A Rolling-Release Version Of Fedora Is Discussed

[phoronix]

Phoronix: A Rolling-Release Version Of Fedora Is Discussed

A discussion erupted this morning among Fedora developers about having a version of Fedora Linux that operates on a rolling-release model similar to Arch Linux, Gentoo, and openSUSE Tumbleweed...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTA0Nzc

[HokTar]

So how is Debian CUT doing these days? Did they achieve anything?

[chithanh]

The problems CUT is facing are described here http://np237.livejournal.com/31868.html

[gigaplex]

Some developers were quick to call Fedora Rawhide their rolling-release, except that Rawhide is not always stable and can easily break in significant ways from time-to-time.

That describes all rolling-release distros. I'm not just saying that as a hater, I grew up on Gentoo and currently use Arch.

[renkin]

That describes all rolling-release distros. I'm not just saying that as a hater, I grew up on Gentoo and currently use Arch.

Did you use Gentoo with stable keywords? I can't speak for the Gentoo crowd about stability since I use the unstable/current keyword.

[gigaplex]

Did you use Gentoo with stable keywords? I can't speak for the Gentoo crowd about stability since I use the unstable/current keyword.

For a while. It didn't make a heck of a lot of difference, portage broke just as easily (especially if it had been several weeks since the last update).

[bwat47]

That describes all rolling-release distros. I'm not just saying that as a hater, I grew up on Gentoo and currently use Arch.

Arch does break sometimes, but is definitely more stable than using something like rawhide.... Also arch packages don't ship with debugging stuff enabled.

[Khudsa]

Debian SID + aptlist-bugs is like a rolling release, not so update in some packages or slower to deliver some last versions of other packages, but it's good and stable.

[Ansla]

That describes all rolling-release distros. I'm not just saying that as a hater, I grew up on Gentoo and currently use Arch.

It's not like non-rolling distributions don't cause breakage, it's just that they cause all the damage every six months, or maybe at larger time intervals if you decide to skip a release or use LTS.
I used Redhat (before it split into Fedora and RHEL), Fedora, Suse/Opensuse, Kubuntu before finally settling with Gentoo and all of them broke heavily when updating to a new version.
With Gentoo I do get some breakage from time to time but at smaller scale and it's also easier to identify the package that caused it then when upgrading all the packages in a classic dist-upgrade.

[ruel24]

I'm a long-time user of PCLinuxOS. It's a rolling release. Yes, it doesn't work perfect, but it works close enough. Upgrading every 6 months is a pain, and even that's not a guarantee you'll have a stable system. Unlike openSuse Tumbleweed, if Fedora wants to do the rolling release right, it needs to support DKMS. I'm not a user of Fedora, so it might already and I don't know it, but this is important. At openSuse, when the kernel upgrades, you need to invoke a console command to rebuild the module for nVidia. With DKMS, this is all done for you. I cannot believe a distro puts out a rolling release without supporting DKMS out of the bag.

Mageia gave the same speech as Fedora with the subject of rolling releases came up. They said their Cauldron development release would work for those wanting a rolling release. What some of these people lost in the stone age of Linux distros done't seem to get is that reinstalling every 6 months is not what most users want. They want to set it and forget it. Users want the latest KDE, Gnome, etc. without waiting for the next release.

In my experience, rolling releases are rock solid - more-so than the big release every 6 months. I used to pray I'd have no problems with the new release when I used Ubuntu. Then, there was the time I had to spend resetting my desktop up, adding all my favorite apps back in... Now, I occasionally wipe and reinstall, but mostly just use the system. I just did the first reinstall in over a year and a half. Seems to work great for me.