Fedora Might Shift To A Tick-Tock Release Cadence

Written by Michael Larabel in Fedora on 4 December 2014 at 02:29 PM EST. 25 Comments
FEDORA
Inspired by Intel's tick-tock model of processor development cycles in flipping between architecture and manufacturing advancements, Fedora Linux developers are currently considering a similar model in flipping between feature releases.

Fedora Project Leader Matthew Miller brought up for public discussion the idea of Fedora moving to a tick-tock release cadence. Under the proposal, it would allow alternating between a focus on release features and on release engineering / QA / tooling. The "tick" releases of Fedora would drive features and reduce release engineering changes while the "tock" would focus more on the engineering / tooling changes.

This method would allow for the continual improvement of Fedora with less chances for delay due to many changes across the stack all at once, would focus on the "tock" releases for the later months of the year, and would set user expectations with regard to features and stability -- allowing conservative users to skip the more ambitious changes until they've matured.

The tick-tock release cadence was just brought to the Fedora devel list today and so far it's yielded very mixed responses. We'll see going forward if the Fedora Linux release cadence will changes, but at least there's talk over improving the scheduling of Fedora releases and other initiatives to reduce the likelihood of Fedora's notorious and long-occurring release delays.
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