Ubuntu 14.04 LTS Planning A Linux 3.13 Franken Kernel

[vk512]

Absolutely need new stuff? or can you wait till 14.04.1? The choice is clear

+1 to those who understand the importance to stay on schedule. Apparently not everybody here knows about project management, or stayed with oldies "release when ready" of Debian.

Canonical has commercial objectives, and these imply to release an LTS every other year + Hardware Enablement every 6 months to include new stuff that web compagnies need on their servers. Debian is rock-solid, very conservative, and the evident trade-off is it's lagging behind in terms of innovative stuff support so it's not what web services companies will consider. But they will need a firm schedule from Ubuntu to plan their own services upgrades. The same as with startups on the WebRTC market needed the firm schedule of Chrome and Firefox in support of the technology, and then upgrading their servers when X is mainlined and stabilized to implement new capabilities.

Long story short: two many innovative services depend on new stuff being available in server technology.

But system76 also depends on new stuff because it's an innovative approach too. Fewer people buy PCs, and those who do want the very best of hardware + OS.

Anyway it is safer to wait till the first point release 14.04.1 in August if you can wait 3 months; which is totally clear in Ubuntu's schedule.

[mrugiero]

By backporting Broadwell support only Broadwell support is untested, by using 3.14 everything is untested.

You are right. I was misguided by Michael's opinion in the article (I was really sleepy when I read the article the first time) about it having TONS (like he said) of back ports, and didn't pay attention to the fact the one bit they really care about back porting is Broadwell, and not a huge amount of code. As long as it is all contained in a module, it shouldn't mean problems for anyone else.

Here's a question, WHY DOES ANYONE EVEN CARE?!? I use a ppa's to get newer drivers as well as install binaries from time to time. How's that any different? Non-story here.

Because the PPA doesn't promise any stability, and you chose to use it knowingly. Ideally, using the vanilla release should imply stability, and if anything breaks you blame Canonical. That is relevant for their commercial customers.

[Vim_User]

But if you release with 3.15 even more hardware will be supported, so maybe we should wait another 3 months, and then we see 3.16 will have even more or better hardware support, and we add some more months to the schedule, and ..., and ..., and after 60 years you haven't seen a new release yet.

Relevant for hardware vendors is only that the hardware they sell is fully supported. I wouldn't buy a mchine with an OS that doesn't fully support the hardware. If I have to replace the OS anyways there is no point in buying from System76.

[mrugiero]

Relevant for hardware vendors is only that the hardware they sell is fully supported. I wouldn't buy a mchine with an OS that doesn't fully support the hardware. If I have to replace the OS anyways there is no point in buying from System76.

Right, but as they sell newer hardware, they are likely to sell more.