[Ilugc] Distro release cycle
- From: sankarshan.mukhopadhyay@xxxxxxxxx (Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay)
- Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2013 16:28:34 +0530
On Thu, Sep 19, 2013 at 4:12 PM, Priyanka Sarkar <efyedit6 at efyindia.com>
wrote:
We thought of coming up a good story on the distro release time span.
Our question is 'With many distros going for a six-monthly release
cycle, do you think the release cycles of distros are too short? (And
users don't have to upgrade on a frequent basis?) '
What do you think on this? Would really appreciate if you share your
views elaborately.
While other distributions will have a documented rationale behind the
release cycle, here's what The Fedora Project states "The Fedora
Project releases a new version of Fedora approximately every 6 months
and provides updated packages (maintenance) to these releases for
approximately 13 months. This allows users to "skip a release" while
still being able to always have a system that is still receiving
updates." (from:
<
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_Release_Life_Cycle>)
Further on, in the same link
"Fedora generally develops new releases over a six month period to
provide a regular and predictable release schedule. The bi-annual
targeted release dates are May Day (May 1st) and Halloween (October
31) making them easy to remember and avoiding significant holiday
breaks. Changes to this standard must be approved by the
community-elected Fedora Engineering Steering Committee (FESCo).
A six month release schedule also follows the precedence of Red Hat
Linux (precursor to Fedora). Former Red Hat software engineer Havoc
Pennington offers a historical perspective here
(<
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.redhat.fedora.advisory-board/1475/>).
GNOME started following a time based release based on the ideas and
success of Red Hat Linux and other distributions following Fedora
having adopted a similar release cycle. Several other major
components, including the Linux kernel, Openoffice.org, Xorg, have
started following a time based release schedule. While the exact
release schedules vary between these components and other upstream
projects, the interactions between these components and Fedora makes a
six month time based release schedule a good balance."
--
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
<
https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan>
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