Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 3rd May 2007 18:29 UTC, submitted by anonymous
"Several months ago, the Fedora Board (in consultation with Red Hat Engineering) decided to increase the length of time that Fedora releases are supported, in terms of updates. This decision was retroactively applied to Fedora Core 5, allowing it to remain a fully maintained release for several months longer than it would have under the old policy. Fedora Core 5 will reach its end of life for updates on Friday June 29th, 2007."
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RE: You lose users with that attitude ...
by marc on Thu 3rd May 2007 19:47
in reply to "You lose users with that attitude ..."
Member since:2006-07-24
A distro can't be everything to everyone.
You have to pick a target market and stick to it.
I am a firm believer in Pareto's 80/20 Rule. Develop your product or service to address the needs of 80% of your target. If you try to meet the needs of the other 20%, you will go bankrupt.
If we lose people because of the design approach behind Fedora, that's fine. They are probably folks that should not have used Fedora in the first place. And...importantly, they probably wouldn't be Ubuntu users either.
As I noted above with respect to FL, you can't have it both ways. There are not enough resources.
Debian is in trouble because they were at the other end of the spectrum. Their philosophy was "it will be ready when it is ready and not before". They were way behind the development curve relative to today's marketplace. In that respect, they were not addressing the needs of the majority of their potential user base.
In response to that vacuum we have Fedora and Ubuntu.
RE[2]: You lose users with that attitude ...
by siimo on Fri 4th May 2007 00:10
in reply to "RE: You lose users with that attitude ..."
Member since:2006-06-22
RE: You lose users with that attitude ...
by hamster on Thu 3rd May 2007 20:42
in reply to "You lose users with that attitude ..."
Member since:2006-10-06
RE: You lose users with that attitude ...
by h3rman on Thu 3rd May 2007 21:14
in reply to "You lose users with that attitude ..."
Member since:2006-08-09
Now me and my friends may not count for much to the Fedora developers.
Nonsense, you just didn't seem to have had yourself informed of what the purpose of Fedora is. Shouldn't you have done that when you decided to install it for other people?
I think an upgrade once a year is not that shocking. Plus, there is CentOS now. Should feel very familiar to a Fedora user.
But I would like to point out that if you turn away enough users there will be noone left to use it and no future generation developers to maintain it.
Millions are using Fedora and most of them think the new installation is a tiny sacrifice for a brand new system with lots of new stuff every (half) year.
(This, in my opinion, is what happened to the BSDs and is happening to Debian. If you aren't responsive, you lose favour.)
Don't worry about the BSDs. Quality will always find its way on people's pcs. And Debian, isn't that that system that the supposedly most popular desktop Linux distribution is based on?
If you want a better Fedora, do take it for what it is, and contribute if you like. Criticism of Fedora (which it *does* need, if only to stay sharp) should be addressed to the things that Fedora is about, such as innovation, making a lighter and faster booting system, security, increased (GUI) consistency, removing annoying bugs, stable virtualisation, better bug reporting system, improved performance of Yum, quality packaging, etc. etc.
RE[2]: You lose users with that attitude ...
by MacTO on Thu 3rd May 2007 22:07
in reply to "RE: You lose users with that attitude ..."
Member since:2006-09-21
Criticism of Fedora (which it *does* need, if only to stay sharp) should be addressed to the things that Fedora is about, such as innovation, making a lighter and faster booting system, security, increased (GUI) consistency, removing annoying bugs, stable virtualisation, better bug reporting system, improved performance of Yum, quality packaging, etc. etc.
I got into then out of Fedora at FC4 and FC5, and yes there was a lot to like about it. The GUI was great and I liked how it packaged up software (I'm of the opinion that Debian based distributions are too fine grained). But let's get a couple of things straight here: goals like faster booting and improved performance of yum are a direct consequence of sluggishness of yum and the rather long boots of earlier times. And I will have a very hard time supporting the notion that Fedora is about security or fixing bugs when the support cycle is under 2 years. That means fewer bug fixes and fewer security patches for products that are on the market.
As for upgrading every year not being shocking, well, I'm sure that the over 80% of the market who use Windows and Mac OS X would disagree with that. The computer obsessive, like you and I, may like frequent upgrades because it gives us new toys. To those for whom the computer is a tool, it is far more of an annoyance.
Member since:
2006-09-21
I maintain Linux systems for a few people. Most of them just want things to work, and don't want things to change to much when part of the system is upgraded. (Because too many changes means too much relearning.) Obviously you cannot get that with Fedora, so I won't bother giving them that. So they lose them as users.
On the other hand I, as their maintainer, don't want to use something radically different from what they are using (again, more time spent learning differences). They don't want to use something different from me either, because they know that will mean that I'm less effective at providing them support. So they lose me as a user as well.
Now me and my friends may not count for much to the Fedora developers. I'm fine with that. But I would like to point out that if you turn away enough users there will be noone left to use it and no future generation developers to maintain it. (This, in my opinion, is what happened to the BSDs and is happening to Debian. If you aren't responsive, you lose favour.)