Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-project (422 mails)

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Re: [opensuse-project] openSUSE LTS, Tumbleweed and release cycles
  • From: "Kim Leyendecker" <kimleyendecker@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Mon, 6 Dec 2010 19:00:51 +0100
  • Message-id: <COL107-DS5329510AADA4FE8233408A52B0@xxxxxxx>
This looks all very interesting.... But with a LTS-Release it maybe will be difficult. I used Ubuntu 10.04 LTS for a while and read something about 8.04 LTS. There´s Firefox in version 3.0.19 and there aren´t any updates by Mozilla (I read it, if it isn´t the truth, please correct me) so I think it´s the work of the community to do this.

In generell I think the idea of Thomas Thym very nice. It looks a little bit like Debian:
- stable
- testing
- sid

Maybe the Ubuntu-way is a much better way to do it:

openSUSE 11.4 becomes a regular version.
openSUSE 11.5 will be the first LTS release. Support till 2014 (when it comes 2011)
openSUSE 11.6 will be a regular 6 month release
so on.....

Then they are two important repos:
- LTS: This repo includes all software for a LTS-release
- Regular: This repp includes all 6 month releases of software.

Factory becomes like Debian Sid.

That´s my idea of a LTS-version

kind regards
kdl

PS: Please note that it´s just an idea. It isn´t the stable version of this idea. It´s more than a "Alpha"

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- From: AdrianSchröter
Sent: Monday, December 06, 2010 11:28 AM
To: opensuse-project@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: Thomas Thym
Subject: Re: [opensuse-project] openSUSE LTS, Tumbleweed and release cycles

On Thursday 02 December 2010 14:38:39 Thomas Thym wrote:
On Wednesday 01 December 2010 16:51:49 wrote Slaya Chronicles - Geeko
Acolyte:
> I may be wrong but RH is where it is today is partially due to CentOS.
>
> CentOS, by more traditional business models should have killed RHEL
> years ago. I mean, who would want to pay for something (SLES/SLED) you
> can get at no cost (CentOS) right ?
>
> The opposite is true now. What we have now is a sizeable pool of
> RHEL-type system trained IT guys. And guess what these people will
> recommend for paid-for support Enterprise Linux?

=Asking=
I can clearly see the advantage of a LTS system.

No doubt.

My impression of that
discussion is, that it is worth it to ask Novell what they need to support
the openSLES idea. For the openSUSE-Novell-openSLX-every community member
ecosystem this seems by far the better alternative.

=Thinking further=
Another idea which came to my mind. I see manly two types of openSUSE users
with their special needs. 1. Stability, security, long-term support, not
much work maintaining or migrating the systems. This will apply to many
servers or desktops from business users (esp. bigger ones). 2. Stability,
security and software that is up to date. They update their systems
regularly. (Power-users, Home-users, etc.)

In my opinion the amount of people wanting a mixture is small (but that is
just a guess). So what does the user want? 1. => He/she wants an LTS
version and is happy when a new version is published, when end of life of
his version is approaching after 3 years. openSUSE LTS/openSLES would be
the choice. 2. => They will be happy to use openSUSE Tumbleweed. It fits
exactly their needs.

=Consequences=
When the majority of users is satisfied with LTS and Tumbleweed why not
change the release cycle to focus our resources for these new tasks? Now we
have 8 month until the next release. We support every release for 18 month
(2 releases and 2 months). => we have 2.33 main versions to maintain.

So why not expand the release cycle to 2.5 years and support it for 3
years?! This would be fine for group 1. For the second group we offer
Tumbleweed based on that LTS main release. To fill the gap between we could
provide "snapshot"-CDs of the Tumbleweed tree (if really needed) to offer a
live and install medium for new installations / new users. There may be a
3rd tree like factory / testing. That might reduce the number of repos as
well. You could get rid e.g. of all the openSUSE 11.x/KDE_Factory repos.
And we would have again about 2 main versions to maintain.

Practically, a long time support is possible already. I offered multiple times
to create an OBS project where people could still maintain (security) updates
for openSUSE 11.0 for example.

However, so far no real group got established. So it looks in first place as a
lack of workforce to me.

But again, there is nothing what stops you to do this already _right now_.

However, I don't see that this would obsolete KDE:Factory openSUSE_11.1 repos
for example. Because you still want to offer the user the choice to have
either something rocking stable with little changes and on this other hand
with some bleeding edge component.

bye
adrian

--
Adrian Schroeter
SUSE Linux Products GmbH
email: adrian@xxxxxxx

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