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Debian Decides To Adopt Time-Based Release Freezes

Posted by Soulskill on from the regular-intervals dept.

frenchbedroom writes "The ongoing Debconf 9 meeting in Cáceres, Spain has brought a significant change to Debian's project management. The Debian project will now freeze development in December of every odd year, which means we can expect a new Debian release in the spring of every even year, starting with 'Squeeze' in 2010. Until now, development freezing was decided by the Debian release team. From the announcement: 'The project chose December as a suitable freeze date since spring releases proved successful for the releases of Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 (codenamed "Etch") and Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 ("Lenny"). Time-based freezes will allow the Debian Project to blend the predictability of time based releases with its well established policy of feature based releases. The new freeze policy will provide better predictability of releases for users of the Debian distribution, and also allow Debian developers to do better long-term planning. A two-year release cycle will give more time for disruptive changes, reducing inconveniences caused for users. Having predictable freezes should also reduce overall freeze time.' We previously discussed talks between Canonical and the Debian release team about fixed freeze dates."

1 of 79 comments (clear)

  1. By the Way - this insane versioning bent by AbbeyRoad · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Linux distributions LOVE to come up with catchy names for their releases.

    But sit down at a random machine and try work out WHAT release of Debian (or Fedora or whatever) you are actually sitting in front of and you can pull your hair out.

    How is anyone supposed to remember that "Debian <insert-dumb-release-name-here>" is MORE recent that "Debian <insert-other-dumb-release-name>" ????

    I suppose you are going to tell me to check /etc/issue

    Oh THAT'S user friendly.

    And what if /etc/issue has been emptied "for security reasons".

    I can hear the support call already: "Er... Sir, if you can't work out what version of Linux you are running we recommend that you re-install, and also check the Wikipedia entry for Debian. .... Yes that's D-E-B-I-A-N"

    I know as a maintainer that at one point "Sarge" was the most important word in your life, but for the USER (that's the person that is actually going to be using the OS you are working on), he doesn't know "Sarge" from "Etch" from "Horcrux".

    AND HE DOESN'T CARE EITHER.

    -paul