Subtitle: does Fedora actually suck?

Hi folks.  This isn't a troll.  We run SL on all of our server systems 
and most of our client systems around here, and I'm pretty happy with 
the situation, except for one thing: we get requests fairly frequently 
for software that our user community genuinely must have, but that is 
not in the current version of SL.  (Examples include Python 2.4, PHP 
5.x, MySQL 5.x, etc.)

We typically respond to this by building parallel copies of the software 
in question:

     foo.tar.gz --> /usr/local/foo

This approach usually works, but it does have some pitfalls, such as 
other programs finding the "wrong" version of foo.

I recently had what I thought was a bright idea: leave SL on the server 
systems, but run Fedora on the client systems.  Then we get 
bleeding-edge software where we need it and stability where we need it. 
  The downside is the necessity for frequent upgrades to the client 
systems, but we can kickstart a lot of those, so that isn't such a big 
issue.

On the other hand, I've seen some words on this list lately that 
indicate that Fedora is buggy, unreliable, etc.  Those kinds of things 
ARE big issues.  I installed Fedora 6 on an ancient PC at home and 
haven't seen any obvious problems with it, except that the X-windows 
display isn't nearly as good as the Windows display was.

If you have any solid experience with Fedora, I'd appreciate hearing 
your opinions of Fedora.  Thanks.

					- Mike
-- 
Michael Hannon            mailto:[log in to unmask]
Dept. of Physics          530.752.4966
University of California  530.752.4717 FAX
Davis, CA 95616-8677