Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 17th Nov 2009 16:22 UTC, submitted by diegocg
Fedora 12 has been released today. "I'm proud to announce the release of Fedora 12, the latest innovative Linux distribution from the Fedora Project, a global, collaborative partnership of free software community members sponsored by Red Hat."
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Member since:
2009-07-21
The problem with using Fedora, non-LTS Ubuntu, and maybe OpenSUSE is that there is always a compelling reason to upgrade: continued support. You've got maybe seven months to go on Fedora 11.
A Fedora version is unsupported approximately 13 months after release. After that, no more updates. How well are Fedora/non-LTS Ubuntu releases supported in the period between the new version being released and the end of support? Do they get anything besides security/major bug fixes? Do they get kernel upgrades / backports? How well do upgrades work when skipping between versions?
Since Linux drivers are often only provided for the latest or recent mainline kernel version(s), one may have to upgrade, rebuild parts of the system, or backport drivers if they change hardware / need improved drivers. And after a few years, new software might not work with old dependencies. (For example, Firefox 3 won't build out-of-the-box using the libraries included with RHEL 4.)
I personally use CentOS to avoid these problems - Red Hat provide updates for years, and backports drivers and fixes.