I'm a big fan of Ubuntu (server and slowly trying to ween off OSX onto Ubuntu Desktop) and their regular release cycle is actually reassuring -- I've never had major problems when upgrading, although I keep all my production servers -1 LTS (all currently 8.04).
I'm not sure, however, what the big differences are between releases on the server side (lots of improvement on desktop, sure). All I see is slowly growing memory footprint but little performance gains or other benefits. Anyone have a thought?
For what its worth, Server 10.04 boots dramatically faster than 8.04. I've been able to reboot a VM in under 10 seconds (timed from typing "reboot" to getting a login prompt again)
The main reason to upgrade Server, though, is to get access to a new generation of packages which are considered stable. The stuff you get in 8.04, while reliable, is getting long in the tooth features-wise.
I'm always stoked for new releases of Ubuntu even though I don't really use them much at all (except on servers). Is there any real reason to keep up a release cycle like theirs when you can just update the apt repositories?
Consistent support without worrying about major changes in versions of software you depend on.
Especially for the LTS releases, you want to be able to get security fixes without wondering if there's some backwards-incompatible change to stuff you use.
Is there any major Linux distro that doesn't use a release cycle of some sort? If there is, you'd have to be mad to use it for production environments.
For desktop users it fits a decent niche, and I tend to recommend it, even though I use Debian myself. Debian stable tends to have things too out of date by the end of a release cycle for most desktop users' tastes (though that can be partially addressed via the backports repository). You can get the always-current version by tracking unstable, which doesn't actually break as much as the name implies, but it does have dependency issues relatively frequently. If you aren't comfortable doing dependency resolution in aptitude, it isn't the best choice imo. Having checkpointed releases mitigates most of the upgrade-conflicts issues, because various upgrade paths are usually tested to make sure the default apt dependency resolution does the right thing with them (Debian stable does this upgrade-path testing very thoroughly between releases, but Ubuntu at least does some of it).
That was a refreshing piece. It's good to see Ubuntu doing so well, and it is pleasing to hear that 11.04 will have some focus on more behind the scenes stuff like making more use of powerful GPUs. VLC is already doing some of that (an area where Mac users can envy their Linux brothers a bit). Hopefully many other projects will follow with those sorts of under the hood improvements. 10.04 was slick, Good work guys
Ah. I (mistakenly, it seems) thought that VLC used the framework that Apple released awhile back for hardware accel as well. Whoops. Ouch, at -3 for that, though.
I've always been a fan of their numbering scheme and regular release schedule, but I'm not a fan of the 6-month interval. It seems a little quick to me. 9 months would be better (though irregular) in my opinion.
First off, if you are installing mid-way between two releases you basically have 3 months before your distro is obsolete. I just put 10.04 on my laptop in July and already I'm thinking about upgrading again (which has not always been smooth, 9.04->9.10 sucked), and I haven't even gotten around to my desktop yet, and now I just decided to wait until 10.10 because why bother doing it now? So I'll still be on 9.10. It becomes a hassle for users after a while. I remember when I was downloading the release on the night it came out and updating my machine, but the releases these days are less and less noticeably different.
I also wonder if they could accomplish more in 9 months than in 6, some percentage of time is spent doing overhead for each release and a slower release schedule would allow them to bite off bigger chunks. 6 months made a lot of sense when it was a new project and there were a lot of low hanging fruit, but these days I feel like the path forward requires bigger steps and more time.
I don't think a new release makes the old release obsolete - that comes when they stop providing patches for it. If you're using an LTS release, like 10.04, you've got three years worth of support.
You don't need to update to the latest version every time - the 18 month support window for non-LTS releases is pretty decent. It means that they can have a quick release cycle to get support for new hardware out fast and get a fresh round of attention for each new release while not obsoleting old installs too quickly.
And if, like many people here, you feel the need to upgrade just because there's something new, odds are there'd be something else shiny demanding your attention anyway!
Honestly LTS releases are only viable for 3 years if you're OK with 3 year out of date versions of software. They never import new major versions of anything, so you're stuck with whatever (eventually old and crufty) version you got. Hardy was stuck on an old and crashy version of Pidgin for a long time, whereas newer builds were actually much better.
Isn't that rather the point of opensource?
I rely version 2.xx of Blah, i want security fixes to version 2 without being forced to update to blah 7, with all it's new incompatibilities and bugs, just because somebody has a sales target
Yes, that's exactly what LTS releases are for. I wouldn't use one on my personal desktop machine, but for a production server platform I specifically WANT three years out of date versions of software, since the latest and greatest may behave differently and break everything.
If you were deploying Ubuntu company-wide and had custom desktop software, you'd want an LTS release on the desktop too, for the same reason.
Stability versus agility is a trade-off. In some cases it makes sense to pick a fast-moving platform. In others it makes sense to pick a slow-moving one. With the combination of a six-monthly release cycle and three year support on LTS releases, Ubuntu gives you both platforms to pick from.
"This is where Ubuntu Backports comes in. The Backports team believes that the best update policy is a mix of Ubuntu's security-only policy AND providing new versions of some programs. Candidates for version updates are primarily desktop applications, such as your web browser, word processor, IRC client, or IM client. These programs can be updated without replacing a large part of the operating system that would affect stability of the whole system."
Is there any justification for that distinction? That is, does Canonical consider the x.10 builds experimental and the x.04 builds stable? I've never heard that.
IMO it's just better to stick to LTS releases, Canonical tends to make less experimental changes in those releases, because things should work for 3 years. In the other hand, on post LTS releases like 10.10 (which is a x.10 release) they have more freedom to do more under the hood changes.
I'm not sure, however, what the big differences are between releases on the server side (lots of improvement on desktop, sure). All I see is slowly growing memory footprint but little performance gains or other benefits. Anyone have a thought?