Canonical Could Switch To Rolling Releases For Ubuntu 14.04 and Beyond 222
massivepanic writes "For the longest time Canonical has slapped an LTS ("long term support") moniker on some of their Ubuntu releases. Currently, a new major release of the operating system happens every six months, and is supported for 18 months after release. Whereas in the past when LTS versions received two years support or more, the current model — starting with 12.04 — supports new LTS releases for five years. However, a recent public Google Hangouts session revealed that Canonical has been thinking about switching from the venerable LTS model to a rolling release, starting with version 14.04."
Yay, I think? (Score:5, Insightful)
I like the idea of rolling releases, but given the amount of massively stupid crap that Ubuntu springs on us by just rolling it into a new release (unity, I'm looking at you), I also like the idea of freezing a Ubuntu box at a non-ugly release and having a box that at least receives security updates for a few years
Re:But...Unity. (Score:5, Insightful)
the amount of bitching i hear about unity versus the amount of time it takes to install something else (TM) is ridiculous.
too lazy to apt-get install, but too vehement to shut the fuck up about it online.
nerds are strange.
Be careful (Score:5, Insightful)
If they're going to dump LTS, they need to be REAL careful about what shit they push out. I used Linux for many many years, but finally I just got tired of stuff breaking all the time, and switched to Mac OS, where Apple seems to be reasonably careful not to annoy me too much with their updates. Maybe Linux got better since then, but I doubt it judging by some of the discussions I read about on Slashdot, like massive controversies still going on about KDE vs Gnome, as well as major about faces going on WITHIN KDE and Gnome, AND talk of distros even going away from KDE and Gnone entirely. I don't mind things changing, even largish changes, but you ought to be REAL careful to make it smooth, and I don't see it happening.
Re:Yay, I think? (Score:5, Insightful)
Already have a distro that does that. I believe it is called "Debian".
Re:Great (Score:5, Insightful)
"Tell me, have they ever addressed the LDAP bug that's been sitting in a queue for 2+ years."
That's impossible!
Well, they close the bugs if no further feedback is given in, what? fifteen days? or when the next release is launched.
"It's a joke distro."
Basically yes. It's a pity all that effort wasn't pushed into Debian (and in the Debian way, of course -the worst problem is that Ubuntu has pushed some of its bad manners into Debian too by means of young developers that don't know any better).
Re:Be careful (Score:3, Insightful)
You should have stuck with real Debian, or moved to FreeBSD.
Re:They had better leave server LTS alone.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a half dozen programmers and four (4) IT people, to support a site of several thousand hosts. Most of those hosts are in clusters, of course...
We have to verify and validate the software, put it on thousands of hosts, and then run it until the next upgrade. The name of the game is "stable". We don't want to upgrade the OS any more often than is absolutely required by the application.
Rolling releases are a complete non-starter for us. Sure, they are easier to support from the OS vendors perspective. But, they are absolutely unacceptable for customer whose primary business requirements for the platform are "stable" and "predictable".
Re:Yay, I think? (Score:5, Insightful)
I've tried using LTS on some machines, but it hasn't worked out well. The trouble with it is that Ubuntu's quality is crap, and that applies to LTS releases just as much as non-LTS. For instance, they started gratuitously breaking sound with Jaunty, and as of Precise it's still broken on some machines I use. When important stuff is randomly broken in an LTS release, you end up upgrading to a non-LTS to see if they've fixed the bug.
The root problem is that Ubuntu is more interested in random, useless crap like Unity and ALSA than they are in just fixing bugs and making something that works. Rolling releases won't make that any better or worse. You'll get the bug fixes sooner, but you'll also get new bugs sooner.
Re:Be careful (Score:4, Insightful)
Agreed. 14.04 will still be supported for 5 years, 16.04 for 5 years, etc. The rolling release jsut means more updates in the OS. Personally I'd like this better, I like to be with the new releases and experiment with the new features, but everytime I install a new version of Ubuntu it mucks up a setting I had before..
So with the rolling release you risk having some setting mucked up any time, without warning. Instead of having it mucked up when you install a new release, where the mere fact of installing a new release IS the warning that some settings will be mucked up (if only for the simple reason of changed functionality).
Doesn't sound like an improvement to me.
Re:But...Unity. (Score:4, Insightful)
Look into OpenSUSE, then.
The 11.x/12.x releases have been pretty consistently good for me.
Even better... no Unity to complain about.
(Never saw what the big buzzy was over Ubuntu in any case. I tried it a couple of times and found it marginally acceptable, but annoying.)