Upgrades sometimes flawed

[Andrew Mathenge]

I doubt that we'd have to wait a long time for broken stuff to be
fixed. An LTS release
gets constant updates and the Update Manager is great in making sure that broken
stuff is fixed right away and delivered as soon as possible.

You won't find any disagreement in this list regarding your statement
on Freedom and
Linux. It's a mantra well known to everyone here. I do appreciate the
effort that Canonical
puts into every launch and the excitement that comes with it when you
are able to
achieve a successful upgrade without fighting too much with failed applications.
I've had good upgrades and very bad ones and in those cases, I *chose*
to revert..

But there is another interesting idea regarding these release dates
that upgrade major
components of the software. This has to do with the coordination
between the major
free software vendors. Mark Shuttleworth calls it a "pulse" in the
industry. If this happens,
then the release cycle of Ubuntu, or Fedora, or any major Linux
desktop would match the
release of MySQL, or Open Office, or device driver vendors, and so on. With this
release coordination, then breakage will be minimised.

His article is interesting... it's here:
http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/159

Andrew.

On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 11:05 AM, Bob Jonkman <bjonkman at sobac.com> wrote:
> On 27 Jan 2009 at 10:02 Andrew Mathenge <ubuntu-ca at lists.ubuntu.com> wrote
> about "Re: Upgrades sometimes flawed[...]"
>
>>Perhaps it's time to re-think that six-month release cycle policy.
>>Would nine-months help bring in a tighter upgrade with fewer defects?
>>
>>Andrew.
>
>
> I don't think so.  Six months is good.
>
> A longer release cycle means that broken stuff in today's kernel may be
> tightened up more that it would be with a shorter release cycle, but it means
> that we have to wait longer for the broken stuff to be fixed.  Also, the pace
> of change is so great that new stuff would be coming out faster than the
> release cycle. eg. Where were Netbooks nine months ago?
>
> There's an argument for upgrading even more frequently - a continuous upgrade /
> improvement cycle.  This is what the "unstable" branches can be used for.  But
> while upgrading continuously may shorten the time to fix one particular error,
> it gives no opportunity for regression testing.  One bug fix may adversely
> affect an otherwise perfectly functional application.
>
> For those people who don't want to participate in the short upgrade cycle
> Ubuntu offers the LTS releases  (8.04 "Hardy Heron" is the most recent) with
> three years of support (five on the server distro).  LTS releases seem to come
> out every two years or so; 10.04 is next:
> http://www.ubuntu.com/products/ubuntu/release-cycle
>
> Remember that Ubuntu is based on the Debian distro, which is one of the slowest
> to release new versions.  If Ubuntu LTS is still too unstable, people may want
> to consider using a Debian release instead.
>
> It's always possible to upgrade piecemeal - if there's a new feature or
> application you want then just install that one by itself, without upgrading
> the entire OS.
>
> The bottom line is that people shouldn't feel forced to upgrade just because
> there's a new release.  The whole point of Software Freedom is the freedom to
> do what's best for YOU.
>
>
> It looks like this has been a topic of discussion for a long time:
>
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-discuss/2008-July/004777.html
>
>
> --Bob.
>
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