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Canonical Could Switch To Rolling Releases For Ubuntu 14.04 and Beyond
massivepanic writes "For the longest time Canonical has slapped an LTS ("long term support") moniker on some of their Ubuntu releases. Currently, a new major release of the operating system happens every six months, and is supported for 18 months after release. Whereas in the past when LTS versions received two years support or more, the current model — starting with 12.04 — supports new LTS releases for five years. However, a recent public Google Hangouts session revealed that Canonical has been thinking about switching from the venerable LTS model to a rolling release, starting with version 14.04."
I like the idea of rolling releases, but given the amount of massively stupid crap that Ubuntu springs on us by just rolling it into a new release (unity, I'm looking at you), I also like the idea of freezing a Ubuntu box at a non-ugly release and having a box that at least receives security updates for a few years
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you
That is, if Canonical didn't already shoot themselves and their distro in the foot in every way possible.
Although, there was this in the article:
Assuming switching to a rolling release between LTS versions doesn’t disrupt Ubuntu’s growth in any way, the casual Ubuntu user doesn’t really have to pay too much attention to the switch should it happen, though they might get a little annoyed at the probably-higher frequency of software updates. To satiate the more in-depth user, Canonical could theoretically put out a test version in between the LTS releases, which would also help cut down on bugs in the LTS.
Which leads me to believe that this is targeted at the desktop builds, but the article was a bit skim on details.
If they dropped LTS for their server builds, I guarantee Ubuntu's popularity would drop faster than a whale out of the sky.
But how will the alliterative critters be named then?
It's not the new versions of existing packages that are the downside of this. It's the deal where they might roll out a whole new UI or privacy sucking 'feature'.
Right now I am sitting on 12.04 with a Gnome UI. I don't plan on going anywhere for a couple of years. When I do it's going to be a distro that makes sense, and that is likely to mean NOT Ubuntu.
the amount of bitching i hear about unity versus the amount of time it takes to install something else (TM) is ridiculous.
too lazy to apt-get install, but too vehement to shut the fuck up about it online.
nerds are strange.
If they're going to dump LTS, they need to be REAL careful about what shit they push out. I used Linux for many many years, but finally I just got tired of stuff breaking all the time, and switched to Mac OS, where Apple seems to be reasonably careful not to annoy me too much with their updates. Maybe Linux got better since then, but I doubt it judging by some of the discussions I read about on Slashdot, like massive controversies still going on about KDE vs Gnome, as well as major about faces going on WITHIN KDE and Gnome, AND talk of distros even going away from KDE and Gnone entirely. I don't mind things changing, even largish changes, but you ought to be REAL careful to make it smooth, and I don't see it happening.
"Tell me, have they ever addressed the LDAP bug that's been sitting in a queue for 2+ years."
That's impossible!
Well, they close the bugs if no further feedback is given in, what? fifteen days? or when the next release is launched.
"It's a joke distro."
Basically yes. It's a pity all that effort wasn't pushed into Debian (and in the Debian way, of course -the worst problem is that Ubuntu has pushed some of its bad manners into Debian too by means of young developers that don't know any better).
What makes you think that people who criticize Unity still run it?
Anyway people who for some reason feel the need to defend this shell online seem far more angry and aggressive than its detractors.
Me thinks you miss the whole point. If you piss off most of your user base the answer is not "just install something else" the answer is FIX the dang mess you made.
But I see Ubuntu swirling the drain, They are making moron decisions, and getting worse. But everyone else is as well. . Fedora 18 is also a steaming pile of doo-doo..
So Linux follows it's normal cycle of every 7 years making it crappy to the point that it get's reborn again. Mandrake was king until they pooched that one, then they died and Ubuntu rose from the ashes... Ubuntu is now pooched, so let's see who rises from the ashes this time.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
If they don't run it, then why do they care enough to come on Slashdot and post about it every time Ubuntu is mentioned? Do they have some sort of psychiatric issue that prevents them from behaving like normal human beings?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
If you think people commenting about Unity while not actively using it is bad, you'd better not look into the Windows 8 threads. You'd probably have an aneurysm.
I'm a big fan of long-term releases, only because I may be one of those individuals who might be responsible for systems that do not have access to the internet in order to support the "rolling release" model.
It's nice to be able to have a stable, known-good server installation on several isolated networks that just need an occasional update of dpkgs and completely expect it to work fine after it's been restarted. I don't think the same is expected in a rolling release model.
The idea that a rolling release maintains binary compatibility is, so far, been proven false. In our world, long-term releases make sense.
Kriston
Except unity isn't a mistake in their eyes or the people that like it, myself included. It's a much better UI then Gnome ever was in my eyes.
I'm amused every time Unity is discussed. That is hilarious, though.
"apt-get-rid unity"
Hilarious!
I suppose that I should point out that if you couldn't alt-F1 to get a terminal, then you're not really a Linux guy at all. But, hell, you made me laugh, so I'm not going to beat up on you!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Look into OpenSUSE, then.
