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Ubuntu Rolling Release Proposal

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Re: Ubuntu Rolling Release Proposal

#51

Post by IgorPartola »

gtaylor wrote: post #23
ohazi wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I agree that ubuntu's time based releases are generally a better experience that debian's "whenever it's ready" stable releases. Debian's testing and unstable branches are rolling releases though, and those were the only alternatives I was actually considering.

Although, I'm not sure we can even look at the Debian when trying to predict what a rolling release Ubuntu would look like (even considering that they are "relatives"). The current difference in manpower and mind share is pretty big between these two related distros. Regardless of which one each of us may like better, Canonical has the manpower and mindshare to probably have a bit more success with this model. I real…

I was under the impression that the Debian team is much larger than Cannonical. This is why they have always said that they could not do what they do without Debian. The biggest problem with a rolling release is that you constantly have to reboot the server to apply kernel upgrades, which you have to do less with LTS (though the first 6 months after the release it feels like a weekly chore).

Re: Ubuntu Rolling Release Proposal

#52

Post by Recoil42 »

hristov wrote: post #50

This repeated notion of a truly converged OS is really annoying and it is very disappointing to see Ubuntu continue to pursue it despite the loud complaints of most of their users. Lets point out the obvious: the user interaction of a small handheld device is very different than that of a computer with a full size monitor and mouse. Thus any os's on those two devices have to have different UI features. That's it. Of…

>Lets point out the obvious: the user interaction of a small handheld device is very different than that of a computer with a full size monitor and mouse.

And what happens in-between? What happens in the case of tablets? Notebooks with a touchscreen? Future devices like large format displays with full UI, and future paradigms like gesture control?

Re: Ubuntu Rolling Release Proposal

#53

Post by nonamegiven »

dpearson wrote: post #49
eliben wrote: post #46

I watch Ubuntu's recent steps with trepidation. I love using it for a home Linux machine (indeed upgrading just to LTS-es), and I could not care less about its "convergence" aspirations. I don't want Ubuntu on my phone or my tablet, or at least I don't care. I worry that eventually its mobile plans will bury the desktop Ubuntu, move it out of focus, so to say. When that happens, I wonder whither I should turn. Debian…

I used to use Debian, and I'm not sure I'd go back. On one hand, the stability was wonderful (Debian was pretty much bulletproof for me), but packages were, for stable, quite old. Hardware compatibility isn't quite as good: hardware (including a USB Wi-Fi dongle) that Ubuntu autodetects and has no trouble with became an adventure to get working. I tracked stable, so maybe testing would be better in terms of package o…

Depending on what you do with your machine(s), it might make sense for you to go with whatever versions come with the vast majority of the packages, but for the few that matter to you, manage them yourself. For example, I use Oracle's Virtualbox PPA, and it just updated as a normal software update last night. That's 4.2.x, compared to Ubuntu's 4.1.x. For things that aren't PPA'd, you'd need to pay closer attention. It's an option.

Re: Ubuntu Rolling Release Proposal

#54

Post by moxie »

What's interesting is that they are in part re-creating the original problem they were trying to solve.

The complaints about Debian were that they only cut a release like every two years. The Debian response was that people who wanted more timely updates could run the "testing" branch, which was a "rolling" release.

Ubuntu promised to solve the slow release cycles and the instability of a rolling branch by cutting stable and well-composed releases on a rigorous six month schedule.

This announcement sounds a lot like the original Debian model they were trying to get away from.

Re: Ubuntu Rolling Release Proposal

#55

Post by moxie »

What's interesting is that they are in part re-creating the original problem they were trying to solve.

The complaints about Debian were that they only cut a release like every two years. The Debian response was that people who wanted more timely updates could run the "testing" branch, which was a "rolling" release.

Ubuntu promised to solve the slow release cycles and the instability of a rolling branch by cutting stable and well-composed releases on a rigorous six month schedule.

This announcement sounds a lot like the original Debian model they were trying to get away from.

Re: Ubuntu Rolling Release Proposal

#56

Post by gizmo686 »

moxie wrote: post #54

What's interesting is that they are in part re-creating the original problem they were trying to solve. The complaints about Debian were that they only cut a release like every two years. The Debian response was that people who wanted more timely updates could run the "testing" branch, which was a "rolling" release. Ubuntu promised to solve the slow release cycles and the instability of a rolling branch by cutting st…

A difference is that Debians testing branch was a testing branch, and as such did not have the same effort and priority put in to keeping it stable. Even as a rolling release, I would expect Ubuntu's main reopositories to be more stable than debian tesdting.

