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OpenSUSE Team Reworking Dev Model, Delays 12.2 Release

Posted by timothy on from the when-big-turns-make-sense dept.

LinuxScribe writes "The upcoming 12.2 RC1 release of openSUSE has been delayed, and the final 12.2 release 'won't see the light of day on July 11th,' as developers within the openSUSE community struggles to fix their release efforts, Community Manager Jos Poortvliet said today." Says the article: "Among [openSUSE Release Manager Stephan] Kulow's suggestions? Dumping the current release cycle schedule for openSUSE and moving to an annual or even unscheduled release system."

2 of 38 comments (clear)

  1. It's harder than it looks by laffer1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I wish the OpenSUSE project luck getting this figured out.

    Maintaining packages in this manner is a lot of work. At the end of the day, most contributors only work on a handful of packages and don't consider the possible breakage of other packages. One or two people end up doing all the cleanup work. This happens in the BSD community all the time. For instance, if you look at the recent issues in FreeBSD when PNG was updated or the new debate about X.org 7.7 coming into the tree. FreeBSD's approach to ports is great when you want up-to-date software, but the maturity found in NetBSD's pkg-src or even OpenBSD's model sounds a bit more like what OpenSUSE is looking for.

    I'm not trying to pick on FreeBSD. I use a similar process for MidnightBSD due to limited developer resources. In my case, it usually means I personally have to update packages. That's why we have such outdated versions of Firefox (unbranded of course) and Chrome. Not only do all the other dependancies have to be the right magic versions, but someone has to take the effort to port a rather complex piece of software. Luckily, the Linux folks don't have nearly the trouble as they're a tier 1 platform for most software these days. Still, there are many different choices in linux for near everything and getting your combination to work can be tiresome. Next time you download packages from any open source OS, consider how much work went into that easy experience. Saying thank you can't hurt either. :)

    --
    MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
  2. Seems like a smart move by c0d3g33k · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I was a happy OpenSUSE user for several years, but abandoned it after the 12.1 release. My reasons were quality and stability issues that had been on the rise over the last few releases, which culminated in the premature (IMHO) and half-assed transition to systemd in 12.1. That was the last straw and the trigger to embark on another distro-walkabout (I won't say what I ended up switching to, because this isn't about that).

    There is a lot to like about OpenSUSE and it's probably still one of the best distributions to use for a nicely integrated and well supported out-of-the-box KDE environment. But the incidence of instability (generally user-facing stuff - the base environment of kernel, toolchain and libs is pretty rock-solid), random bugginess (usually caused by a lone developer or small team marching to their own drummer without regard to their surroundings) and poor integration of interacting components has been creeping up over the last few years. It seems that people in the OpenSUSE development team have taken notice and started to think about the causes and how to address them. Bravo to them for having the insight to notice and the balls to try and address the problem before pushing out a release.

    Not that they probably care too much about what I think*, but I'll be watching carefully and may give the next release another chance.

    ---
    * The developer community is probably one of the more unconsciously user-hostile developer groups I've encountered in awhile. A fine and dedicated bunch, but they tend to keep to themselves in places apart (mailing lists, IRC) from where the users hang out (forums.opensuse.org). A typical response when a user is baffled about some problem or wants to discuss improvements is the typical "well did you file a bug report" (delivered in an imperious and self-important manner by the a senior forum user or appointed moderator who are just a little too zealous in their developer worship), or the suggestion that users join the mailing lists if they want to be heard because the developers don't use the forums (don't want to be too close to the hoi polloi, after all). Meritocracies do indeed become oligarchies, apparently. http://boingboing.net/2012/06/13/meritocracies-become-oligarchi.html