From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Mar 19 21:02:55 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 58888106566B for ; Wed, 19 Mar 2008 21:02:55 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from scottro@nyc.rr.com) Received: from hrndva-omtalb.mail.rr.com (hrndva-omtalb.mail.rr.com [71.74.56.122]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 197808FC18 for ; Wed, 19 Mar 2008 21:02:54 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from scottro@nyc.rr.com) Received: from localhost ([69.203.87.53]) by hrndva-omta04.mail.rr.com with ESMTP id <20080319204748.CNHQ12279.hrndva-omta04.mail.rr.com@localhost> for ; Wed, 19 Mar 2008 20:47:48 +0000 Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2008 16:47:48 -0400 From: Scott Robbins To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Message-ID: <20080319204748.GC61839@mail.scottro.net> Mail-Followup-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org References: <867igo3cih.fsf@zid.claresco.hr> <47C749CF.4010501@FreeBSD.org> <86eja7et3j.fsf@zid.claresco.hr> <47E0249C.8030700@FreeBSD.org> <868x0ezh9u.fsf@zid.claresco.hr> <20080319193243.GA30784@eos.sc1.parodius.com> <000401c889f9$fab77c10$f0267430$@com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <000401c889f9$fab77c10$f0267430$@com> User-Agent: mutt-ng/devel-r804 (FreeBSD) Subject: Re: Upgrading to 7.0 - stupid requirements X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2008 21:02:55 -0000 On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 03:46:52PM -0400, Kevin K wrote: > > That said: I do understand what you're saying, and yes, I can see why > > you would want that. It does make sense, and it's reasonable. It's > > just hard to achieve. I don't think other mainstream OSes (e.g. Linux) > > offer this ability either, though. Am I wrong? > > Redhat's up2date/yum ? I'm not 100% certain though. RedHat, some Debian versions and others aimed at the server market will have their precompiled binaries with reasonably sane defaults. (Or else with everything, including the kitchen sink, thrown in.) The downside is that the server based ones, (RH, CentOS, etc.,) are going to have older versions of packages. This makes sense of course. Much of the time, they'll simply concentrate on security updates and have a 5 year EOL (possibly longer, possibly shorter, but around that.) Desktop---well, things like Ubuntu and Fedora usually have major upgrades every 6 months or so. Fedora at least, recommends doing a complete reinstall, though usually, updating via their yum package manager will work. It doesn't always. Arch Linux and some others have a rolling release type thing, where incremental upgrades take place all the time, usually without major effect. They're smaller, and like the BSDs tend to be better at letting people know--(things similar to our HEADSUP type posts.) Fedora in contrast, might make a decision that will break sound for 30 percent of the users and the only way to find out will be to dig through their (rather slow) bugzilla, only to find that the developer doesn't consider it a bug. (That's not an insult aimed at the developer--they have their reasons which are often quite logical, but anyway...) -- Scott Robbins PGP keyID EB3467D6 ( 1B48 077D 66F6 9DB0 FDC2 A409 FA54 EB34 67D6 ) gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys EB3467D6 Xander: She must be right. We must have some kind of amnesia. Buffy: I don't know what that is, but I'm certain I don't have it. I bathe quite often.