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Ubuntu To Turn Into A Rolling-Release Distribution?

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  • #41
    It will not work

    I have used many a rolling release, Gentoo, Sid, various Debian Testing, Aptosid (Sidux) and a few days with Arch. They all have one thing in common - you spend way too much time on system maintenance. You have to monitor the forums to ensure you do not break something. There is nearly always some package that is not quite right. There can be errors in Ubuntu as well, but generally once you get it right it stays right. Upgrading once every six months is not a chore compared to upgrading every day. Rolling distros are for tinkerers who have the time to devote to just keeping it working, but for those who actually use their computers to do things then some stability is required.

    I have given up on various Debian releases because of Samba never really working properly with my WDTV Live and constant fighting with my NAS. Arch seemed pretty good except it refused to print anything from my Canon printer, some Cups issue that I refused to spend days resolving. Arch's Samba did work well with my peripherals and I will try again once the printer issue resolves.

    Through thick and thin one thing is always constant. I can install Ubuntu and right click share and the WDTV Live is working in seconds. My networked printer prints, my networked scanner scans, my USB TV stick works just by plugging it in, my Creative Zen is plug and play as is my Vado and my Android phone. With my laptop my 3G USB dongle is plug and play. Most of these things are invented elsewhere at RedHat or SUSE etc, but in one distro they all just work.

    To move to a rolling distro is just silly.

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    • #42
      Originally posted by FunkyRider View Post
      Is there anyone concerned that this daily update might not be stable enough for production environment? Hell, even their supposedly official releases are not stable enough for production environment the first half year after the release.
      The proposed Ubuntu daily builds are strictly for testing, not for production.

      In case you missed the video a few posts back, this was a case of bogus reporting by the Register. Ubuntu is not moving to a rolling-release model.

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      • #43
        Originally posted by JeanPaul145 View Post
        And yes I'm aware that strictly speaking, there is support for a nice ol' sudo aptitude update && sudo aptitude [dist]-upgrade but I've seen it go wrong too many times on Kubuntu to trust that process for updating to a new Kubuntu release.
        ...which is exactly why Canonical err against doing that. If you do a dist upgrade properly, using the update-manager app you're supposed to use, you're much less likely to brick your system.

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        • #44
          aphids fly south for the winter

          We have to have milestones. It's hard to remember dates of last known operational-operating systems.

          Developers need static programming interfaces in order to developer quality work. They need stationary development environments to remain comfortable.

          It takes months to learn. It takes years to perfect.

          Quality video games can take past three years to develop. If Sony and Microsoft switch the Application Programming Interface's (API) on a weekly basis you'd never see a title released that was any good.

          Good developers don't upgrade, update, or reinstall. You need to test against known factors. This gets to be almost impossible on a Linux distribution.

          Linux can make it on the Desktop but it will be the distribution that slows down and stays static for a few years that gets us there.


          Rolling releases move too fast for people to keep up.

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          • #45
            Daily builds != rolling release

            Please tell me that someone didn't just hear the words "daily builds", and write a sensationalist article without actually doing any research about what that means (hint: it has nothing to do with Ubuntu becoming a rolling distro).

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            • #46
              Not daily builds

              They have clarified that they are not talking rolling releases, but providing updated packages between releases eg if a new version of Firefox was released.

              They should have done that all along, not just via PPAs.

              Kept the net abuzz for a day about nothing.

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              • #47
                Originally posted by crazycheese View Post
                It depends on case. Sometimes its just changes to the code, sometimes changes to compile or link logic. Most of the time its not required, yet most of the time minor versions are not kept in gentoo as well.
                Rolling release doesn't mean you have to update glibc every other week. That's why Gentoo has the package.mask system, making updates optional (I stick to a glibc that works well for at least a year.)

                A rolling release distro can choose to update end-user software only, with base package updates only when really required. That means getting new versions of stuff like Gnome, KDE, Firefox, your media player, etc, without having to wait six months. Pretty much what people do with PPAs now, but it would be better if that was done by Ubuntu directly.

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                • #48
                  Excpetions could be made (and should) for drivers. Linux is a circus right now; your hardware doesn't work, wait six months, maybe it's fixed then. No. If a fix is there, put it in Ubuntu now, not next year.

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                  • #49
                    Well, I guess that making a rolling release would bring more unstability... but it would provide more fixes which are not merged into distro after beta or rc release to the time when the next version comes.

                    I mostly like current model with some official PPAs for Kubuntu and xorg-edgers or xorg-edgers/radeon PPAs but I miss Ubuntu-patched newer stable kernels in repositories (the Mailine PPA vanilla kernels are not sufficient). There are many major or minor bugs in kernel (mostly with drivers which affect not all but only some people) which are not fixed until the new release (with newer kernel) comes out.

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                    • #50
                      Originally posted by AnonymousCoward View Post
                      Please tell me that someone didn't just hear the words "daily builds", and write a sensationalist article without actually doing any research about what that means (hint: it has nothing to do with Ubuntu becoming a rolling distro).
                      That's exactly what happened here...

                      And as always, the raging anti-Ubuntu trolls came out of the bridge.

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