Ubuntu To Turn Into A Rolling-Release Distribution?

[grege]

'buntu releases

@TemplarGR
"Those poor souls who use it add 10s of PPA's each just to use all the latest features... Isn't it less stable? If you are going to PPA the whole thing, while not do it officially? "

Because 95% (a guess) of Ubuntu users do not add PPAs. PPAs are for developers and advanced users who have an interest or requirement for a new or updated package.

I have three PPAs active, one for Firefox 4 beta with nightly builds, one for Chromium nightly builds and one for Handbrake. My system is rock solid Kubuntu KDE 4.5 with a 2.5.35 amd64 kernel and fglrx running my Radeon HD4290. I also have 64bit flash directly from Adobe as the Ubuntu supplied one is 32bit with a wrapper. Fglrx gives me WebGL acceleration in both browsers.

On the other hand I have several Ubuntu running friends who do not even know PPAs exist.

People like them like Ubuntu and they like 32bit LTS releases, and they prefer as little change as possible. You obviously love rolling releases and you are suited to rolling releases. But that does not mean everyone else wants or needs the bleeding edge. Ubuntu could have as many as 30 million users, and 28 million of them just want a computer that works with a minimum of effort.

[TemplarGR]

@TemplarGR
"Those poor souls who use it add 10s of PPA's each just to use all the latest features... Isn't it less stable? If you are going to PPA the whole thing, while not do it officially? "

Because 95% (a guess) of Ubuntu users do not add PPAs. PPAs are for developers and advanced users who have an interest or requirement for a new or updated package.

I have three PPAs active, one for Firefox 4 beta with nightly builds, one for Chromium nightly builds and one for Handbrake. My system is rock solid Kubuntu KDE 4.5 with a 2.5.35 amd64 kernel and fglrx running my Radeon HD4290. I also have 64bit flash directly from Adobe as the Ubuntu supplied one is 32bit with a wrapper. Fglrx gives me WebGL acceleration in both browsers.

On the other hand I have several Ubuntu running friends who do not even know PPAs exist.

People like them like Ubuntu and they like 32bit LTS releases, and they prefer as little change as possible. You obviously love rolling releases and you are suited to rolling releases. But that does not mean everyone else wants or needs the bleeding edge. Ubuntu could have as many as 30 million users, and 28 million of them just want a computer that works with a minimum of effort.

My experience tells me otherwise. Almost all people i know who use Ubuntu use PPAs. They are not for advanced users, there is nothing advanced about adding another repo you know.

Also could you provide any stats about them prefering LTS 32bit releases? Because even here on phoronix benchmarks have shown that the 64 bit version is faster. And i remember reading somewhere that 64 bit downloads surpass 32bit downloads. And LTS releases are really old. They won't support newer hardware, and they lack plenty of features. I don't believe any desktop user would use them.

[grege]

My experience tells me otherwise. Almost all people i know who use Ubuntu use PPAs. They are not for advanced users, there is nothing advanced about adding another repo you know.

Also could you provide any stats about them prefering LTS 32bit releases? Because even here on phoronix benchmarks have shown that the 64 bit version is faster. And i remember reading somewhere that 64 bit downloads surpass 32bit downloads. And LTS releases are really old. They won't support newer hardware, and they lack plenty of features. I don't believe any desktop user would use them.

You and your friends are computer heads. You cannot project that small group to the world at large. Why on earth do you think LTS releases exist if no one uses them? A survey of Phoronix users is a tiny sample of people who are devoted to computers in general and specifically Linux. Phoronix is for those interested in the latest technical advances and what might happen in 6 months or a year, or who actively participate in testing. What percentage of the total Linux population do you seriously think that is? I help at the other end of the scale, friends and relatives and people referred for help from our local User Group. People who are pissed off with Windows and just want a computer they can turn on surf the net and read email. They care nothing for 64 bit or latest advances in xorg or PPAs.

In short perfect candidates for Ubuntu LTS.

