Red Hat delivers test of 2.6 kernel Linux

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My views... in reply to all.

I agree mostly with Richard Flude, but I can see where JWatson77 (were two 7's necessary?) is coming from.

First, lets clear up a few things (from my point of view, if I am wrong, let me know).

You CAN'T compared MS's offering to distro in all aspects (expecially upgrading, and updating).

MS Windows is a full blown OS with a GUI distributed in binary. It is made to detect as much hardware as possible. In Linux terms, its... a kernel w/ all of its patches and options installed and a full KDE on top. But a Linux distro is a collection of kernels and loads of other software accessable from a single point in binary and/or source form.

For MS, an upgrade is like going from NT to 2000 or a SP. An update is patches and security fixes. To a distro, an upgrade is a major upgrading of many of the applications they provide mirrors to or rarely an overhaul of the installation and setup. An update can be your installed application(s) getting an update or upgrade. In most cases, the updates can be ignored (like memory leak solved for ppc64... you got ppc, so you don't care). Basically, most distro upgrades are just major updates. In most cases, an upgrade can be achived by updating your system.

In Fedora's case, if you installed Gnome 2.5, KDE 3.2, and linux 2.6.* on top of your Fedora, you are half way to the current one (this isn't a perfect example, but its close). Understand, that this doesn't mean you HAVE to. If you leave the 2.6 out, its not like going from NT to 2000 or a SP. I know many who still use the 2.2 kernels with the latest applications and everything works fine.

Basically, you could have installed 4 years ago, but still be up-to-date with all the current applications and kernels. You don't need to reinstall everytime a new Fedora core comes out. In many cases, its as simple as installing or updating the differences.

Businesses don't like updating all the time. The chance something might break increases. So, in comes RedHat, who look at every update, test it out, and tell if/how you should procede. They provide a predictable cycle so one can plan ahead. This means they can provide a very stable system, but can't provide a bleeding edge one. So they left that to the community as Fedora.

Fedora leaves more work to the user. The user has to decide what updates are worth the time. If you wanted all the new stuff, reinstalling might be less work than updating (ex. with KDE 3.2, an update will have 3.2 and 3.* as they reside together, with reinstall only 3.2). In some cases, there might be no reason to update at all... you need to look at the change log. Some businesses don't want this extra work. So they go to RedHat Enterprise for less work and a more predictable environment.

Also, I don't think 3 releases a year is an "aggressive" release cycle. From a application point of view, its actually normal for any distro. RedHat Enterprise is just slow in comparison, so its predictable.

Posted by: doe_z   Posted on: 02/15/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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