2 years is too long
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| keithcu Jul 29, 2009 4:43 PM EDT |
They should have done it every 1 year. |
| garymax Jul 29, 2009 4:48 PM EDT |
Given Debian's track record, to standardize on any cycle is good news--especially a 2 year cycle. Long enough for those who don't want to upgrade every 6 months (i.e. Ubuntu) but short enough to stay relatively up to date. |
| keithcu Jul 29, 2009 4:53 PM EDT |
The reason why is that it is too hard for people to plan. If you made a plan to say: re-do your kitchen over the next 2 years, what exactly would that plan look like? Goof of for 21 months, and then work for 3 months. If people don't want to update to the latest version, they don't have to. In the early years of Debian, they shipped quite frequently: http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/project-history/ch-release... |
| dinotrac Jul 29, 2009 5:54 PM EDT |
keithcu - In the early years of Debian, lots of people frowned mightily and ran stuff from unstable because you couldn't really do a nice Debian workstation (as opposed to server) any other way. A 2 year cycle is too long, but infinitely better than, well, infinitely longer. |
| herzeleid Jul 29, 2009 6:14 PM EDT |
@garymax - FWIW we ubuntu users aren't obligated to upgrade every 6 months. At work I run an ubuntu LTS desktop, which means about 2 years between upgrades. Of course, I could upgrade every 6 months if I wanted to, but I tend to run the new non-LTS releases on less critical systems to see how they do... |
| garymax Jul 29, 2009 6:37 PM EDT |
@herzeleid I know this very well. I was making a comparison between release dates not the necessity of upgrading. Point taken, however. |
| Steven_Rosenber Jul 29, 2009 6:44 PM EDT |
A two-year release cycle for Debian should mean those two years as Stable plus an additional year as Old-Stable, meaning a defined three years of support for each release. That's what I've been asking for. I like to know exactly how long a release will be supported. This pretty much makes every Debian release a 3-year LTS. Since Lenny went stable in Feb. 2009, the project should continue providing security patches for Etch (now Old-Stable) through Feb. 2010, giving Etch a supported life (as Stable and Old-Stable) from April 2007 until then -- almost but not quite 3 years. If Squeeze goes stable in the first part of 2010, does that mean Lenny will only be Old-Stable (and get the requisite security patches) until the first part of 2011, giving it an effective life of only 2 years? That's probably long enough ... but all will be forgiven if the Intel-Xorg issues are solved for my old hardware (which I'm not giving up so easily ... unless I fall into money). (Can you tell I'm running Debian again? ... as of this afternoon) For those who think 2 years is too long, there's always Testing and Sid ... |
| azerthoth Jul 29, 2009 6:49 PM EDT |
When I ran Debian it was almost always testing, which while it does have some lag time could hardly be called stale. Eventually though I started having issues with all forms of it and took my training wheels off. |
| Steven_Rosenber Jul 29, 2009 7:05 PM EDT |
Quoting:... took my training wheels off. Meaning??? I, too, had problems with Lenny in the testing phase and gave up at one point (although my deal-breaker problem is now solved ... and yes, it's Xorg-related). |
| gus3 Jul 29, 2009 7:28 PM EDT |
Quoting:Meaning???He switched to a real distro. /me ducks the flying objects (but no chairs!) and runs like you-know-what |
| bigg Jul 29, 2009 7:30 PM EDT |
As I understand it, it's not a two-year release cycle, it's just a guarantee that there will be more than 24 months between releases. There's still great uncertainty, if the term release means anything to you. |
| Steven_Rosenber Jul 29, 2009 7:45 PM EDT |
Nuts! |
| garymax Jul 29, 2009 9:58 PM EDT |
@bigg But then again, Slackers don't have this issue... |
| bigg Jul 29, 2009 10:04 PM EDT |
Yes, I left Debian because I didn't like choosing between antique software and a development version of a distro. |
| azerthoth Jul 30, 2009 1:39 AM EDT |
Steven, meaning I went to a source based distro that is multiply more configurable and tailorable than a binary based distro can be. The learning curve was steep, but well worth the effort. I cant imagine running my daily driver on something I cant tweak to my exact tastes ... which is something that no binary distribution model can ever achieve. While its true that Sabayon now has a binary model it maintains 100% Gentoo compatability, which means that all it takes is knowledge and persistence to run it as you would a standard Gentoo system. There are a couple of major gotcha's in doing it, but nothing insurmountable if for armed with some info, which can be obtained by just asking. *edit* what that all boils down to ... binary == training wheels */edit* |
| Steven_Rosenber Jul 30, 2009 4:17 PM EDT |
So you're running Gentoo? I just can't get down with all that compiling ... |
| techiem2 Jul 30, 2009 4:26 PM EDT |
I just reinstalled my main system with Funtoo over the weekend.
While I don't think overall there's much difference (I'm not sure exactly what all he tweaks from the stock tree), I must say that syncing the portage tree via git is soooo much faster than syncing via rsync.
So far I'm enjoying it. And the compiling is half the fun! Nothing like watching a compile job going in a terminal. :) |
| Bob_Robertson Jul 30, 2009 4:32 PM EDT |
Keithcu, > Goof of for 21 months, and then work for 3 months. You obviously have never used Debian Unstable. Those folks are NOT goofing off. Steven, > (Can you tell I'm running Debian again? ... as of this afternoon) Very interesting. Welcome back. > For those who think 2 years is too long, there's always Testing and Sid ... In the 10 years I deliberately ran Sid, I have had few "real" problems. A package now and then, sure, but only twice had a problem that required _work_. ...One of them was last week. I suggest that folks be careful about the upgrade from Grub to Grub2. My ancient server (1GHz is ancient? my, how time flies) simply could not handle the UUID use in Grub2. I had to use LILO in order to get rid of the UUIDs before installing Grub would work again. |
| Bob_Robertson Jul 30, 2009 4:35 PM EDT |
On the article subject, 2 years is just 2 years. It's just an arbitrary period of time. What matters is that the freeze period last as long as it needs to last to work out the bugs. "Not release until it's done" remains a very good idea. Ubuntu's problems come from trying to release on a specific schedule, bugs and all. |
| Steven_Rosenber Jul 30, 2009 5:42 PM EDT |
If I'm looking at this right, once they have a freeze, no new versions of anything are accepted, and then it's all about bug fixes. I'd be OK with that. At the appointed time, Debian Testing would be frozen and even if it didn't have the "Stable" (big S) designation, it would be stable (little s) in the sense that all the versions of packages would remain the same ... I think. |
| Steven_Rosenber Jul 30, 2009 5:45 PM EDT |
Re: Debian Sid ... I ran Sidux with Xfce from the live CD for a couple weeks at one point. That was a very nice distro with some excellent Sidux-created tools. I definitely would consider running it again. |
| azerthoth Jul 30, 2009 5:48 PM EDT |
@techiem, Funtoo uses openrc/baselayout2 while gentoo uses baselayout. Daniel was talking about rewriting a portion of openrc as well. There are lots of fixes and tweaks in the Funtoo system packages, some sitting in bugs.gentoo with fixes that the maintainers havent moved in. The sunshine overlay is also already incorporated into Funtoo's pacakge list. Yes, I run 2 different but related distros. Funtoo on my Desktop and Sabayon on the laptop. Funtoo has had place of pride on the desktop for some time now. |
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