And there are a lot of them in the world.

I think we are arguing at cross purposes. I do not suggest for a moment that a static distro is perfect for advanced desktop users, just that advanced desktop users are not the majority. That is the beauty of Linux - Arch for you and your friends and Ubuntu LTS for beginners and office drones and normal Ubuntu for those somewhere in between. Plus Fedora and Debian's various flavours for those that want to go down that path. I will always have at least one Ubuntu machine because I have to answer the inquiries of those I help.

cheers

[TemplarGR]

Let me provide an example:

My wife uses a core 2 duo laptop. Back in May, it had Ununtu 10.04 LTS installed. She was fine and liked it. I had installed Ubuntu because it was faster to install and required less maintainance. It would be the first time she would use pure Linux install, before that it was dual boot, so i didn't know if she would keep it. I had in mind that if she liked it and was comfortable, i would later install Arch on it.

Then i decided i wanted the latest nvidia blob, because the distro provided was old. I removed it and tried to go to init 3. I couldn't. I googled to find the way to do it, and i couldn't find anything. I remember when i was an Ubuntu user years ago when i had done this plenty of times. But suddently Ubuntu changed the system. In google i found plenty of noise on the subject but no useful information. I lost my patience and asked her: Do you like Linux only? She said yes. I said i will install Arch then which always provide the latest nvidia blob in the official repo.

2 hours later the installation was complete, with everything. I had setup Arch in the way Ubuntu was before. I showed her how to do the updates from the temirnal herself, because that was all that i required from her. Updating her system, any other change i would provide.

What is interesting, is that a week later she told me that with Arch her laptop was running really cool, while on the Ubuntu 10.04 LTS it was really hot. I couldn't have known this because i am not using her laptop. Later asking around i found out that there have been many complaints about power management in 10.04 LTS.

Would you like to know how easy it was to setup the power management in Arch? Just a few packages and a few configurations... And Ubuntu 10.04 LTS was broken...

Since May, i have replaced GNOME on her Arch with KDE. She has updated from kernel 2.6.34 to 2.6.36, changed xorg, nvidia, python from 2 to 3, everything. Not a single breakage, not much maintainance, no format, just updating and a few conf file changes here and there all these months. Her system is rock stable, and she would never want to return to Windows or Ubuntu again. Most of the time she maintains her laptop herself now, she has managed to learn a little of the command line and pacman. It is all she needs.

My wife teaches ECDL and she tells me how much she hates Windows 7 at work. Arch with KDE is more stable and faster. It boots faster, it starts apps faster, it uses far less memory, and has more eye candy too. I always kid and tell her "tell them to switch to Arch" and she laughs, from her personal experience she knows that Arch being difficult or unstable is a myth. Note that she does not know much about Unix, and she has a degree on economics, not computer science...

So now, she is a perfect example of an office drone who uses Arch and is very happy. Do not tell me that rolling releases are not for beginners, they are, it is the beginners that lack the motivation to switch.

[BlackStar]

Do not tell me that rolling releases are not for beginners, they are, it is the beginners that lack the motivation to switch.

It is not beginner-friendly because (a) it is more difficult to install the first time and (b) it has higher upkeep, because the increased rate of updates introduces a higher potential of regressions.

Had your wife's laptop come with an Ati graphics card, would she still be using Arch? With every "pacman -Syu" having the chance to kill drivers, chances are she'd have thrown either the laptop or Arch out of the window.

[TemplarGR]

It is not beginner-friendly because (a) it is more difficult to install the first time and (b) it has higher upkeep, because the increased rate of updates introduces a higher potential of regressions.

Had your wife's laptop come with an Ati graphics card, would she still be using Arch? With every "pacman -Syu" having the chance to kill drivers, chances are she'd have thrown either the laptop or Arch out of the window.

Since my wife doesn't game, she would be using the opensource drivers, like i do in my desktop.

[grege]

You had to set it up for her

Sorry, but you had to set it up for her first. And you are always there for help and advice. And clearly she is no dummy so being taught how to do updates is not like talking to a brick wall.