Re: Ubuntu Rolling Release Proposal

#57

Post by gtaylor »

IgorPartola wrote: post #51
gtaylor wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although, I'm not sure we can even look at the Debian when trying to predict what a rolling release Ubuntu would look like (even considering that they are "relatives"). The current difference in manpower and mind share is pretty big between these two related distros. Regardless of which one each of us may like better, Canonical has the manpower and mindshare to probably have a bit more success with this model. I real…

I was under the impression that the Debian team is much larger than Cannonical. This is why they have always said that they could not do what they do without Debian. The biggest problem with a rolling release is that you constantly have to reboot the server to apply kernel upgrades, which you have to do less with LTS (though the first 6 months after the release it feels like a weekly chore).

I am sure they are larger, but I highly doubt they invest as much time (full-time), and do it as cohesively as Canonical. That's without factoring in all of the volunteers and other unpaid contributors. Debian has a notoriously slow, bikesheddy decision-making process, also.

Whether you like them or not, Canonical is probably going to be able to do this a bit better. They really can't afford to not do it any better. The mindshare difference is particularly staggering right now. This isn't a direct measure of mind share, but take this as an example:

http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=debian%2C%20ubuntu%2C...

Re: Ubuntu Rolling Release Proposal

#58

Post by gizmo686 »

Wilya wrote: post #47
yogo wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's so much on the bleeding edge in Arch as most people think and packages are usually upgraded in such a way so that dependencies don't cause problems in other packages (at least from my experience). The key has always been to always do a system upgrade and not upgrade individual packages, i.e. always run pacman -Syu or pacman -Syu . In four years I've never seen anything break (knock on wood) aside f…

Arch is very good if you run it as your main system and keep it updated very frequently. Forget it for six months (because it's an unused multiboot, or whatever) and try to do an upgrade, and it might be more painful. I got burnt by the glibc mess last summer, where you had to run a specific set of --force things in a given order to get through and if you didn't, well, you lost your /lib (at which point it's game ove…

Couldn't you solve that problem with some type of repository snapshoting/versioning. So if you try to update more than, say, 1 month, the system installs the updates incrementally.

Re: Ubuntu Rolling Release Proposal

#59

Post by gizmo686 »

IgorPartola wrote: post #51
gtaylor wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although, I'm not sure we can even look at the Debian when trying to predict what a rolling release Ubuntu would look like (even considering that they are "relatives"). The current difference in manpower and mind share is pretty big between these two related distros. Regardless of which one each of us may like better, Canonical has the manpower and mindshare to probably have a bit more success with this model. I real…

I was under the impression that the Debian team is much larger than Cannonical. This is why they have always said that they could not do what they do without Debian. The biggest problem with a rolling release is that you constantly have to reboot the server to apply kernel upgrades, which you have to do less with LTS (though the first 6 months after the release it feels like a weekly chore).

Doesn't Linux support hotswapping kernels?

Re: Ubuntu Rolling Release Proposal

#60

Post by pyre »

YokoZar wrote: post #48
homeomorphic wrote: post #16

I'm sure the decision wasn't taken lightly, and I'm sure Canonical has concluded that an 18 month LTS + rolling makes the most sense for the project. As a user, I am a bit worried about rolling releases though. Maybe someone here can alleviate my worries? As I see it, software has to change. The question for distros is just when? A rolling distro sees such changes continuously, and each package may in principle chang…

The decision hasn't been made yet. Canonical's CTO may have decided he likes it, but the Ubuntu project hasn't yet given it a pass. If you've got workflow-critical programs you don't want updating, use the LTS release. That's what it's for.

I think the real issue is when infrastructure things move.

How would the move to PulseAudio have worked in a rolling release? Would someone with a new install end up with PulseAudio, but someone with an existing install, would just never have it installed unless they knew what it was and started poking around for it?

The same for the transition to using evdev for (e.g.) mouse-handling in X.org rather than defining things in xorg.conf.

I know that Debian has lived through these transitions, but my impression was that the packages were setup in a way that allowed people to keep the old config, or move to the new one. That said, it seems like these issues could be more complex than a 'human being' (Ubuntu's target market) would be able to decipher.

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