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Ubuntu Looking Again At Rolling Release Model

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  • #21
    Originally posted by dalingrin View Post
    I'm not sure why everyone assumes a rolling release means packages will be released early. To me rolling release means, release the packages when they're ready. Under the current 6 month release cycle, changes are hurried and forced due to the 6 month deadline. A rolling release means there is no such deadline(it would basically be a 2 year deadline).

    As a side benefit it also means users might not have to wait 6 months to get an updated version of LibreOffice, Empathy, Transmission, etc. The solution to this now is to have ten billion PPAs, which I really hate. Many packages, especially top level applications, are inconsequential to update. For them to be held to a 6 month update cycle is a bit ridiculous in my opinion.
    This pretty much sums up how I feel.

    Though at this point I would just settle for getting back a PPA for proprietary video drivers.

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    • #22
      They should definitely go this the rolling release model.

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      • #23
        Thankfully, if you read the mailing list thread deeply enough, the Tech Architect for Canonical came along and applied a bit of common sense to this whole "rolling release cuz its teh l33tn3ss lolz. do it NOW!" crowd. If they do eventually go rolling release, it would hopefully be done in a far more sensible way than distros like Arch, that are broken and buggy as the filthy kids' hair much of the time.

        Personally I'm no fan of therolling release model. And yes, I've used rolling release before and been less than impressed. I've used Linux exclusively since '95 and had experience with a bit of everything, including long enough stints with both Arch and Gentoo. Long enough to know that I won't be using a rolling release on any of my machines.

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        • #24
          Originally posted by VoodooSyxx View Post
          Thankfully, if you read the mailing list thread deeply enough, the Tech Architect for Canonical came along and applied a bit of common sense to this whole "rolling release cuz its teh l33tn3ss lolz. do it NOW!" crowd. If they do eventually go rolling release, it would hopefully be done in a far more sensible way than distros like Arch, that are broken and buggy as the filthy kids' hair much of the time.

          Personally I'm no fan of therolling release model. And yes, I've used rolling release before and been less than impressed. I've used Linux exclusively since '95 and had experience with a bit of everything, including long enough stints with both Arch and Gentoo. Long enough to know that I won't be using a rolling release on any of my machines.
          Distros like Arch that are broken and buggy? Nice attempt at trolling dude...

          Actually, i have used every 6 month release of Ubuntu and i mean each one, and i always found way more bugs in it than i ever found on Arch...

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          • #25
            Originally posted by TemplarGR View Post
            Distros like Arch that are broken and buggy? Nice attempt at trolling dude...

            Actually, i have used every 6 month release of Ubuntu and i mean each one, and i always found way more bugs in it than i ever found on Arch...
            It wasn't a troll. It's a fact. Actually, my last go round with Arch was helping one of my roommates sort out a freshly installed system when the geius devs decided to relocate everything from /usr/lib to /lib, and not provide any fresh install media. You honestly think the average Ubuntu user is up for manually relocating critical system libraries to rescue a douched up system less than 10 minutes after install? If so, you have way more faith in the average user than I.

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            • #26
              I think that this discussion lack a definition of what a rolling release is. The way I see it is that a rolling release means updated packages are pushed to users when a new version is available, period.

              Thus, if I understand it correctly, a rolling release may be bleeding edge pushing early alpha packages or may be very conservative only pushing thourougly tested stable versions. The difference from what is done today is simply that the users get each individual package when it is released, and not in a pre-specified date in time when the whole system is updated. So if the packages pushed will be more or less bleeding edge than what it is today is probably a completely different discussion.

              From what I've gathered from the mailing list, the main problem is not really with stability, but with support. How to support a moving target?

              Having said that, my opinion is that the best model has already been nailed by Windows/MacOSX/Android/iOS etc. Core components of the OS remain stable in order to provide a stable target for developers while other things are updated (no need to wait for the next version of the OS to get updated XBMC or LO). Basically, everything that breaks compatibility at any level, should only be implemented into the next version of the OS, while other updates, bugfixes and security patches should be pushed asap. The problem is that this would require a lot of additional work from canonical in order to backport everything to the stable branch.

              PPAs are not a proper solution because users must decide by themselves which one to trust or not.

              As always, feel free to correct me.

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              • #27
                I do not know how Ubuntu wants to do it.

                OpenSUSE has a rolling release. ( two versions actually )

                It offers the latest stable packages, and is updated more often then the normal releases, like 12.1 12.2 12.3.

                There is also a factory version, latest software, kind of bleeding edge version.



