora tries very hard to keep a Spring/Summer and Fall/Winter release schedule, and their schedules are lined up with major features being released in the projects that they source. For example, Fedora release schedules are based on several key projects' timescales: the Linux kernel, GNOME, Plasma Desktop, GCC, various programming language release schedules, and so on. Sometimes delays are due to external forces, other times delays are due to internal things. This time, it's a combination of both. In the past, it might be warranted to be somewhat upset because it was difficult to "get the bits", so to speak. But now Fedora does composes of all the release deliverables every night, and they are tested by Fedora's OpenQA instance. You can get those images and use it yourself on computers or virtual machines. Me? I just dnf distro-sync every week, and I'm up to the latest bits.

Fedora's goal is to offer the best in Free and Open Source Software, and that's a very hard thing to do. Especially when they are usually first to it, and trying to do the best with everything they do.

Read about Fedora's foundations and goals and how it approaches release engineering. It's enlightening.

[bug77]

Well, except you're missing the point where you explain why it actually *matters* so much that we're a week or two out from the dates we aim for. Still no-one has said anything about that. You just seem to be taking it as read that everyone agrees it's a terrible, awful thing for us to post some dates and then not hit them exactly, but you're still not saying *why* it's terrible.

Because there's value in having predictable releases.
For 10 years (I think) I have known that April and October is the time for a distribution update. Fedora initially has tried to do the same, but that "week or two out from the dates we aim for" has turned into "I have no idea if there's one or two Fedora releases each year" (to quote myself).
Seriously, there's no harm in having feature-based releases instead of time-based. Just be upfront about it and stop publishing dates before you know you can keep them.

[devius]

So either your Release Schedule Setup doesnt work out and needs to be recalculated or your developers are used to having delays and sort of dont care if its some days/weeks behind the schedule.

Or you're making a big deal out of nothing and there's actually nothing wrong with the way Fedora development happens?

But saying we have fixed release schedules, but then having a delay every time and saying "that doesnt matter anyway" just makes the Project look bad.

Where did you get the idea that Fedora has a fixed release schedule? According to the publicly available official Release Life Cycle document, it's a hybrid, so it's exactly what it's supposed to be, nothing more, nothing less, and anything else is your own incorrect and baseless assumption.

[AdamW]

Blaming others now is not the right path. And putting development behind closed doors is what RedHat were accusing others of, so that would be double standards, too.

So either your Release Schedule Setup doesnt work out and needs to be recalculated or your developers are used to having delays and sort of dont care if its some days/weeks behind the schedule.
But saying we have fixed release schedules, but then having a delay every time and saying "that doesnt matter anyway" just makes the Project look bad.

We don't say we have a fixed release schedule. What we say is this:

"We say approximately every 6 months because like many things, they don't always go exactly as planned. The schedule is not strictly time-based, but a hybrid of time and quality. The milestone releases are tested for compliance with the Fedora Release Criteria, and releases will be delayed if this is not the case."

That's right on the page that defines the Fedora release cycle:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_Release_Life_Cycle

We have the schedule because, well, you have to have something to *aim* for. Otherwise we'd wake up every day and go "well, shall we release a Beta today?" and that'd get old pretty quick. But we don't in fact claim that we have a fixed release schedule, we say we have a target and to a degree we will adapt around it as quality requirements dictate.

[AdamW]

Again, I haven't been following every Linux distro, but I'm pretty sure Fedora is the only one that constantly publishes dates and then doesn't meet them. Clearly there's a better way to do what you're doing, only you haven't found it yet.

Well, except you're missing the point where you explain why it actually *matters* so much that we're a week or two out from the dates we aim for. Still no-one has said anything about that. You just seem to be taking it as read that everyone agrees it's a terrible, awful thing for us to post some dates and then not hit them exactly, but you're still not saying *why* it's terrible.