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Ubuntu's Engineering Director Debunks Rolling Release Rumours

Posted by timothy on from the really-wrong dept.

Responding to yesterday's post indicating that Ubuntu might move to a rolling release schedule, reader ddfall writes "This is wrong! Engineering Director of Ubuntu Rick Spencer says 'Ubuntu is not changing to a rolling release.' He goes on to say, 'We are confident that our customers, partners, and the FLOSS ecosystem are well served by our current release cadence. What the article was probably referring to was the possibility of making it easier for developers to use cutting edge versions of certain software packages on Ubuntu. This is a wide-ranging project that we will continue to pursue through our normal planning processes.'"

7 of 80 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Faked Story? by Bill_the_Engineer · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Or the Engineering Director didn't get the memo...

    --
    These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
  2. Like Arch Linux by Bryan+Ischo · · Score: 2, Interesting

    My distribution of choice, Arch Linux, uses a rolling release schedule, which has its good and bad points. I suppose the worst part of it is that with Arch Linux, old versions of software are not retained in the repositories and the package management tools don't make it easy to go back to a prior version of the software in the event of a problem. As a result, upgrading is a bit of a 'cross your fingers' endeavor and more often than not, I've regretted a full system upgrade.

    I think that rolling release can work well but only if the package management system is designed to, and the repositories are set up to, allow easy rolling forward and backward on software versions as necessary. It's my number one wish for Arch Linux, which otherwise is the best distribution I've used.

    1. Re:Like Arch Linux by Fri13 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      How big is your Pacman cache? I have 12Gb and since installation (over 11 months) I have only used 5.5 GB from it. I could even roll back to the base level what I had after installation. It is not as "press this button", but easier than doing a fresh install with Ubuntu install image.

      And do you know what you would gain with the snapshot features from the filesystems and joined it with LVM?

      I upgrade system now and then (usually 2-3 weeks) if I can not find otherwise bugs. And so far I have not yet needed to do a roll back system upgrade. Once I have got bug what did not allow me to enter one application settings panel. But it was fixed in 2 hours and I got it updated.

      It is very nice to go to pacman cache to check what was the earlier version of the software and downgrade it to that version. As Arch tools really gives the nice function for it.

      You are only gaining problems if you do not have enough space for pacman cache or you clear it too often.

    2. Re:Like Arch Linux by Bryan+Ischo · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I use SSDs exclusively (will never buy a spinner platter drive again) and I would prefer if the old packages were hosted on a server somewhere instead of having to be cached on my drive. Seems more efficient to me for 12 GB on a server to serve hundreds of thousands of users than for each of those users to have to spend 12 GB to cache their own packages.

      That being said, I have never deleted anything from my pacman package cache so I could probably use the technique that you described. There are cases where even that is not sufficient (for example, if I want to install on a new computer and want to use an older package version because I know that I have a problem with a newer version) but those are less frequent problems. To be honest, I never even realized that using pacman to downgrade via the local package cache was an encouraged, or reliable, option, but if you're saying it is, then I believe you.

  3. Re:If you catch yourself saying "FLOSS ecosystem" by Anrego · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The whole OSS -> FOSS -> FLOSS thing has always bugged me.

    It's not enough to say it's open source.. we have to emphasize that it's FREE open source.. and now even that's not enough.. we have to describe the specific _kind_ of free that it is.

    And yeah, using the word ecosystem in a non-biology context is _so_ management.

  4. Half-rolling releases anyone?? by RogerC · · Score: 2, Interesting

    In my personal opinion, a half-rolling release model would be a great idea. I want my base system(xorg/kernel/gnome or kde) to be as stable as possible. But why would anyone need to wait 6 month or use some PPA to get the latest version of Firefox/Chrome/GIMP/Whatever? I was taking a look at Chakra (a KDE-oriented distro with Archlinux roots) a few days ago and found their half rolling-release model idea to be extremely good. I hope to see something similar in other distros in the future.

  5. Re:That's a relief by junglee_iitk · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I wanted to install Kubuntu using USB. Guess what, installer segfaults after creating new partition. I had to waste 2 days getting anything installed on my laptop.

    And this problem was known at launchpad.