[nos-bbs] Early note on RedHat FC-5

[George (Skip) VerDuin]

Goodness Tim - philosophy?

On Fri, 2006-05-05 at 16:12 -0500, Tim Gorman wrote:

> Skip,
> 
> A philosophy question. Is there a reason you are moving to FC-5? One reason I 
> left Redhat a number of years ago was their growing penchant to emulate 
> Microsoft with numerous upgrade requirements. 

The upgrades for Redhat commercial product line are not too bad
(opinion), but the FC project is something more demanding.  The good
news is that the toolkit to stay up-to-date is painless (almost) - you
can almost put it on cron and ignore the issue.  I've been bitten by
being too leading edge a few times, but maybe no worse than the Windows
bugs.  There are two issues that shine for me  1) the upgrade process is
faithful to protecting user (my) data  2) Upgrades require no more than
a few minutes followed by whatever (hours?) of unattended operation /
reconfigure is pretty straight forward too when the config files are
replaced.

As a sidelite - FC-5 has pretty spiffy software management tools as long
as you are broadband connected.  I abandon hard software media some
years ago and work pretty much entirely from HD images and web.

> 
> I went with Suse and haven't had to move to a different version for over 2 
> years, not even when Novell bought Suse.

I like suse too - although I don't have a current version up.  When RH
mucked around with the desktop trying to create that merge between gnome
and kde making it look like something out of Redmond, I looked
elsewhere.  Later returned to FC.  There are benefits in perhaps all the
varieties of linux, and I guess I chose to lose music in mp3 for
whatever FC has to offer...  

> 
> I've really enjoyed not being caught up in the upgrad merry-go-round. 

If there is a difference between you and me, it may be that I don't view
the upgrade process as onerous.  I could not prove it, but it may be
that 10 small upgrades are simpler than one big one because it spreads
whatever pain there is around?  Or maybe my skin is thick...

> Do you 
> have to stay on it for development purposes?

Actually I'm retired and FC is just what I WANT to have in my
workstation/server.  I created a LAN for myself with 5 mixed platforms -
the oldest is DOS6.2 (it quit booting a few months ago).  So you used
the word "have to" and I no longer do.  It also takes loads of pressure
off.  What I'm up to is prototyping platforms I'll install on s/v CIRCE
while we live aboard for a few years on the water (without a phone) -
that's the only need to succeed.

Your question triggers something: you can almost watch things go into
obsolescence by stacking things in release date order.  DOS 6 would not
network with FC-5, but would with W-98 / Win-XP networked with FC-5
out-of-the-box / W-98 networking to XP with some reservations / and so
forth...  That's not to say it was impossible - it just took more
effort.  What we have going here with jnos working on this broad
platform base is quite remarkable.

> 
> tim ab0wr
> 
> P.S. My internet firewall is still on Redhat 7.2 using ipchains and 
> Portsentry. So maybe I'm *too* conservative?

Nope - not if it works for you.  My LAN sits behind a dynamic IP DSL
router (based on Linux) and firewall with minimum outside penetration.
A true network appliance.  I'm certain I could be hacked, but the
goodies here aren't probably worth the effort.  When I worry the most is
when I take the IBM G40 with W-XP on the road and outside the LAN.

> 
> On Friday 05 May 2006 14:51, George (Skip) VerDuin wrote:
> > I find this failure fascinating...>SNIP<s


73
de Skip k8rra k


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