[Ilugc] Distro release cycle
- From: lgp171188@xxxxxxxxx (Guruprasad)
- Date: Fri, 20 Sep 2013 10:24:29 +0530
Hi Priyanka,
Here are my thoughts on this subject.
On Thu, Sep 19, 2013 at 4:12 PM, Priyanka Sarkar <efyedit6 at efyindia.com>
wrote:
Dear All,
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?) '
If users want the latest or bleeding edge sotware (mostly the case on
personal computers), they can always keep upgrading to the latest
release. Even if they don't want to follow such a short upgrade cycle
and have reasonably latest software, distros like Ubuntu have LTS
releases that get a lot updates backported from the newer releases and
are supported for a longer time.
For servers it makes sense to stick to stable and thoroughly tested
releases like that of Debian which are rock-solid work just fine
compromising the need to have the latest software in favour of
slightly dated versions. Mostly in production environments, people
tend to prefer no changes unless they require newer software or want
to upgrade to the newer release which comes out once in a few years.
I use a combination of Debian unstable and testing on my laptop and
that helps me have the bleeding edge software. Of course there are
greater chances for crashes and critical bugs to make the desktop
unusable, but with a little bit of know-how it is very much possible
to recover from such scenarios. I prefer rolling releases of distros
instead of one big fat release that comes out every 6 months or so as
the downloads are incremental instead of bulky. Debian suits me best
here.
Thanks & Regards,
Guruprasad
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