On 11:26 Fri 01 Jul , Nirbheek Chauhan wrote: > Except for the fact that while you upgrade, you still have a usable > system. Reinstallation means a massive time-sink during which your > machine is completely unusable. This is not an option for a lot of > people. > > If -user is regularly giving that kind of advice, I think you guys are > making a huge mistake. > > I'm not going to support this kind of max-6-month-upgrade life cycle > for Gentoo. We're effectively driving our users away to distros like > Ubuntu that allow you to upgrade every LTS release instead of > constantly or every 6 months.
In my experience, updates become massively difficult after about 6 months unless you have deep expertise in Gentoo. You run into blocker after blocker after USE-flag problem after resolution failure and an ongoing series of confusing messages with no apparent end in sight. We may call it supported (and technically, we're right) but it isn't realistically possible for most users. After handing over administration of about 10 systems to someone else with less experience in Gentoo, I still get called in about once every couple of months to help every time one of these weird problems comes up. I recommended upgrades to the new admin every 3 months, which is a point where nearly everything still works cleanly. -- Thanks, Donnie Donnie Berkholz Sr. Developer, Gentoo Linux Blog: http://dberkholz.com
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