No beginner could be bothered to run the Arch install while reading web instructions on another machine, then hand editing config files. It can only work for a beginner if someone sets it up first and then teaches them the basics. If one of my helpees asked me to set up Arch I would happily do it, because they would have been interested enough to have found out it existed and what it all means. But generally once setup and shown the basics I rarely hear from them again. And Ubuntu works "good enough" for most people.

My wife's business XP machine always works perfectly as well, and my daughter's Ubuntu never misses a beat - as far as they are concerned it is no problem to maintain a computer, because they don't. And they both use their machines for hours every day without a thought of the operating system. For them computers are just a tool. My daughter has suddenly got curious and wants me to instruct her in a complete build from parts and Linux install during our coming summer (Southern Hemisphere) school vacation. If she then gets interested enough to continue learning then Arch would be a great learning tool. We shall see.

I do not think we will ever agree. My opinion will not change - Ubuntu should not become a rolling release, and they have already said that it will not happen.

BTW

The magic keystoke is CTL-ALT-F1, that will dump you to a terminal login. I do not know why they abandoned CTL-ALT-BKSPCE, it was a Debian or Xorg thing that Ubuntu inherited.

[TemplarGR]

No we will not agree and i will tell you why:

I had to setup Arch for her, that is true, and i also have to make "difficult" configuration changes too. But that is not because Arch is a rolling release distro, but because it lacks gui installation and automated setup.

What my example proves, is that a rolling release vanilla upstream model like Arch, is still stable and doesn't need that much maintainance at all.

Imagine Arch, but with a dedicated team behind it with the target to provide GUI tools and automated scripts for setup. Something similar to Chakra for example, without the kdemod.

Imagine if Ubuntu was based in Arch and not Debian. Would that be unstable, or user unfriendly? No.

It will not be too difficult to create such a distro i believe. In fact, if enough users could be bothered, we could put Ubuntu to shame with such a distro easily. But it seems most Arch users do not need such a distro and do not want to spend their time on it(including myself).

[Ex-Cyber]

The magic keystoke is CTL-ALT-F1, that will dump you to a terminal login. I do not know why they abandoned CTL-ALT-BKSPCE, it was a Debian or Xorg thing that Ubuntu inherited.

They abandoned Ctrl-Alt-Backspace because it was very easy for people with some keyboard configurations (e.g. sticky modifier keys, certain layout-switching combos) to hit it accidentally.

Example: configured to switch layouts via Ctrl+Alt+Shift - you type a character and realize you're in the wrong layout; then you're likely to hit Ctrl+Alt to switch layout and then hit backspace to delete the initial character, and all it takes is a tiny amount of overlap to blow away all your applications with no warning/confirmation. That's pretty much a usability disaster.

Xorg devs responded to this by making the "kill server" combo configurable via XKB, so you can still set up Ctrl+Alt+Backspace if you really want it.

[yotambien]

I agree with TemplarGR. I don't really see what should make a rolling release distribution inherently unstable. It's nowhere written that software packages must be immediately available. This is, if upstream releases a new version of software X, there's no need to allow users to get it straight away with zero testing. And conversely, not having a rolling release model does not automagically provide stability. Most will agree that RH or Debian are more stable than Ubuntu, for instance. So it all comes down to how much QA is done before releasing anything. A competent team of distribution developers should be able to make sure everything is in place and that new packages don't break anything.

Actually, a well designed rolling release distribution should be more user friendly in my opinion, since updates/upgrades are known to work and easy to perform within the mechanisms provided by the distribution, as opposed to having to chase weird repositories and bringing down the terminal to paste some commands found on some website. Also, think about kernel upgrades that provide support for new hardware (say a wireless USB adapter or a new printer). On the one hand you just let your system do what it has to do, on the other you either a) install a binary kernel from somewhere (where?); b) compile a fresh kernel (!); c) reinstall the OS (!!!).