On Fri, Jul 01, 2011 at 09:08:53AM -0500, Donnie Berkholz wrote: > 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.
Right. I can't tell you how many times I've seen on -user where someone comes back after not upgrading for longer than 6 months and finds themselves in a very tricky situation. Since we have a council decision that says the migration path has to exist for a year, that's what I'll follow. However, if someone waits a year to upgrade a gentoo system, things will have changed so much that the upgrade process will be challenging for them to say the least, unless they know gentoo very well. William
pgp1ZvZDk6LjB.pgp
Description: PGP signature
