Tux99 wrote:
On Mon, 1 Nov 2010, Frank Griffin wrote:
Weak point:
Unless you are prepared to do full intensive QA on the updated distro,
the quality of these updated ISOs can be significantly lower than the
quality of the original release ISO. Since it will look, for all
intents and purposes, like the release ISO, that level of quality will
be what people expect of it.
Nonsense. The normal updates are not any more unstable than the original
release, rather the contrary.
I suggest you review MDV's release procedures. Full releases and
security updates go through formal QA. Backports are often not even
tested by the person building the rpm.
Exactly. Even regular (non-security) updates are prone to errors.
Of course occasional glitches can happen but they happen equally on the
original install CDs (as has been proven again and again).
And they get addressed through updates which themselves go through QA.
What difference is there between someone who installs from the original
release CD and then applies updates vs. installing from a CD where the
updates are already included?
In the first case, you can roll back the update. If all you've got is
two ISOs, and you're unfamiliar enough with CLI rpm to be using ISOs to
begin with, you're screwed unless you reinstall (or kept the old image,
which newbies are unlikely to do).
That's one weakness of update CDs. Newbies are going to assume that
everything on CD/DVD is reliable.
I'm all for the idea of updated ISOs that include all updates, too.
Such ISOs will only be up to date the day they are produced. So regular
updates should still be done.
And what do you do if it contains a problematic update ? Recall the CD ?
At least with updates in repository, faulty updates can be withdrawn -
and sometimes are.
- André