The 11.x/12.x releases have been pretty consistently good for me.
Even better... no Unity to complain about.
(Never saw what the big buzzy was over Ubuntu in any case. I tried it a couple of times and found it marginally acceptable, but annoying.)
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
the amount of bitching i hear about unity versus the amount of time it takes to install something else (TM) is ridiculous.
I volunteer for an organization that collects old and used PCs then builds new ones with the good parts from the old ones. We then install Ubuntu. Until the start of 2013 we used Ubuntu 10.04, however with the new year we switched to Xubuntu 12.04. Some of the people in the organization don't like the new DE Canonical is using, Unity. As ease of use is one of the criteria we use, I suggested that we use Linux Mint as studies and surveys rate it as the easiest. However no one replied. Not right now, as I'm booted into Snow Leopard, but I have Ubuntu 12.04 installed on my Mac to dual-boot.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
because it sucks, and they had to use it for 3 seconds before installing something else. Its kind of a wish that things would "just work" out of the box, like they did in 11.10 and 11.04.
Normal human beings aren't allowed to have negtive opinions or critize things?
I think you might need the meds actually.
You guys need a Penguin key.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Purely speculation here but part Steam seems to be promoting Ubuntu for their Linux-based Steam client. Games often require patching to get acceptable or optimal performance. This announcement for Rolling Releases might be directed at keeping Valve / Steam happy.
Anything that improves Linux distros is good news. However, if Steam suddenly gets 100 million Linux gamers, the sudden popularity of Ubuntu (assuming at some point Steam might only work with Ubuntu) might not work in favor of other distros. I'm concerned that it might push too much development resources to get X & Y working which is popular for the gaming community but not for all other Linux / ''Nix users (personal, business, enterprise...).
I agree with you, and I tried unity on a couple versions of Ubuntu, and then switched to Gnome Classic. I get what unity is for. It is for hand-held devices and tablets. In his flawed vision, Mark Shuttleworth somhnow thinks that the desktop is dead and that he can single handedly force Ubuntu users to behave differently. That is simple arrogance and the result of a business model where decisions are made by a small cabal that doesn't have paying customers. What is worse is that Canonnical muffed it and pissed off users. The changes were too sudden and the product didn't really work and the design was an obstruction to a reasonable workflow. They should have made Unity available on non-desktop test beds, and then when there was a real tablet for it, made it more available.
Besides that Ubuntu is bloatware. There is too much in it and some of the core stuff is poorly documented and of questionable value. My pet peeve is Gnome Tracker. If you have a slow USB drive with an NTFS filesystem and do a kernel upgrade, tracker can keep your system busy for a day or more, and there is no documentation on what metadata it is gathering. Do you trust that a company based in the security-paranoid UK might be using the tracker data in spyware?[ I am looking into an alternative distro because I'd like to be far more selective in what I run, anyway. Slax is looking god. Even Puppy looks good.
I like the idea of running linux in pieces from any available disk and filesystem type. Why not boot linux from a core image on an NTFS filesystem and load archives of added applications and user files backups into memory and and save the changes back to the same disk? I don.t just mean a USB stick, but any old filesystem on a disk, and I don't mean virtualized but from the bootloader which looks for a directory in some filesystem and boots what is there. No partition bull, not booting Windows first, no clobbered grub configs. That is all bull.
Not necessarily. I know quite a few former Ubuntu users that switched to Mint or even plain Debian because of the last few horrible releases. I wouldn't be surprised to discover Ubuntu is losing ground fast to other Linux distributions.
"I'm never quite so stupid as when I'm being smart" (Linus van Pelt)
Canonical did not abandon users who want a traditional desktop. You might have heard of Xubuntu and Kubuntu.
OK, I'll correct you. You are wrong. You don't have to compile everything from source. Yes, you can "make install" your packages from ports source, but you can also "pkg_add -r" your packages from what amounts to a binary repository. Do understand that there is no update command to update binary packages, however. If not compiling from source, you are expected to "pkg_delete" the old version and then "pkg_add -r" the new version. They are in the process of introducing a new, more full-featured binary package management system called "pkg", but the transition is going to be messy.
The answer to your other question should be obvious. There is no distro of any OS that will work with "ANY" hardware.
The idea of rolling releases is by itself a good one, as there is really no point in trying to get thousands of packages, that are in large part completely independed of each other, "stable" at the same time ("stable" mostly meaning we won't ship the fixes upstream provides). However far to often new packages also break stuff, be it just little things or Unity and Gnome3 comming along and wreaking your whole desktop environment. So could we please get proper support for downgrades or the installation of multiple versions per package first? If stuff breaks and I could just go back to the older version in a single click I wouldn't mind if stuff breaks. But right now I have to search for the .deb via arcane means, twiddle with raw dpkg and in the end might completely wreak the dependency tree as a result (try install old Gnome2 on modern Ubuntu, not easy). As long as upgrades are a one way street, rolling releases really sound like a bad idea if you want a stable system.