                The Tumbleweed project provides a rolling updates version of openSUSE containing the latest stable versions of all software instead of relying on rigid periodic release cycles. The project does this for users that want the newest, but stable software.

                The difference to Factory is that Factory is bleeding edge, often experimental, not yet stabilized software that needs more work to become useful. Tumbleweed contains the latest stable applications and is ready for daily use.
                Last edited by Gps4l; 01 March 2013, 09:46 AM.

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                • #28
                  Originally posted by VoodooSyxx View Post
                  It wasn't a troll. It's a fact. Actually, my last go round with Arch was helping one of my roommates sort out a freshly installed system when the geius devs decided to relocate everything from /usr/lib to /lib, and not provide any fresh install media. You honestly think the average Ubuntu user is up for manually relocating critical system libraries to rescue a douched up system less than 10 minutes after install? If so, you have way more faith in the average user than I.
                  I don't think that Canonical would leave such migration tasks for end users with rolling (or periodic) release(s).
                  IME, all Ubuntu upgrades, including distribution version upgrades, have worked without borking the system for years. I don't see how rolling release would change that.

                  Originally posted by Figueiredo View Post
                  ...
                  Having said that, my opinion is that the best model has already been nailed by Windows/MacOSX/Android/iOS etc. Core components of the OS remain stable in order to provide a stable target for developers while other things are updated (no need to wait for the next version of the OS to get updated XBMC or LO). Basically, everything that breaks compatibility at any level, should only be implemented into the next version of the OS, while other updates, bugfixes and security patches should be pushed asap. The problem is that this would require a lot of additional work from canonical in order to backport everything to the stable branch.

                  PPAs are not a proper solution because users must decide by themselves which one to trust or not.

                  As always, feel free to correct me.
                  I don't think that the Windows model is very good. Users install untrusted software from untrusted sources, computers (and devices) are full of outdated and vulnerable software and new OS releases break compatibility with software and hardware. And people are stuck with old OS versions for years.
                  It works because the whole industry targets single OS so all big new hardware and software features come at same time with the new version of OS.

                  Rolling release model is better if interfaces and libraries are properly versioned and treated with care.

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                  • #29
                    Originally posted by VoodooSyxx View Post
                    It wasn't a troll. It's a fact. Actually, my last go round with Arch was helping one of my roommates sort out a freshly installed system when the geius devs decided to relocate everything from /usr/lib to /lib, and not provide any fresh install media. You honestly think the average Ubuntu user is up for manually relocating critical system libraries to rescue a douched up system less than 10 minutes after install? If so, you have way more faith in the average user than I.
                    Whenever they make changes like that, pacman (normally) automates the process. The specific change you're talking about (in July 2012) did have a special situation which required manual adjustment, but I didn't need to do anything on my machine.

                    That said, it's true Arch does sometimes require it's users to do advanced things (cause it's designed for advanced users), but that's only because they'd rather make changes faster (leaving the details up to the users) instead of writing scripts to automate all the conditions. That doesn't mean that Ubuntu (or other user-friendly distros) couldn't hold off on releasing core changes until the proper automation scripts had been written and fully tested. Since these changes are part of the system core, you probably want to lag their release farther behind anyways (to catch more bugs), and they wouldn't really effect user-applications like Office, Gimp, Inkscape, Blender, etc.. all those could still be released "day of" without any problems.

                    Look at Chakra's Half-rolling release model: http://chakra-linux.org/wiki/index.p..._Release_Model
                    This is exactly the kind of release model Ubuntu should adopt: Stable core, Bleeding apps.
                    Last edited by F i L; 01 March 2013, 11:57 AM.

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                    • #30
                      Originally posted by VoodooSyxx View Post
                      It wasn't a troll. It's a fact. Actually, my last go round with Arch was helping one of my roommates sort out a freshly installed system when the geius devs decided to relocate everything from /usr/lib to /lib, and not provide any fresh install media. You honestly think the average Ubuntu user is up for manually relocating critical system libraries to rescue a douched up system less than 10 minutes after install? If so, you have way more faith in the average user than I.
                      That was a giant change, that I also got burned by. Mainly because I didn't check the website before hand. If you see anything major getting updated, you stop for 2 seconds and pull up archlinux.org its really simple, if you did check before hand, they told you how to fix it. (Also it was /lib to /usr/lib, not the other way around) and the next install media (1 month later. They do a new one every month, been like that for a long time) did have the change automatically.
                      All opinions are my own not those of my employer if you know who they are.

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