Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-project (142 mails)

[Andreas Vetter <vetter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 16 Apr 2008, James Tremblay wrote:

> This whole thread brings back a point I've been trying to make for over
> a year now. The point, openSUSE should not bother itself with LTS(long
> term support) for 3 (4 if SLE counted) distributions. I say, starting
> with 11.0 provide only support and fixes until 11.1(which should be an
> online upgrade via zypper)then only support 11.1 until 11.2, then 11.2
> until 11.3 then give 11.3 a full three years support bringing us around
> to 12.3, this means that the team is only ever supporting 2 community
> distro's and one enterprise at a time and the *.3s can become new
> releases for SLE. This would make it clear that the other versions are
> truly community and that, to get the 5+ years a server should have, a
> person needs to subscribe to SLE. This should not offend openSUSE\SUSE
> customers and it should please and even entice non-enterprise
> subscribers to look more closely at SLE. While allowing more resources
> to be available to packaging a really nice retail box for the *.3s.
>
> Can anyone estimate the energy used to patch 10.3 that could have been
> avoided if the Devs were not back porting fixes to 10.1 and 10.2, but
> already working full-time on only 10.2+ when 10.3 was due to begin?
> These interim releases aren't much different than a SP anyway why not
> release them that way? openSUSE has a patch disk mechanism.
>
> Does anyone else see the wheel being reinstalled every time we take the
> car for a drive? Isn't a Distro that upgrades rather than replaces more
> flexible for the enthusiast and more reliable to the consumer? How much
> Alpha testing can be removed if *.2 truly is *.1 plus fixes? 
>
> My vision in practice:
> Joe Consumer running 9.3: "Hey cool, 10.3 is out, I can't wait to see
> the new .....I have been hearing a lot of cool stuff about 10 and 9 has
> been so good to me!"
> Joe Enthusiast running 10.2: "Hey cool, 10.3 is out, I wonder if they
> included that new version of .... the one I'm running now is so buggy."
>
> How many sour moments, defections and poor reviews concerning 10.0 could
> we have been avoided? I see those reviews going from utter condemnation
> to "hey guys, the new interim from openSUSE has a few bugs, but, these
> guys really fix this stuff quick. check back later." 
>
> Maybe, I've just been reading to much stuff like this;
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IT_Service_Management
> or I could just be nuts, let me know.

So you want all openSUSE users to upgrade every 8 months?
That is impossible. 2 years is acceptable and sometimes even that is too 
short. 

Another use of e.g. 10.1 is as a additional repo for SLES10, because you 
don't get all the software you need on a Server from the SLES, SLED and 
SLE SDK repos.

You said x.1 should be x.0+SP. But it is hopefully not.
A SP for a SLE product does not change the kernel and probably glibc.
A newer openSUSE version always had newer Kernel, glibc, gcc, X, KDE, ...

A possible way to go is enlarging the time between releases even more. We 
already moved from 6 months to 8 months. Maybe even more.

-- 
Mit freundlichen Gruessen,
 Andreas Vetter

Fakultaet fuer Physik und Astronomie
Universitaet Wuerzburg              
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