[SGVLUG] FC repository searches

[Dustin Laurence]

On Tue, Sep 12, 2006 at 10:56:06AM -0700, Jeff Carlson wrote:
> Dustin Laurence wrote:
> > Out of curiosity, what were the symptoms?
> ...snip...
> 
> Basically, install Debian via Knoppix 3.8 or 3.9.  So that is a pretty
> old version by now.  Then do apt-get dist-upgrade because I figure
> there's a lot to get up to date.  After that, X wouldn't start or KDE
> wouldn't start or something like that.  This was a laptop so I pretty
> much only ran it with desktop software in mind, not really much for a
> server.

Er, I'm going to reconsider "pilot error."  AFAIK you can't do
"dist-upgrade" without planning.  I wouldn't do it without checking some
release notes.  I don't think I'm going to blame Knoppix unless 'apt-get
upgrade' failed.

Maybe Debian's docs are bad here, but that's not surprising--the docs
also still recommend running "testing" as being safer than running Sid,
but apparently "everyone" knows Sid is the one to run for a
bleeding-edge desktop.  That's really bad.

> This may sound really weird coming from me, and probably isn't even what
> you mean, but I have said this before and I'll keep saying it.  If "win"
> means the competition packs it in and goes home, then I never want RH to
> "win."

No, I just mean what RH is doing now.  It's the most successful company
in the enterprise Linux space.  Getting a monopoly would be bad.

That is part of Debian's importance: the existence of Debian Stable, and
it's production by a non-profit organization with no vital organs to
kill, means that there is always some pressure on RH.  Even if Novell
can't compete for the long run, Debian will always be there.  At a
minimum they always must be sufficiently "better" to make it worth
paying for RHEL rather than use Debian Stable for free.  Same for
Novell, and I think it benefits everyone, even those who will never use
Debian.

> I, for one, was never sure what the big deal over the end of RHL was.
> Basically, Fedora replaced it 100%.

Eventually...but there was a very unsettling gap.

> so the fact you can't call RH for help with Fedora is a no-op for me.  I
> never saw a reason for all the outcry.

I think the "big deal" was that before RHL ended, none of us ever even
considered that it was possible.  I never felt vulnerable to the
decisions and fortunes of one company--even though I was--until that
company demonstrated that it might find it's interests outweighed mine.
The community crossed a psychological frontier.

I should *thank* them for waking me up.  Probably you should be happy
about it too, because I think the pressure to keep Fedora and RHEL "at
the top" is far greater because of all of us who now regard them as
"just another distro" rather than the center of the Linux universe, as
it once was.

You know the joke about people saying "I run Linux 5.3", meaning that
there is a huge crowd of people that don't even realize that there is a
difference between RHL and Linux?  The newer people don't even get the
joke anymore.  I think understanding the joke and the fact that it isn't
current anymore explains almost everything about the "big deal."
> 
> Sure, I'm just thinking of the times on another list when I have gotten
> so tired of a thread I stopped reading all the messages with that
> subject of from particular participants.

As you say, it's peanuts compared with biodiesel. :-)

Dustin

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