[plug] Why is the FC redhat network alert notification tool so screwed up?

[Craig Ringer]

On Sun, 2005-08-14 at 19:53 +0800, Ari Finander wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I'm working on updating an FC4 installation and I'm finding that there
> are like 250+ updates, but some are listed as being from FC3 by the
> RHN alert notification tool.

I don't use RHN, so I hadn't noticed anything like that and have no
useful explanation to offer. Is this a new install or an upgrade? If an
upgrade, by what method are you upgrading?

Separately, yes there are a lot of updates to FC4. I was astonished by
just how many, personally - it's evidently not a distro for people with
slow 'net connections.

>  When I look at the RPMS for the os on the different mirrors I'm
> finding that these are almost invariably later versions than what I
> have installed from the cds. Every one of them! FC3 didn't have this
> much discrepancy between the cd isos and the mirrors.

Even more than FC3, FC4 tends to upgrade packages to new upstream
versions if major bugs or security holes are found. Thus, yes, you can
expect a lot of updates. They don't tend to upgrade things for no reason
though, and it's not in continuous development like Debian Testing is
(that's what Rawhide is for).

> Is FC4 a 'testing' distribution, and the fedora project is going back
> to alternating stable and testing?

It's a fairly bleeding edge distro, but "stable" in the sense that
releases are tested and maintained, and that things are only upgraded if
there are major issues or security holes.

--
Craig Ringer