Linux Mint Debian Edition 2 Will Be Rolling-Release

jones_supa writes: Following the trend of rolling-release Linux distributions, Linux Mint brings you some news and information about Linux Mint Debian Edition 2, aka. "Betsy." As you might know, the Linux Mint team maintains two distributions: Linux Mint and LMDE. LMDE was a rolling distro for a while and eventually turned into a semi-rolling one. This was good at the time but it also presented challenges: the biggest issue in LMDE was the fact that it required a lot more maintenance than Linux Mint but that it had far less users. This hurt the frequency of updates it received but also the quality of the distribution. Now, LMDE 2 is going back to be continuously upgraded and to occasionally just receive media refresh ISO images. You can check the Roadmap to see the remaining issues. As the quality of Betsy is getting higher and higher, the project is getting closer to QA stage to iron out the bugs and perform proper testing.

Comments

Re:They should switch it to "devuan"

[rubycodez]

Clem already said Linux Mint Debian will NOT have systemD for now, will watch stability of that project for a while

So, it's Debian without the SystemD stink. That's a good thing

Re:They should switch it to "devuan"

[hairyfeet]

I have a better question...how in the hell are the devs gonna do QA, QC, and regression testing when on any given day one or more vital subsystems can change?

This is what I've never been able to get anybody to explain without it becoming politics, how you are gonna take a bunch of teeny tiny fiefdoms, most of whom don't even talk to each other and NEVER check with one another before they start doing major changes, and then allow any part on any given day to change based on these little groups release schedules without it ending up a buggy clusterfuck. I mean do you think Linus calls up the KDE and Gnome guys before making a change to the kernel just to see if its gonna fuck up what they are working on? Think the KDE and Gnome guys have the guys working on Pulse on speed dial so they can call them before they start messing with major parts of their DEs? And then you are gonna add on top of all this lack of communication and "do your own thing" cowboy coding a system where the system you had last week can have multiple critical components changed this week? Who is in charge of regression testing? How many systems is this tested against and how many hardware variations? These should be pretty standard questions folks yet every time I ask them usually what I get is filthy names or just shoulder shrugs.

Maybe its just me but in the decade I've been messing with Linux the feeling I've been getting is that the reason why Linux kicks so much ass on servers and embedded and is such a buggy mess when it comes to the desktop comes down to one of attitude wrt the developers. the guys in server and embedded really care about stability, about QC, about regression testing, they have a very strong "If it ain't broke" ethic and don't just throw out something that works without a hell of a lot of thought and debate. Contrast this to what I've seen in the desktop, where even the so called "stability focused" distros seem to jump on the latest bandwagon waaay too early, be it Pulse or KDE 4 or systemd, ironically with all the rhetoric of Windows and Mac being focused on new releases to generate profits I've seen a LOT MORE of the "just release a new version instead of fixing the old" in the *NIX desktop realm, and to top it off an almost bizzaro hatred of long term stability, see how quickly KDE 3 and Gnome 2 were cast aside even though they were resource light, feature rich, and a good chunk of the major bugs had been stamped out.

So to me the rolling release fad is just a symptom of a larger problem, the "last version bad, new version good, must be on the bleeding edge" phenomena that seems to have taken hold for some damned reason. I mean is there really anything that is so. fucking. urgent. that it absolutely HAS to be released that nanosecond instead of going through the alpha/beta/release schedule that has worked for so long? Or has the insane turnover of mobile infected us to the point that "here this morning, gone this afternoon" is just gonna be the way of things from now on?