Ubuntu 16.04.4 LTS Planned For Release 1 March

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Ubuntu 16.04.4 LTS Planned For Release 1 March

The delayed Ubuntu 16.04.4 point release is now expected to become available at the start of March...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ubuntu-16.04.4-LTS-Revised-Plan

[paintbynumbers]

It seems reasonable for desktops but Ubuntu/Debian still get used for business/servers. It's nice to have security issues and bugs fixed for 5 years without breaking changed popping in causing busy work.

[elvis]

What a waste of human resources, Debian derivatives and point release distributions. A modern operating system does roll.

As a business user of Ubuntu LTS on both the workstation desktop and server, I respectfully disagree.

[dungeon]

What a waste of human resources, Debian derivatives and point release distributions. A modern operating system does roll.

I heard that modern rolling distro is another day broken, is that true?

[andre30correia]

Not true. Thaís deviam fan Boy os a troll. Ubuntu Will roll 4.13 and mesa 17.2. But ok. Continue to use the modern xfce

[Ray54]

I like point releases as they fit into the way I like to update 6 linux machines I maintain. What I expect from a point release is for it to have been checked against a huge regression test case library before release, so that I don't have family members saying this or that now does not work. I can see that for many enthusiasts a rolling release is what they want, but for casual users and people maintaining large numbers of machines, then point releases should have major advantages.

[Gannet]

They releasing a new LTS's but still not fixing a bug which prevents normal using ubuntu in KVM since 16.04.2: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...g/+bug/1719038

[cybertraveler]

What I'd like to see is a distro do something inbetween Arch and Ubuntu LTS. I'd like to see it create stable releases, but ship new down-stream created minor & point releases of the software in their stable releases to their customers.

For example: Imagine the distro ships Mesa v18.0 and Python 2.7.13. When Mesa 18.1 and Python 2.7.14 are rolled out, they would package them up and ship them. You'd get less stability than a traditional fixed-release distro, but it would be more stable than a rolling release distro. They'd obviously have to keep track of which packages follow Semantic Versioning and which don't and they'd have to be very careful with updates to packages which don't follow it. Some projects (eg GTK+ 3.x) haven't maintained backwards compatibility when bumping their minor version number.

[Spooktra]

What's the point of an LTS point release when the next LTS is just a a couple of months away?

[cybertraveler]

What's the point of an LTS point release when the next LTS is just a a couple of months away?

For some users upgrading to the next major LTS release is a time consuming or expensive process. As such they may wish to stay with each LTS release for as along as possible to reduce the overall costs. For example: imagine a school with 30 computers that run Ubuntu 16.04. 1 system admin and support technician may be maintaining those computers. Switching to the next LTS release may mean:
- retraining staff
- fixing issues related to the major new versions of the included software.
- getting third-party software working on the new version of Ubuntu
- performing a full upgrade of every computer

The 16.04 point releases would be of benefit to this hypothetical sys admin. If the admin needs to buy a replacement computer because one fails, the point release means that the more hardware is supported than the version of the distro prior to the point release. This means the number of computers for the admin to choose from is increased. As such the admin can likely find a better system for a lower price.

Mesa updates (included in the point releases) often increase the performance of the GPU too. I have done benchmarks before and after doing point release upgrades on Ubuntu and seen incredible improvements (in my case it was with an Intel GPU).

Finally: the point releases can include improvements to drivers you are already using. I have a touch screen monitor that used to cause Ubuntu to lock-up. During one of the point release updates my touch screen driver was updated and I no longer experienced lock ups. This was a really nice hasle free experience for me. I had the same familiar working version of Ubuntu but with faster 3D acceleration and a more stable touch screen driver.