Views from an Red Hat -> Ubuntu -> Fedora migrator

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Mon, Oct 22, 2012 at 03:32:42PM -0400, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:
> [In defense of Ubuntu, they kind of gave a hint that the 12.04 wasn't
> stable.  They recommended waiting for 12.04.1.  Still, I think that is
> kind of funny.]
> 
> I like the idea of a rolling release.  I'm not sure why that isn't the
> norm.
> 
> Perhaps because certain changes have cascading effects, ones that
> almost require a "flag day".
> 
> - "a major transition (perl 5.12 to 5.14 for example)"
> 
> - switching to NetworkManager "without a net" (pun intended).
> 
> - switching to systemd
> 
> Could all those be reasonably captured in accurate dependencies?  I'd hope 
> so.  But capturing dependencies outside the distro (eg. in users own code 
> or practice) isn't as easy.
> 
> Perhaps because users are not ready for continuous change if it has 
> observable effects.  Maybe they like punctuated equilibrium 
>   <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuated_equilibrium>
> 
> At one point, releases were meant to let the vendor resell the product to 
> you at intervals.
> 
> Debian's releases are so infrequent that they drive a significant number 
> of users to unstable.  If unstable were billed as a rolling release, and 
> everyone drew the right inferences, it would be pretty neat: the best of 
> both worlds.

And some people will run stable with select pieces from stable-backports.
That's the sensible way to run a server that matters.

> It's a mystery to me.

To some extent the debian name 'unstable' scares people.  It isn't named
'unstable' because it is 'unstable'.  It has the name because it is
always changing.  It is the opposite of debian 'stable' which never
changes (and also happens to be very stable as far as reliability,
but that's because it is well tested).

-- 
Len Sorensen
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists