[opensuse-project] openSUSE 11.2 schedule
Moin, openSUSE 11.1 is almost out of the door and we (coolo, aj, zonker and myself) had some discussion about the release date for openSUSE 11.2. First we talked about July '09 release to come close to an 8 months release cycle. But KDE 4.3 is scheduled for release on June 30th and probably an OpenOffice.org release will be out end of June as well - both wouldn't make it into a July openSUSE 11.2. Therfor we're now thinking about a September release. Beside of getting the most current OpenOffice and KDE in thhis would even have one additional upside. It probably would be just in front of our openSUSE conference. So the conference could be used for very a focused openSUSE 11.3 planning. But it has its downside as well. Finalization of the release would happen during the summer holiday season. To address this we we added one Beta to stretch the development time a bit. Here's what we're talking about: 2009-02-05 openSUSE 11.2 Alpha 0 2009-03-05 openSUSE 11.2 Alpha 1 2009-04-02 openSUSE 11.2 Alpha 2 2009-04-30 openSUSE 11.2 Alpha 3 2009-05-28 openSUSE 11.2 Alpha 4 2009-06-25 openSUSE 11.2 Beta 1 2009-07-09 openSUSE 11.2 Beta 2 2009-07-24 openSUSE 11.2 Beta 3 2009-08-06 openSUSE 11.2 Beta 4 2009-08-20 openSUSE 11.2 RC1 2009-09-03 openSUSE 11.2 GM 2009-09-10 openSUSE 11.2 Public Release Events to consider March 3-8 CeBIT March 8-13 BrainShare June 24-27 LinuxTag June 3-11 Akademy/Guadec Sept openSUSE conference (mid of sept) Sept Plumbers conference (around Sept 20-25) Let us know what you're thinking about this. Best M -- Michael Löffler, Product Management SUSE LINUX Products GmbH - Nürnberg - AG Nürnberg - HRB 16746 - GF: Markus Rex -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On 12/15/2008 at 14:43, Michael Loeffler <michl@novell.com> wrote: First we talked about July '09 release to come close to an 8 months release cycle. But KDE 4.3 is scheduled for release on June 30th and
probably an OpenOffice.org release will be out end of June as well -
both wouldn't make it into a July openSUSE 11.2. Therfor we're now
It's like always with release dates: getting in 'sync' with upstream projects is close to impossible, except if they would all adjust. So we postpone 11.2 for 2 month in order to get KDE 4.3 in... sounds actually quiet fair. And just to let you know: by the typical 6 month cycle, just in September will most likely be also Gnome 2.28 ;) So we just miss the addition of hte greatest / best of gnome... but you see what I want to say with this anyhow. Dominique -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Mon, 2008-12-15 at 14:43 +0100, Michael Loeffler wrote:
Moin,
openSUSE 11.1 is almost out of the door and we (coolo, aj, zonker and myself) had some discussion about the release date for openSUSE 11.2.
First we talked about July '09 release to come close to an 8 months release cycle. But KDE 4.3 is scheduled for release on June 30th and probably an OpenOffice.org release will be out end of June as well -
It is unlikely there will be any major OpenOffice.org update released at the end of June - the release would be 3.1.1. 3.1 is scheduled for March 25 currently.
both wouldn't make it into a July openSUSE 11.2. Therfor we're now thinking about a September release. Beside of getting the most current OpenOffice and KDE in thhis would even have one additional upside. It probably would be just in front of our openSUSE conference. So the conference could be used for very a focused openSUSE 11.3 planning. But it has its downside as well. Finalization of the release would happen during the summer holiday season. To address this we we added one Beta to stretch the development time a bit.
Here's what we're talking about:
2009-02-05 openSUSE 11.2 Alpha 0
Nearly 2 months to alpha 0 seems like a long time - is this simply an infrastructure issue because of SLE 11? What will the state of Factory be during this time? -JP -- JP Rosevear <jpr@novell.com> Novell, Inc. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Mon, 2008-12-15 at 14:46 +0100, Dominique Leuenberger wrote:
On 12/15/2008 at 14:43, Michael Loeffler <michl@novell.com> wrote: First we talked about July '09 release to come close to an 8 months release cycle. But KDE 4.3 is scheduled for release on June 30th and
probably an OpenOffice.org release will be out end of June as well -
both wouldn't make it into a July openSUSE 11.2. Therfor we're now
It's like always with release dates: getting in 'sync' with upstream projects is close to impossible, except if they would all adjust.
So we postpone 11.2 for 2 month in order to get KDE 4.3 in... sounds actually quiet fair.
And just to let you know: by the typical 6 month cycle, just in September will most likely be also Gnome 2.28 ;) So we just miss the addition of hte greatest / best of gnome...
I agree, I think its odd to make a lengthy 10 month schedule and then not add on 2-4 weeks to grab the final version of GNOME. Within 2 months Ubuntu, Fedora and Mandriva will have new releases with a 6-months-newer GNOME. However, we have these types of things as an on going problem. Perhaps we should consider things in the context of the longer term ie 11.2 as it relates to 11.3 and beyond. For instance, moving to hard 9 month schedule would at least allow us to ensure that every other release coincided nicely with either GNOME or KDE. -JP -- JP Rosevear <jpr@novell.com> Novell, Inc. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
Hi Michael, On Montag 15 Dezember 2008 14:43:03 Michael Loeffler wrote:
Let us know what you're thinking about this. I think this plan is very good. If KDE4.3 is out on June 30th, we have two month to test an fix the 4.3. And then we deliver an ready Package in 11.2
-- Sincereley yours Sascha Manns openSUSE Marketing Team (Weekly News) Web: http://saschamanns.gulli.to Blog: http://lizards.opensuse.org/author/saigkill -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 8:43 AM, Michael Loeffler <michl@novell.com> wrote:
But it has its downside as well. Finalization of the release would happen during the summer holiday season. To address this we we added one Beta to stretch the development time a bit.
As others have said - I have some reservations about releasing in September and just missing a GNOME release. I know that syncs badly with the conference, but I think GNOME is important enough to go ahead and wait for it. Why have such a lengthy release cycle and then just miss GNOME? Also, given that people start testing heavily with RCs, it might be better to have an additional RC rather than an additional beta. Best, Zonker -- Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier openSUSE Community Manager jzb@zonker.net http://zonker.opensuse.org/ http://blogs.zdnet.com/community/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
2008/12/15 Michael Loeffler <michl@novell.com>:
First we talked about July '09 release to come close to an 8 months release cycle. But KDE 4.3 is scheduled for release on June 30th and probably an OpenOffice.org release will be out end of June as well - both wouldn't make it into a July openSUSE 11.2. Therfor we're now thinking about a September release.
Let us know what you're thinking about this.
I like the thinking, but I have tended to move to every other release in past skipping 1 release, as twice yearly upgrades tended not to be time effective, especially when important upgrades were available for a previous release. Psychologically, I'd like to see 2 RC's series releases, to encourage more tester's who avoid 'Alpha' & 'Beta'. This could be at expense of the last Beta's, giving time for wider testing of the kernel on real hardware, with a chance for more fixes for less common drivers, making it into the GM version, so the final release boots flawlessly on more boxes. Has Linux grown up? In my view, the core parts kernel, compiler tool chain, libraries, and most of the underlying system software has. With Repo's providing easy access to big headline project releases, there's less reason than every to release 6 monthly. But that surrenders a marketing advantage to other community distro's. Therefore perhaps some sub-releases for big items, that are big downloads, and keep SuSE in the news, would help. So perhaps there are plans for KDE4.2 for 11.1? May be that would be a good stepping stone, with say issue of 11.1-KDE-4.2 install, and provide a fall back position, should KDE 4.3 be significantly delayed for some reason. That would cope with the GNOME release to, if an 11.2-GNOME-2.28 Live CD was planned. Most of the work is probably done anyway, it's just sync-ing up the official installation media, with what many users will do via online repository. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Monday 15 December 2008 14:57:23 Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier wrote:
Also, given that people start testing heavily with RCs, it might be better to have an additional RC rather than an additional beta.
+1. -- Regards, Carlos Goncalves -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Mon, 2008-12-15 at 14:43 +0100, Michael Loeffler wrote:
Moin,
openSUSE 11.1 is almost out of the door and we (coolo, aj, zonker and myself) had some discussion about the release date for openSUSE 11.2.
First we talked about July '09 release to come close to an 8 months release cycle. But KDE 4.3 is scheduled for release on June 30th and probably an OpenOffice.org release will be out end of June as well -
It is unlikely there will be any major OpenOffice.org update released at the end of June - the release would be 3.1.1. 3.1 is scheduled for March 25 currently.
both wouldn't make it into a July openSUSE 11.2. Therfor we're now thinking about a September release. Beside of getting the most current OpenOffice and KDE in thhis would even have one additional upside. It probably would be just in front of our openSUSE conference. So the conference could be used for very a focused openSUSE 11.3 planning. But it has its downside as well. Finalization of the release would happen during the summer holiday season. To address this we we added one Beta to stretch the development time a bit.
Here's what we're talking about:
2009-02-05 openSUSE 11.2 Alpha 0
Nearly 2 months to alpha 0 seems like a long time - is this simply an infrastructure issue because of SLE 11? There are 2 things. SLE 11 finalization phase which will keep many of
On Monday 15 December 2008, JP Rosevear wrote: the internal guys busy. And the vacation season till mid of January.
What will the state of Factory be during this time?
Factory is ongoing synced out. M
-JP
-- Michael Löffler, Product Management SUSE LINUX Products GmbH - Nürnberg - AG Nürnberg - HRB 16746 - GF: Markus Rex -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Monday 15 December 2008, Dominique Leuenberger wrote:
On 12/15/2008 at 14:43, Michael Loeffler <michl@novell.com> wrote:
First we talked about July '09 release to come close to an 8 months release cycle. But KDE 4.3 is scheduled for release on June 30th and
probably an OpenOffice.org release will be out end of June as well -
both wouldn't make it into a July openSUSE 11.2. Therfor we're now
It's like always with release dates: getting in 'sync' with upstream projects is close to impossible, except if they would all adjust.
So we postpone 11.2 for 2 month in order to get KDE 4.3 in... sounds actually quiet fair.
And just to let you know: by the typical 6 month cycle, just in September will most likely be also Gnome 2.28 ;) So we just miss the addition of hte greatest / best of gnome... I just checked with aj on Gnome. And my evaluation timewise with implementing Gnome is too long. We should be able to get Gnome in 11.2 if we have the Gnome GM with last openSUSE Beta version or even RC1 might be possible. But the latter needs to be confirmed by our Gnome colleagues JP and Vincent.
but you see what I want to say with this anyhow. So let's get the discussion going on and I'll do some reschedulung to get latest Gnome in with 11.2.
M
Dominique
-- Michael Löffler, Product Management SUSE LINUX Products GmbH - Nürnberg - AG Nürnberg - HRB 16746 - GF: Markus Rex -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
Il giorno lun, 15/12/2008 alle 09.57 -0500, Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier ha scritto:
As others have said - I have some reservations about releasing in September and just missing a GNOME release.
I know that syncs badly with the conference, but I think GNOME is important enough to go ahead and wait for it. Why have such a lengthy release cycle and then just miss GNOME?
I tend to think it is a lot better to have old but working GNOME, rather than pushing the new version in at the last minute. It did not work in the past, and I don't see how it should be different this time. Regards, A. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
I think waiting for KDE 4.3 is a great idea. Right now on the 11.1 release there are many features in KDE missing that used to be in KDE 3.5 (unless they somehow found their way back in between RC1 and GM, lol). I feel the main focus should be to identify those features and make an effort to add them. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 12:49 PM, Andrew Joakimsen <joakimsen@gmail.com> wrote:
I think waiting for KDE 4.3 is a great idea. Right now on the 11.1 release there are many features in KDE missing that used to be in KDE 3.5 (unless they somehow found their way back in between RC1 and GM, lol). I feel the main focus should be to identify those features and make an effort to add them.
A brief reminder - while openSUSE and Novell contribute a great deal to KDE, we don't guide the project or all KDE development. So, identifying "missing features" and seeing to it that they're available in 4.3 is (at least in my opinion) a bit beyond the scope of our KDE developers. They've done an outstanding job of back-porting features from 4.2 to 4.1 for openSUSE 11.1 and making it exceedingly nice, but putting the burden of KDE 3.5 feature parity on our crack squad of KDE folks is a bit much to ask. Best, Zonker -- Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier openSUSE Community Manager jzb@zonker.net http://zonker.opensuse.org/ http://blogs.zdnet.com/community/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
Alberto Passalacqua a écrit :
I tend to think it is a lot better to have old but working GNOME, rather than pushing the new version in at the last minute. It did not work in the past, and I don't see how it should be different this time.
exactly. openSUSE should build without taking account of the other deadlinks, what will you do if kde reshedule? It's much better to have the build service offer (like it does) the very last version for the folks that wants it and stay with the old one on stable release. there will *always* be a *breaking new* great application needing to wait some more weeks... jdd -- http://www.dodin.net http://valerie.dodin.org http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-eic8MSSfM -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Mon, 2008-12-15 at 19:44 +0100, jdd wrote:
Alberto Passalacqua a écrit :
I tend to think it is a lot better to have old but working GNOME, rather than pushing the new version in at the last minute. It did not work in the past, and I don't see how it should be different this time.
exactly.
This is only partially true, GNOME will be feature frozen before the end of July and would have regular updates throughout a development cycle. -JP -- JP Rosevear <jpr@novell.com> Novell, Inc. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
2008/12/15 jdd <jdd@dodin.org>:
Alberto Passalacqua a écrit :
what will you do if kde reshedule?
If KDE reschedules, then 4.2 + some 'back ported' features sounds good to me; with 3.5.10 as an option like in 11.1. KDE has been at a difficult point in the software life cycle, whist I actually enjoyed basic use of 11.1's KDE4, I suspect that KDE 3.5.10 will remain a popular choice. The 4.2 release has been getting better reviews, and I noticed OpenSUSE had included some of the 'new' features in 4.1.3. 4.3 is going to be the crunch release for me, it either makes it by then, or breaks for me (XFCE or LXDE seem like the most promising replacements). So I hope it makes sense, remains fast, becomes very solid and avoids emasculation at hands of "Usability Experts".
there will *always* be a *breaking new* great application needing to wait some more weeks...
Yes, whilst the Build service and 1 Click install do really change the landscape, from the old days of waiting on box sets. However OpenSUSE needs to maintain interest, and not everyone has a fast net connection; so something to get reviewed, appear on Magazine covers, for cheap disk emporiums to send out, and to put in the retail box set makes sense. May be Build service labels like "X::Stable", "X::Latest" could be leveraged in the post-install process, presenting a selection of unstable, latest & greatest software for those with decent net connections and tolerance for frequent updates? -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Monday 15 December 2008 14:43:03 Michael Loeffler wrote:
2009-05-28 openSUSE 11.2 Alpha 4 2009-06-25 openSUSE 11.2 Beta 1
One thing I would like to see in general is feature and version freeze not coinciding with last submission day for Beta 1 - so for above dates not on 19th June but for example on 5th (Friday) or 8th (Monday). Looking forward to a first Beta for which not half of the packages suddenly do not build anymore and which is less stable/usable than the last Alpha. Bye, Steve -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 1:44 PM, jdd <jdd@dodin.org> wrote:
there will *always* be a *breaking new* great application needing to wait some more weeks...
To keep it in perspective, we're not talking about *an application*, we're talking about a desktop environment that is made up of a slew of other applications. Best, Zonker -- Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier openSUSE Community Manager jzb@zonker.net http://zonker.opensuse.org/ http://blogs.zdnet.com/community/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Mon, 2008-12-15 at 09:46 -0500, JP Rosevear wrote:
On Mon, 2008-12-15 at 14:43 +0100, Michael Loeffler wrote:
Moin,
openSUSE 11.1 is almost out of the door and we (coolo, aj, zonker and myself) had some discussion about the release date for openSUSE 11.2.
First we talked about July '09 release to come close to an 8 months release cycle. But KDE 4.3 is scheduled for release on June 30th and probably an OpenOffice.org release will be out end of June as well -
It is unlikely there will be any major OpenOffice.org update released at the end of June - the release would be 3.1.1. 3.1 is scheduled for March 25 currently.
both wouldn't make it into a July openSUSE 11.2. Therfor we're now thinking about a September release. Beside of getting the most current OpenOffice and KDE in thhis would even have one additional upside. It probably would be just in front of our openSUSE conference. So the conference could be used for very a focused openSUSE 11.3 planning. But it has its downside as well. Finalization of the release would happen during the summer holiday season. To address this we we added one Beta to stretch the development time a bit.
Here's what we're talking about:
2009-02-05 openSUSE 11.2 Alpha 0
Nearly 2 months to alpha 0 seems like a long time - is this simply an infrastructure issue because of SLE 11?
I actually don't mind it being 2 months. In the past, when we released Alpha0, it's basically been the last released openSUSE plus a few updates. This way, we can ensure that we actually have something to test :-) Cheers, Magnus -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
Il giorno lun, 15/12/2008 alle 15.38 -0500, JP Rosevear ha scritto:
This is only partially true, GNOME will be feature frozen before the end of July and would have regular updates throughout a development cycle.
Hi JP, this would open again another question, which is openSUSE updates policy. Strictly speaking only security updates should be provided. Other updates are hard to be accepted, and very slow to come even if ready, as we experienced in the past. So, if the policy doesn't change, I would still vote for an older GNOME, which means less work for everyone and probably a better result, imho. Best, A. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier a écrit :
On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 1:44 PM, jdd <jdd@dodin.org> wrote:
there will *always* be a *breaking new* great application needing to wait some more weeks...
To keep it in perspective, we're not talking about *an application*, we're talking about a desktop environment that is made up of a slew of other applications.
not only: we spoke also of openoffice, why not firefox and thunderbird? why not sync with Mandriva, Ubunto or Debian :-)? anyway we have no way to know what others are to do and we shouldn't bother. Let's use our optimal release cycle and let the *build service* do what it does very well. The build service is the thing we have to rely on for latest product. it's even easy to have new kde, gnome, openoffice... whatever available on cd through build service for people needing a cd, not even necessary to mirror these cd's (they are usefull, but only for a small part of our users) jdd -- http://www.dodin.net http://valerie.dodin.org http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-eic8MSSfM -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 5:26 PM, jdd <jdd@dodin.org> wrote:
it's even easy to have new kde, gnome, openoffice... whatever available on cd through build service for people needing a cd, not even necessary to mirror these cd's (they are usefull, but only for a small part of our users)
Not necessarily. For instance - no new GNOME was available for 11.0, even though some members of the GNOME team tried to package it for 11.0. [0] Whether that will hold true for 11.2 or not, I don't know. As for what others do - unless the release schedules change, Ubuntu & Fedora will release in October, with the most recent GNOME and presumably the KDE 4.3 release. I really wish the GNOME & KDE folks would sync their schedules up... Best, Zonker [0] http://lizards.opensuse.org/2008/11/27/gnome-backports-on-opensuse/ -- Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier openSUSE Community Manager jzb@zonker.net http://zonker.opensuse.org/ http://blogs.zdnet.com/community/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
Zonker, On Mon, 2008-12-15 at 17:45 -0500, Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier wrote:
On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 5:26 PM, jdd <jdd@dodin.org> wrote:
it's even easy to have new kde, gnome, openoffice... whatever available on cd through build service for people needing a cd, not even necessary to mirror these cd's (they are usefull, but only for a small part of our users)
Not necessarily. For instance - no new GNOME was available for 11.0, even though some members of the GNOME team tried to package it for 11.0. [0] Whether that will hold true for 11.2 or not, I don't know.
We had to can that backport for several reasons. We will, however, make every attempt to build GNOME 2.26 for openSUSE 11.1. We have actually already enabled both openSUSE 11.1 and Factory and while we update to latest GNOME, we will be able to fix whatever breaks as we go. Cheers, Magnus -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Mon, 2008-12-15 at 14:43 +0100, Michael Loeffler wrote:
Here's what we're talking about:
2009-02-05 openSUSE 11.2 Alpha 0 2009-03-05 openSUSE 11.2 Alpha 1 2009-04-02 openSUSE 11.2 Alpha 2 2009-04-30 openSUSE 11.2 Alpha 3 2009-05-28 openSUSE 11.2 Alpha 4 2009-06-25 openSUSE 11.2 Beta 1 2009-07-09 openSUSE 11.2 Beta 2 2009-07-24 openSUSE 11.2 Beta 3 2009-08-06 openSUSE 11.2 Beta 4 2009-08-20 openSUSE 11.2 RC1 2009-09-03 openSUSE 11.2 GM 2009-09-10 openSUSE 11.2 Public Release
Just from a scheduling point of view, I tend to prefer the longer (9 to 10 months) schedules, so I like the September release date. The only concern I have is whether we'll make the fall GNOME release, but I suppose we can't please everyone, and we've narrowly missed some KDE releases in the past, so it'sprobably our turn ;-). Sounds good to me, plus the summer through the fall is a nice slow time for me to work on stuff :-) -- Kevin "Yeaux" Dupuy - openSUSE Member Public Mail: <kevin.dupuy@opensuse.org> Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays from the Yeaux! -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Mon, 2008-12-15 at 09:48 -0500, JP Rosevear wrote:
I agree, I think its odd to make a lengthy 10 month schedule and then not add on 2-4 weeks to grab the final version of GNOME. Within 2 months Ubuntu, Fedora and Mandriva will have new releases with a 6-months-newer GNOME.
Good point. If it's not too long of an addition, I would rather see the release be delayed for GNOME. And it's not *too* lengthy, even delaying 11.2 by a month (an extreme case, it seems to me) would still be a shorter development period than we had for 10.2 -> 10.3 (Dec. 7, 2006 until Oct. 4, 2007) -- Kevin "Yeaux" Dupuy - openSUSE Member Public Mail: <kevin.dupuy@opensuse.org> Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays from the Yeaux! -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Monday, 2008-12-15 at 14:43 +0100, Michael Loeffler wrote:
But it has its downside as well. Finalization of the release would happen during the summer holiday season. To address this we we added one Beta to stretch the development time a bit.
Some people might have difficulties contributing during the summer holidays. Me, for instance... I won't have my ADSL network, maybe not even the computer, during August. So certainly I will not do any testing, and very probably no translations. - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAklHGyQACgkQtTMYHG2NR9Ws0QCfU4mq5lqhpIl44FwV/2BDCF+p OLsAmwYGRh5hf6u2ctwniBX4P5kFNlB1 =ZgVr -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Monday 15 December 2008 22:57:07 Magnus Boman wrote:
On Mon, 2008-12-15 at 09:46 -0500, JP Rosevear wrote:
On Mon, 2008-12-15 at 14:43 +0100, Michael Loeffler wrote:
Moin,
openSUSE 11.1 is almost out of the door and we (coolo, aj, zonker and myself) had some discussion about the release date for openSUSE 11.2.
First we talked about July '09 release to come close to an 8 months release cycle. But KDE 4.3 is scheduled for release on June 30th and probably an OpenOffice.org release will be out end of June as well -
It is unlikely there will be any major OpenOffice.org update released at the end of June - the release would be 3.1.1. 3.1 is scheduled for March 25 currently.
both wouldn't make it into a July openSUSE 11.2. Therfor we're now thinking about a September release. Beside of getting the most current OpenOffice and KDE in thhis would even have one additional upside. It probably would be just in front of our openSUSE conference. So the conference could be used for very a focused openSUSE 11.3 planning. But it has its downside as well. Finalization of the release would happen during the summer holiday season. To address this we we added one Beta to stretch the development time a bit.
Here's what we're talking about:
2009-02-05 openSUSE 11.2 Alpha 0
Nearly 2 months to alpha 0 seems like a long time - is this simply an infrastructure issue because of SLE 11?
I actually don't mind it being 2 months. In the past, when we released Alpha0, it's basically been the last released openSUSE plus a few updates.
Yes, that is to be expected for parts we actively develop - people are busy until release with fixing bugs, so they start with a new stuff only shortly after release (and vacations and ...). What you see though is package version updates. Stano -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Tuesday, 16. December 2008 03:53:27 Kevin Dupuy wrote:
The only concern I have is whether we'll make the fall GNOME release, but I suppose we can't please everyone, and we've narrowly missed some KDE releases in the past, so it'sprobably our turn ;-).
I don't want to start a flame war but to me the current changes in GNOME2 in each release look rather non-critical to the ordinary user (read, they are more nice to have features). In opposite KDE currently does a bigger jump with each KDE4 release and (re-) adds undebatable important features (read, not being in sync with the release either causes backport efforts or noticeably hurts users not having latest). Looking forward to not miss a new KDE4 release by one or two months the third time in a row :-)... Bye, Steve -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Monday 15 December 2008, JP Rosevear wrote:
2009-02-05 openSUSE 11.2 Alpha 0 Nearly 2 months to alpha 0 seems like a long time - is this simply an infrastructure issue because of SLE 11?
Perhaps because some people also want to do vacation or reasonable development somewhen during the year? ;) I don't think it makes sense to fill every month with opensuse alphas just because we can. if there has to be some time where changes are actually being done instead of being in release-mode all the time. Greetings, Dirk -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Monday 15 December 2008, JP Rosevear wrote:
I agree, I think its odd to make a lengthy 10 month schedule and then not add on 2-4 weeks to grab the final version of GNOME.
final version? GNOME finally ceases to exist? ;) I don't see the point, there will always be yet-another-release of major software that we'll miss. It would make more sense to spend time on incremental improvements of the platform and not sync schedules with the latest desktop gimmick that only 50% of the users use (be it KDE or GNOME or ..). Furthermore those parts are exchangeable, one click and you have a buildservice repository that always ships the latest shiniest KDE. I don't understand why a shorter release cycle was dismissed, there was no reason given? How about a release in ~ May, which includes kernel 2.6.28 and gcc 4.4, and then a release around October/November for 11.3? These plans have synergy effects: we can make use of a stable 2.6.28 kernel already for other products, and we can make use of the testing of an intermediate 11.2 release to make sure that 11.3 is stable enough to become synced with the Enterprise Desktop SP1. The openSUSE Build Service good infrastructure to provide the latest desktop to the user. It does not provide good infrastructure to ship the latest kernel/X.org/compiler, because those are not really leaf packages like the desktop is. Or does the openSUSE GNOME team really prefer to skip a completeGNOME release because 11.2 would only be released autumn next year? And why does the opinion of the GNOME team matter on the release cycle of a linux distribution? Shouldn't we make sure that we ship a newer platform in time so that the desktops can make use of platform features and test and prepare that in the community, offloading all the "the stuff does not compile/work anymore" to the development community? And what are we doing when the other distros ship their spring release? Greetings, Dirk -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Tue, 2008-12-16 at 12:18 +0100, Dirk Müller wrote:
On Monday 15 December 2008, JP Rosevear wrote:
I agree, I think its odd to make a lengthy 10 month schedule and then not add on 2-4 weeks to grab the final version of GNOME.
final version? GNOME finally ceases to exist? ;)
I don't see the point, there will always be yet-another-release of major software that we'll miss.
The point is that the original schedule proposal specifically called out wanting to include KDE 4.3 (and OpenOffice - but that was incorrect schedule wise, however with a september release its also back into play) and specifically rejected a release date because of it. So major releases seem to be driving the schedule proposal for now. I do agree we should shoot for 4.3 if possible as well as KDE 3.5 will be dropped out of the next release and jumping as far ahead as possible to close the feature gap is necessary.
It would make more sense to spend time on incremental improvements of the platform and not sync schedules with the latest desktop gimmick that only 50% of the users use (be it KDE or GNOME or ..). Furthermore those parts are exchangeable, one click and you have a buildservice repository that always ships the latest shiniest KDE.
I think the KDE buildservice is great for testing. I don't think the build service is used by a majority of desktop users though.
I don't understand why a shorter release cycle was dismissed, there was no reason given? How about a release in ~ May, which includes kernel 2.6.28 and gcc 4.4, and then a release around October/November for 11.3? These plans have synergy effects: we can make use of a stable 2.6.28 kernel already for other products, and we can make use of the testing of an intermediate 11.2 release to make sure that 11.3 is stable enough to become synced with the Enterprise Desktop SP1.
Sure - this is why I also suggested we discuss more than just 11.2 at this time.
The openSUSE Build Service good infrastructure to provide the latest desktop to the user. It does not provide good infrastructure to ship the latest kernel/X.org/compiler, because those are not really leaf packages like the desktop is.
Or does the openSUSE GNOME team really prefer to skip a completeGNOME release because 11.2 would only be released autumn next year? And why does the
I don't understand what you are saying here - GNOME would be updated to 2.26 for 11.2 if 2.28 was not feasible.
opinion of the GNOME team matter on the release cycle of a linux distribution?
The downstream openSUSE GNOME team's opinion should matter I hope as part of the community.
Shouldn't we make sure that we ship a newer platform in time so that the desktops can make use of platform features and test and prepare that in the community, offloading all the "the stuff does not compile/work anymore" to the development community?
And what are we doing when the other distros ship their spring release?
Yes, see above, starting to plan more than one release at a time (from a schedule perspective) would be helpful imho. -JP -- JP Rosevear <jpr@novell.com> Novell, Inc. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On martedì 16 dicembre 2008 13:37:40 JP Rosevear wrote:
On Tue, 2008-12-16 at 12:18 +0100, Dirk Müller wrote:
On Monday 15 December 2008, JP Rosevear wrote:
I agree, I think its odd to make a lengthy 10 month schedule and then not add on 2-4 weeks to grab the final version of GNOME.
final version? GNOME finally ceases to exist? ;)
I don't see the point, there will always be yet-another-release of major software that we'll miss.
The point is that the original schedule proposal specifically called out wanting to include KDE 4.3 (and OpenOffice - but that was incorrect schedule wise, however with a september release its also back into play) and specifically rejected a release date because of it. So major releases seem to be driving the schedule proposal for now.
I do agree we should shoot for 4.3 if possible as well as KDE 3.5 will be dropped out of the next release and jumping as far ahead as possible to close the feature gap is necessary.
It would make more sense to spend time on incremental improvements of the platform and not sync schedules with the latest desktop gimmick that only 50% of the users use (be it KDE or GNOME or ..). Furthermore those parts are exchangeable, one click and you have a buildservice repository that always ships the latest shiniest KDE.
I think the KDE buildservice is great for testing. I don't think the build service is used by a majority of desktop users though.
I don't understand why a shorter release cycle was dismissed, there was no reason given? How about a release in ~ May, which includes kernel 2.6.28 and gcc 4.4, and then a release around October/November for 11.3? These plans have synergy effects: we can make use of a stable 2.6.28 kernel already for other products, and we can make use of the testing of an intermediate 11.2 release to make sure that 11.3 is stable enough to become synced with the Enterprise Desktop SP1.
Sure - this is why I also suggested we discuss more than just 11.2 at this time.
The openSUSE Build Service good infrastructure to provide the latest desktop to the user. It does not provide good infrastructure to ship the latest kernel/X.org/compiler, because those are not really leaf packages like the desktop is.
Or does the openSUSE GNOME team really prefer to skip a completeGNOME release because 11.2 would only be released autumn next year? And why does the
I don't understand what you are saying here - GNOME would be updated to 2.26 for 11.2 if 2.28 was not feasible.
opinion of the GNOME team matter on the release cycle of a linux distribution?
The downstream openSUSE GNOME team's opinion should matter I hope as part of the community.
Shouldn't we make sure that we ship a newer platform in time so that the desktops can make use of platform features and test and prepare that in the community, offloading all the "the stuff does not compile/work anymore" to the development community?
And what are we doing when the other distros ship their spring release?
Yes, see above, starting to plan more than one release at a time (from a schedule perspective) would be helpful imho.
-JP -- JP Rosevear <jpr@novell.com> Novell, Inc.
Gived the fact that KDE 4.3 should ship on june 30, I'd say to release openSUSE 11.2 around july 30. This has some positive effects: - 4.3 gets in opensuse, we have one full month to stabilize it in opensuse. We could backport some important fixes from the 4.3 branch until the GM. In a month of testing they'll show up for sure. - Gnome 2.26 won't be "fresh" but at least we won't miss a release for a few week. Actually we'll be in a balanced situation on the gnome side, beeing in the middle of their release cycle. This seems very good to me, both on the kde and on the gnome side. - 11.1 has some performance problem with intel cards and there's a lot of work going on in xorg. With the new year we'll have dri2 and gem (decent performance, finally 3d apps in a composited environment will make compiz an option for a lot more users, less cpu usage) and xorg 1.6-1.7 (for a better exa). For june(even before) 2.6.29 will be already out and bring kernel modesettings (nicer graphical boot, better suspend). These features are very important and IMHO should be brought to users asap. In this situation such a long release cycle as the proposed one doesn't seem the best to me. -August will not be in a beta stage, where testers are needed but not avaible because swimming in the sea. =) Of course releasing 11.2 only a month after kde 4.3 requires a wise planning and strategy BUT the same would be in September/October with Gnome. NOTE that (IMHO) the build service should not be "abused" in this discussion. Sure, it's a great tool for testing and/or costumizing, but we are talking about planning a "supported" distro. Build services bring lot of updates everyday and sometimes this upgrades can break a stable system. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
2008/12/16 JP Rosevear <jpr@novell.com>:
On Tue, 2008-12-16 at 12:18 +0100, Dirk Müller wrote:
On Monday 15 December 2008, JP Rosevear wrote:
It would make more sense to spend time on incremental improvements of the platform and not sync schedules with the latest desktop gimmick that only 50% of the users use (be it KDE or GNOME or ..). Furthermore those parts are exchangeable, one click and you have a buildservice repository that always ships the latest shiniest KDE.
I don't understand why a shorter release cycle was dismissed, there was no reason given? How about a release in ~ May, which includes kernel 2.6.28 and gcc 4.4, and then a release around October/November for 11.3?
I don't understand why a shorter release cycle was dismissed, there was no reason given? How about a release in ~ May, which includes kernel 2.6.28 and gcc 4.4, and then a release around October/November for 11.3? These plans have synergy effects: we can make use of a stable 2.6.28 kernel already for other products, and we can make use of the testing of an intermediate 11.2 release to make sure that 11.3 is stable enough to become synced with the Enterprise Desktop SP1.
The openSUSE Build Service good infrastructure to provide the latest desktop to the user. It does not provide good infrastructure to ship the latest kernel/X.org/compiler, because those are not really leaf packages like the desktop is.
That's an interesting point. I'd bracket gcc & glibc as the tricky upgrades. The kernel and X has been provided via update rpm's in the past (SuSE 7.X times), why can't they be done by build service, if a bundle containing any system tools that require upgrading is included in the "release set"? I install several different kernel rpm's on anything but play systems, and it's saved pain with a Rescue CD on several occasions. gcc, updates are usually easy to install for developers, but pointless in OpenSUSE context unless you recompile the system source. Similarly glibc, it has to provide binary compatability for older executuables, but without relinking against it, you're not going to achieve the aim of widespread use. Now a May release, includes gcc-4.4, kernel 2.6.8; and KDE 4.2 which is at beta stage at present. Which one out of those, will the most end users actually care about? What improvements make this compelling to end users? May be the whole big bang release idea where everything gets updated all together is somewhat broken. The big projects the distro packages operate independently. So how about a more "Tick Tock" based approach, does that provide more flexibility and is it more natual? X.0 - kernel, glibc, gcc, binutils, base utitlities, filesystems (rest feature stable, bug fixes only) X.1 (KDE) (OOo) - core stuff proven (and stabilised), latest applications X.2 (GNOME) - more application updates (FINAL release goes to retail, upgrade from X.1 & 11.1) Y.0 - kernel, glibc, gcc Y.1 - (APPLIC perhaps mainly YaST this time) Y.2 - significant kernel release + upgrade of core server daemons Y.3 - Desktop updates (FINAL release goes to retail, with upgrade from Y.2 & X.FINAL) De-coupling would allow natural follow on releases focussed on getting out the latest, without destabilishing the whole distro. Only some of the teams are under max stress and release pressure at each point. The interim .0, .1 etc releases culminate in a really solid quality retail distribution. Upgrading from one release version to the next, is a more incremental step.
I think the KDE buildservice is great for testing. I don't think the build service is used by a majority of desktop users though.
That seems like an area, which could be developed. Some sort of "Policy" wizard that then allows the admin to be notified of package upgrade possibilities. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
Am Montag, 15. Dezember 2008 15:57:23 schrieb Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier:
I know that syncs badly with the conference, but I think GNOME is important enough to go ahead and wait for it. Why have such a lengthy release cycle and then just miss GNOME?
Also, given that people start testing heavily with RCs, it might be better to have an additional RC rather than an additional beta.
You understand that this RC would need the final GNOME, right? Greetings, Stephan -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
Am Montag, 15. Dezember 2008 21:38:36 schrieb JP Rosevear:
On Mon, 2008-12-15 at 19:44 +0100, jdd wrote:
Alberto Passalacqua a écrit :
I tend to think it is a lot better to have old but working GNOME, rather than pushing the new version in at the last minute. It did not work in the past, and I don't see how it should be different this time.
exactly.
This is only partially true, GNOME will be feature frozen before the end of July and would have regular updates throughout a development cycle.
Sorry, but how many 10.3 online updates you had to push because the final GNOME was broken? We need to have the last GNOME GM-4 weeks. No discussion there. If we delay GM or skip autumn GNOME I don't mind. Greetings, Stephan -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
Am Dienstag, 16. Dezember 2008 12:18:44 schrieb Dirk Müller:
I don't understand why a shorter release cycle was dismissed, there was no reason given? How about a release in ~ May, which includes kernel 2.6.28 and gcc 4.4, and then a release around October/November for 11.3? These plans have synergy effects: we can make use of a stable 2.6.28 kernel already for other products, and we can make use of the testing of an intermediate 11.2 release to make sure that 11.3 is stable enough to become synced with the Enterprise Desktop SP1.
Actually many complained that 11.1 had a too short release cycle - so they did not really start testing because they hardly finished their 11.0 polishing and I guess that's right for many. And if you go with a may release with many developers having prolonged christmas holidays and ask for an extended RC phase to stabilize and translate, this gives very little time over a kernel and a gcc update. Does pretty hard to sell to users to me. Greetings, Stephan -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
Am Dienstag, 16. Dezember 2008 04:06:10 schrieb Carlos E. R.:
On Monday, 2008-12-15 at 14:43 +0100, Michael Loeffler wrote:
But it has its downside as well. Finalization of the release would happen during the summer holiday season. To address this we we added one Beta to stretch the development time a bit.
Some people might have difficulties contributing during the summer holidays. Me, for instance... I won't have my ADSL network, maybe not even the computer, during August. So certainly I will not do any testing, and very probably no translations.
Yeah, that's why we need to move slowly over august. I.e. freezing development mid/end of july and only do RC releases over august. But RC phase means we only fix critical bugs and we will get a lot of complaints about bugs not being fixed. But every bug fixed may cause regressions. Greetings, Stephan -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Tue, 2008-12-16 at 20:01 +0100, Stephan Kulow wrote:
Am Montag, 15. Dezember 2008 21:38:36 schrieb JP Rosevear:
On Mon, 2008-12-15 at 19:44 +0100, jdd wrote:
Alberto Passalacqua a écrit :
I tend to think it is a lot better to have old but working GNOME, rather than pushing the new version in at the last minute. It did not work in the past, and I don't see how it should be different this time.
exactly.
This is only partially true, GNOME will be feature frozen before the end of July and would have regular updates throughout a development cycle.
Sorry, but how many 10.3 online updates you had to push because the final GNOME was broken? We need to have the last GNOME GM-4 weeks. No discussion there. If we delay GM or skip autumn GNOME I don't mind.
I'll toss this one up in the air even though I haven't actually thought it through yet; If we do DE based releases, problem would be solved (ie, release openSUSE 11.2, KDE Edition when the KDE Devs/Community feels it's ready, and likewise for GNOME). What it might mean is that this time around, the KDE edition is released a month or two prior to the GNOME edition. Next time around, it might be the same, or the other way around. Perhaps that will create an administrative night mare and all the mirrors will come after us etc etc. I don't know. Thought it might be worth mentioning it. Cheers, Magnus -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
Thought it might be worth mentioning it. Limiting openSUSE to GNOME or KDE is just wrong. Interesting idea
Am Dienstag, 16. Dezember 2008 22:28:33 schrieb Magnus Boman: though. Greetings, Stephan -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
Am Montag, 15. Dezember 2008 16:08:41 schrieb Rob OpenSuSE:
2008/12/15 Michael Loeffler <michl@novell.com>:
First we talked about July '09 release to come close to an 8 months release cycle. But KDE 4.3 is scheduled for release on June 30th and probably an OpenOffice.org release will be out end of June as well - both wouldn't make it into a July openSUSE 11.2. Therfor we're now thinking about a September release.
Let us know what you're thinking about this.
I like the thinking, but I have tended to move to every other release in past skipping 1 release, as twice yearly upgrades tended not to be time effective, especially when important upgrades were available for a previous release.
Psychologically, I'd like to see 2 RC's series releases, to encourage more tester's who avoid 'Alpha' & 'Beta'. This could be at expense of the last Beta's, giving time for wider testing of the kernel on real hardware, with a chance for more fixes for less common drivers, making it into the GM version, so the final release boots flawlessly on more boxes.
Actually what I want to get away from with this release is Alpha, Beta and RC. Our Alphas are usually not less stable than our betas and our RCs are usually not 100% release material. So I want simple Milestones with goals associated to it. These goals wouldn't be much different from what we have now, but it would make it more clear IMO. Greetings, Stephan -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Tue, 2008-12-16 at 20:01 +0100, Stephan Kulow wrote:
Am Montag, 15. Dezember 2008 21:38:36 schrieb JP Rosevear:
On Mon, 2008-12-15 at 19:44 +0100, jdd wrote:
Alberto Passalacqua a écrit :
I tend to think it is a lot better to have old but working GNOME, rather than pushing the new version in at the last minute. It did not work in the past, and I don't see how it should be different this time.
exactly.
This is only partially true, GNOME will be feature frozen before the end of July and would have regular updates throughout a development cycle.
Sorry, but how many 10.3 online updates you had to push because the final GNOME was broken? We need to have the last GNOME GM-4 weeks. No discussion there. If we delay GM or skip autumn GNOME I don't mind.
I don't know now - how many? -JP -- JP Rosevear <jpr@novell.com> Novell, Inc. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Tue, 2008-12-16 at 20:03 +0100, Stephan Kulow wrote:
Am Dienstag, 16. Dezember 2008 12:18:44 schrieb Dirk Müller:
I don't understand why a shorter release cycle was dismissed, there was no reason given? How about a release in ~ May, which includes kernel 2.6.28 and gcc 4.4, and then a release around October/November for 11.3? These plans have synergy effects: we can make use of a stable 2.6.28 kernel already for other products, and we can make use of the testing of an intermediate 11.2 release to make sure that 11.3 is stable enough to become synced with the Enterprise Desktop SP1.
Actually many complained that 11.1 had a too short release cycle - so they did not really start testing because they hardly finished their 11.0 polishing and I guess that's right for many. And if you go with a may release with many developers having prolonged christmas holidays and ask for an extended RC phase to stabilize and translate, this gives very little time over a kernel and a gcc update. Does pretty hard to sell to users to me.
I think though this was really exacerbated by all late features because of SLE 11 - cutting those off better would help in a shorter cycle (though I'm not sure 6 months is the right answer). -JP -- JP Rosevear <jpr@novell.com> Novell, Inc. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
2008/12/16 Stephan Kulow <coolo@novell.com>:
Am Montag, 15. Dezember 2008 16:08:41 schrieb Rob OpenSuSE:
2008/12/15 Michael Loeffler <michl@novell.com>:
Psychologically, I'd like to see 2 RC's series releases, to encourage more tester's who avoid 'Alpha' & 'Beta'.
Actually what I want to get away from with this release is Alpha, Beta and RC. Our Alphas are usually not less stable than our betas and our RCs are usually not 100% release material. So I want simple Milestones with goals associated to it. These goals wouldn't be much different from what we have now, but it would make it more clear IMO.
That sounds like an improvement to me. Giving some focus to the testing, makes it less daunting, and more likely to attract testers with better understanding of the particular area. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Tue, 2008-12-16 at 22:44 +0100, Stephan Kulow wrote:
Am Dienstag, 16. Dezember 2008 22:28:33 schrieb Magnus Boman:
Thought it might be worth mentioning it. Limiting openSUSE to GNOME or KDE is just wrong. Interesting idea though.
Hmm, would it be possible to have a base openSUSE system, and have GNOME/KDE as addons? It wouldn't be *that* much of a difference compared to the LiveCD's? Cheers, Magnus -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Tue, 2008-12-16 at 20:03 +0100, Stephan Kulow wrote:
Actually many complained that 11.1 had a too short release cycle - so they did not really start testing because they hardly finished their 11.0 polishing and I guess that's right for many. And if you go with a may release with many developers having prolonged christmas holidays and ask for an extended RC phase to stabilize and translate, this gives very little time over a kernel and a gcc update. Does pretty hard to sell to users to me.
I agree with them. I tend to prefer longer release times, particularly from a testing (some people like to use their shiny new release before they go bug hunting in the next one ;-)), and from a marketing perspective (2 to 3 releases a year, every year gets tedious to manage, and overwhelms users). I think the current openSUSE schedule (which has been described to me as "3 releases over a period of two years", is that about right?) is a good pace. -- Kevin "Yeaux" Dupuy - openSUSE Member Public Mail: <kevin.dupuy@opensuse.org> Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays from the Yeaux! -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Tue, 2008-12-16 at 12:00 +0100, Dirk Müller wrote:
Perhaps because some people also want to do vacation or reasonable development somewhen during the year? ;)
I don't think it makes sense to fill every month with opensuse alphas just because we can. if there has to be some time where changes are actually being done instead of being in release-mode all the time.
I agree wholeheartedly. -- Kevin "Yeaux" Dupuy - openSUSE Member Public Mail: <kevin.dupuy@opensuse.org> Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays from the Yeaux! -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Tue, 2008-12-16 at 22:45 +0100, Stephan Kulow wrote:
Actually what I want to get away from with this release is Alpha, Beta and RC. Our Alphas are usually not less stable than our betas and our RCs are usually not 100% release material. So I want simple Milestones with goals associated to it. These goals wouldn't be much different from what we have now, but it would make it more clear IMO.
I think this is a great idea. openSUSE 11.2 M1 (milestone 1), etc. Considering in the few years I've been testing openSUSE, I've tested out RCs that were worse than alphas, getting away from the naming is probably a smart idea. I can't name how many times I've read a Linux news article "what is wrong with this thing? It's RC 1 but it is horrible", sometimes even when the RC is a month or so away from the actual GM release (and that affects everyone, not just openSUSE, I've read about that in relation to all sorts of software). It's the naming. -- Kevin "Yeaux" Dupuy - openSUSE Member Public Mail: <kevin.dupuy@opensuse.org> Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays from the Yeaux! -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Wed, 2008-12-17 at 08:28 +1100, Magnus Boman wrote:
If we do DE based releases, problem would be solved (ie, release openSUSE 11.2, KDE Edition when the KDE Devs/Community feels it's ready, and likewise for GNOME). What it might mean is that this time around, the KDE edition is released a month or two prior to the GNOME edition. Next time around, it might be the same, or the other way around. Perhaps that will create an administrative night mare and all the mirrors will come after us etc etc. I don't know.
But at that point, we might as well just choose one desktop environment as the default (which I'm NOT advocating, BTW). I don't know if the mirrors will come after ya, but I have an idea the Marketing team will ;-). Seriously, managing two different versions of the same "version" being released would confuse even some Linux users :-) -- Kevin "Yeaux" Dupuy - openSUSE Member Public Mail: <kevin.dupuy@opensuse.org> Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays from the Yeaux! -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
2008/12/16 Kevin Dupuy <kevin.dupuy@opensuse.org>:
On Wed, 2008-12-17 at 08:28 +1100, Magnus Boman wrote:
If we do DE based releases, problem would be solved (ie, release openSUSE 11.2, KDE Edition when the KDE Devs/Community feels it's ready, and likewise for GNOME). What it might mean is that this time around, the KDE edition is released a month or two prior to the GNOME edition.
But at that point, we might as well just choose one desktop environment as the default (which I'm NOT advocating, BTW). I don't know if the mirrors will come after ya, but I have an idea the Marketing team will ;-). Seriously, managing two different versions of the same "version" being released would confuse even some Linux users :-)
So bump the number, and make the new rpm's installable via update. If the core base is the same, then you have more users running the same major version, those who want 'stability' could stay with the final version of the previous release, those who love to be current, can track the new software to get to the very latest minor release (and/or pre-release test betas of new versions via build service repository if that exposure is deemed desirable). Having 10.2/10.3/11.0 and then 10.3/11.0/11.1 must be as hard to support, as something like 11.3 (Final KDE4.3, GNOME 2.28, OOo 3.1.1) plus 12.x which is 'current' with the most recent release made When applications lag the infrastructural core of the distro, at least they're known quantities, and already have to be supported in the last final release. Isn't the point to maximise the user base, so that SLED & SLES are fairly bullet proof, and likely end-user issues have already been experienced?. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Tuesday 16 December 2008 05:01:32 pm Kevin Dupuy wrote:
On Tue, 2008-12-16 at 20:03 +0100, Stephan Kulow wrote:
Actually many complained that 11.1 had a too short release cycle - so they did not really start testing because they hardly finished their 11.0 polishing and I guess that's right for many. And if you go with a may release with many developers having prolonged christmas holidays and ask for an extended RC phase to stabilize and translate, this gives very little time over a kernel and a gcc update. Does pretty hard to sell to users to me.
I agree with them. I tend to prefer longer release times, particularly from a testing (some people like to use their shiny new release before they go bug hunting in the next one ;-)), and from a marketing perspective (2 to 3 releases a year, every year gets tedious to manage, and overwhelms users).
I think the current openSUSE schedule (which has been described to me as "3 releases over a period of two years", is that about right?) is a good pace.
I tend to agree with Coolo. It is getting hard to follow 6 months release cycle. I barely had time to see 11.0 and it is already candidate for deletion. One year with plan what subsystem can be changed and tested in Alphas, so that we have Betas that can attract more people to start testing. Changes on boot loader, kernel, packaging should not wait until Beta. It will give more time for fine tuning. I guess that I'm average enough, to say that majority use one (latest) computer for all their needs, so they avoid to touch releases with major subsystem broken, specially bugs that can make problems with existing installation. That kind of breakage should be solved in Alphas, if possible. -- Regards, Rajko -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
Stephan Kulow <coolo@novell.com> writes:
Sorry, but how many 10.3 online updates you had to push because the final GNOME was broken? We need to have the last GNOME GM-4 weeks. No discussion there. If we delay GM or skip autumn GNOME I don't mind.
Vincent, JP: What is the expected GNOME release day? Is it early or late September? Anything concrete yet? Andreas -- Andreas Jaeger, Director Platform / openSUSE, aj@suse.de SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg) Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany GPG fingerprint = 93A3 365E CE47 B889 DF7F FED1 389A 563C C272 A126
"Rajko M." <rmatov101@charter.net> writes:
[...] It is getting hard to follow 6 months release cycle. I barely had time to see 11.0 and it is already candidate for deletion.
I hear on the other hand also suggestions for openSUSE to go on a planned 6-month release cycle like Ubuntu and Fedora does - and release say every November and May. Is that something we should do for the future (after 11.2) - or what is the best way to do releases in general? Andreas -- Andreas Jaeger, Director Platform / openSUSE, aj@suse.de SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg) Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany GPG fingerprint = 93A3 365E CE47 B889 DF7F FED1 389A 563C C272 A126
On Wed, 2008-12-17 at 07:57 +0100, Andreas Jaeger wrote:
"Rajko M." <rmatov101@charter.net> writes:
[...] It is getting hard to follow 6 months release cycle. I barely had time to see 11.0 and it is already candidate for deletion.
I hear on the other hand also suggestions for openSUSE to go on a planned 6-month release cycle like Ubuntu and Fedora does - and release say every November and May.
I think after watching and talking to people in this past 6 month cycle leading up to 11.1, people working on this project were pretty frazzled with the time limits. I'm sure they're all breathing a sigh of relief at the prospect of a longer cycle for 11.2. Kudos to everyone for all your hard work!
Is that something we should do for the future (after 11.2) - or what is the best way to do releases in general?
I don't know that I agree with Rajko's tone regarding 11.0 already a candidate for deletion. Honestly, I'm bored with 11 and raring to go on 11.1. But that's just my personal habit. :-) We do have a 2 year support cycle, so people don't *have* to jump to the next version out. The downside of course is with a 6-month cycle, we have 4 versions to support in a 2 year support cycle. Actually 5 if you consider the support going into the development of the next version. Right now, we have 3 (10.3, 11.0, 11.1) + development of 11.2. By the time 11.2 is released, 10.3 will be just about EOL'ed. What I'm observing more of in this thread, and hearing from people talking directly to me, is that it isn't so much the time frame for development in as much as the full utilization of each phase. Less testing on alpha, more testing on RC as an example of a rather lop-sided effect we've had. I think the focus of discussion should be more about how we can improve the experience, thus making people likelier to participate earlier on. And I think the extended 11.2 cycle is going to give us that opportunity to take more time to examine that question and come up with effective solutions that make future cycle timeline decisions easier.
Andreas -- Bryen Yunashko openSUSE Board Member
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On Tuesday 16 of December 2008 23:28:41 Magnus Boman wrote:
On Tue, 2008-12-16 at 22:44 +0100, Stephan Kulow wrote:
Am Dienstag, 16. Dezember 2008 22:28:33 schrieb Magnus Boman:
Thought it might be worth mentioning it.
Limiting openSUSE to GNOME or KDE is just wrong. Interesting idea though.
Hmm, would it be possible to have a base openSUSE system, and have GNOME/KDE as addons? It wouldn't be *that* much of a difference compared to the LiveCD's?
Well, technically spoken, yes. I don't think many users would like this approach, installing from a single DVD is just too comfortable. On the other hand, we might consider providing up-to-date desktop environments as add-on products during the life cycle of the distro (basically make an add-on from factory repo after new KDE/GNOME/whatever gets released and stabilized). Jiri -- Regards, Jiri Srain YaST Team Leader --------------------------------------------------------------------- SUSE LINUX, s.r.o. e-mail: jsrain@suse.cz Lihovarska 1060/12 tel: +420 284 028 959 190 00 Praha 9 fax: +420 284 028 951 Czech Republic http://www.suse.cz
On Tuesday 16 December 2008 22:45:57 Stephan Kulow wrote:
Am Montag, 15. Dezember 2008 16:08:41 schrieb Rob OpenSuSE:
2008/12/15 Michael Loeffler <michl@novell.com>:
First we talked about July '09 release to come close to an 8 months release cycle. But KDE 4.3 is scheduled for release on June 30th and probably an OpenOffice.org release will be out end of June as well - both wouldn't make it into a July openSUSE 11.2. Therfor we're now thinking about a September release.
Let us know what you're thinking about this.
I like the thinking, but I have tended to move to every other release in past skipping 1 release, as twice yearly upgrades tended not to be time effective, especially when important upgrades were available for a previous release.
Psychologically, I'd like to see 2 RC's series releases, to encourage more tester's who avoid 'Alpha' & 'Beta'. This could be at expense of the last Beta's, giving time for wider testing of the kernel on real hardware, with a chance for more fixes for less common drivers, making it into the GM version, so the final release boots flawlessly on more boxes.
Actually what I want to get away from with this release is Alpha, Beta and RC. Our Alphas are usually not less stable than our betas and our RCs are usually not 100% release material. So I want simple Milestones with goals associated to it. These goals wouldn't be much different from what we have now, but it would make it more clear IMO.
I like the idea very much. But thinking about it, it might be hard to beat the drums early enough for upcoming release. But maybe "2 milestones to go" would work. Definitely something we should try. Stano -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
2008/12/17 Bryen <suserocks@bryen.com>:
On Wed, 2008-12-17 at 07:57 +0100, Andreas Jaeger wrote:
"Rajko M." <rmatov101@charter.net> writes:
It is getting hard to follow 6 months release cycle. I barely had time to see 11.0 and it is already candidate for deletion.
I hear on the other hand also suggestions for openSUSE to go on a planned 6-month release cycle like Ubuntu and Fedora does - and release say every November and May.
What I'm observing more of in this thread, and hearing from people talking directly to me, is that it isn't so much the time frame for development in as much as the full utilization of each phase. Less testing on alpha, more testing on RC as an example of a rather lop-sided effect we've had. I think the focus of discussion should be more about how we can improve the experience, thus making people likelier to participate earlier on.
Then perhaps rather than just "Factory" aka "unstable", add "testing" and "stable" rather than fixed releases; so most of the community upgrade via small steps constantly; as they should do for security fixes. The stable release could presumably be updated by the SP1, SP2 type method, giving magazines and disk emporiums, something useful to provide to those with poor net connections. May be for the interim versions, made available for testing, some indication of "solidity" would help, based on the underlying technical changes made, and feedback from the "Factory". -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
Onsdag 17 december 2008 07:57:49 skrev Andreas Jaeger:
I hear on the other hand also suggestions for openSUSE to go on a planned 6-month release cycle like Ubuntu and Fedora does - and release say every November and May.
Is that something we should do for the future (after 11.2) - or what is the best way to do releases in general?
I'm for the 7-9 month schedule. Especially if short release cycles are supposed to be as chaotic as the last one, and leading to a similarly Fedora'esque release quality. But maybe shorter release cycles with smaller changes would lead to better quality - still not clear to me what went wrong this time. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
Hi, Le mercredi 17 décembre 2008, à 07:50 +0100, Andreas Jaeger a écrit :
Stephan Kulow <coolo@novell.com> writes:
Sorry, but how many 10.3 online updates you had to push because the final GNOME was broken? We need to have the last GNOME GM-4 weeks. No discussion there. If we delay GM or skip autumn GNOME I don't mind.
Vincent, JP: What is the expected GNOME release day? Is it early or late September? Anything concrete yet?
We don't have a schedule for GNOME 2.28 yet, since we usually prepare it a few weeks before we start the development cycle. This means we'll have the GNOME 2.28 schedule around February/March. But it's highly probably that 2.28.0 would be officially out on September 23rd (other likely possibilities are September 16th and 30th, but 23rd would be the logical date based on the 2.24 development cycle). Sorry -- I couldn't participate to the thread earlier since I'm travelling. I've a very bad internet connection, but I'll try to send a few comments after reading more of the thread. Vincent -- Les gens heureux ne sont pas pressés. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
Hi there. I think that aiming for KDE 4.3 is a good goal for 11.2. After all, 11.1 just misses KDE 4.2 by a few weeks and the majority of openSUSE users are KDE users. It would be just fair not to miss a KDE release again. There are also some KDE apps that AFAIK targeted to be ready by 4.3 (IIRC Kdevelop 4 and KOffice 2). I also don't think that 4.2+backports is a good idea. Backports result in additional work that I prefer to see to be put into more pressing areas, like finally bringing K3b to KDE4 (most of its code is untouched since months). I would not delay 11.2 even further. It would bring openSUSE too close to Ubuntu's October release which could result in less openSUSE press. PS: When did KDE turn to five months of development instead of six? Around the time when KDE 4.0 was released, I read a blog post that KDE switches to a release cycle that's in "delayed sync" with GNOME. Now the roadmap states that 4.3 will be released five months after 4.2. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Wed, 2008-12-17 at 07:57 +0100, Andreas Jaeger wrote:
"Rajko M." <rmatov101@charter.net> writes:
[...] It is getting hard to follow 6 months release cycle. I barely had time to see 11.0 and it is already candidate for deletion.
I hear on the other hand also suggestions for openSUSE to go on a planned 6-month release cycle like Ubuntu and Fedora does - and release say every November and May.
Is that something we should do for the future (after 11.2) - or what is the best way to do releases in general?
Honestly, I think 8-10 months is a good release cycle - from a testing and a marketing standpoint. That way testers aren't just constantly working with bugs (presuming they start after most of the early development is done), and we don't have to constantly support 4 or 5 different versions of openSUSE. After all, our goal should be (and already is, I would think) to make a really good product that people can use for 10 months to a year without having to upgrade. Advanced or power users who want the latest stuff can either upgrade to Factory, or utilize the power of the Build Service to get what they want. -- Kevin "Yeaux" Dupuy - openSUSE Member Public Mail: <kevin.dupuy@opensuse.org> Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays from the Yeaux! -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Wed, 2008-12-17 at 07:57 +0100, Andreas Jaeger wrote:
"Rajko M." <rmatov101@charter.net> writes:
[...] It is getting hard to follow 6 months release cycle. I barely had time to see 11.0 and it is already candidate for deletion.
I hear on the other hand also suggestions for openSUSE to go on a planned 6-month release cycle like Ubuntu and Fedora does - and release say every November and May.
Is that something we should do for the future (after 11.2) - or what is the best way to do releases in general?
I'm all for the "release often" bit of it, especially if we're going to keep our current structure were we combine everything on one DVD. The reason for that is mostly due to more hardware supported by the kernel. If we don't release a new version of openSUSE every ~6 months, we would/should come up with a new structure, such as the one I proposed already (where we have a base DVD that can be released often and have the DE environments as add-ons and they would be released whenever there is a new version available). Cheers, Magnus -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On mercoledì 17 dicembre 2008 00:01:32 Kevin Dupuy wrote:
On Tue, 2008-12-16 at 20:03 +0100, Stephan Kulow wrote:
Actually many complained that 11.1 had a too short release cycle - so they did not really start testing because they hardly finished their 11.0 polishing and I guess that's right for many. And if you go with a may release with many developers having prolonged christmas holidays and ask for an extended RC phase to stabilize and translate, this gives very little time over a kernel and a gcc update. Does pretty hard to sell to users to me.
I agree with them. I tend to prefer longer release times, particularly from a testing (some people like to use their shiny new release before they go bug hunting in the next one ;-)), and from a marketing perspective (2 to 3 releases a year, every year gets tedious to manage, and overwhelms users).
I think the current openSUSE schedule (which has been described to me as "3 releases over a period of two years", is that about right?) is a good pace. -- Kevin "Yeaux" Dupuy - openSUSE Member Public Mail: <kevin.dupuy@opensuse.org> Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays from the Yeaux!
What about a longer release cycle but with a more flexible approach to backports? I'm thinking about kde 4.0 vs kde 4.1 in opensuse 11.0: 4.1 has been REALLY working better than 4.0 and could have replaced kde 4.0 in opensuse 11.1. Yet it stayed in the factory repository untill 11.1...factory repository is not the "official" one and there are issues from time to time (and tons of updates everyday!). I propose for 11.1: kde 4.2 comes out. Packages are built and go in kde factory repo. After a period of testing (2 weeks?) if there are no big problems, they can go in kde stable repo. After another 2-4 weeks, they go in the official opensuse 11.1 update repository. Same for gnome: This way opensuse releases won't be linked anymore to desktop environments but on real improvements in the distro itself. We have the great power of build service and we can use it this way. What do you think about this? -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Wednesday 17 December 2008 02:13:42 am Jiri Srain wrote:
On Tuesday 16 of December 2008 23:28:41 Magnus Boman wrote:
On Tue, 2008-12-16 at 22:44 +0100, Stephan Kulow wrote:
Am Dienstag, 16. Dezember 2008 22:28:33 schrieb Magnus Boman:
Thought it might be worth mentioning it.
Limiting openSUSE to GNOME or KDE is just wrong. Interesting idea though.
Hmm, would it be possible to have a base openSUSE system, and have GNOME/KDE as addons? It wouldn't be *that* much of a difference compared to the LiveCD's?
Well, technically spoken, yes. I don't think many users would like this approach, installing from a single DVD is just too comfortable.
On the other hand, we might consider providing up-to-date desktop environments as add-on products during the life cycle of the distro (basically make an add-on from factory repo after new KDE/GNOME/whatever gets released and stabilized).
Jiri
That's good idea in many ways: - base distro would have to sync with smaller number of upstream projects - the addon desktop CDs can be tested out of sync with main release - current problems with last minute inclusion or time spent on backports are out for good - users that depend on physical media will get opportunity to have the newest desktop without much work to download oBS repository Is there any adverse effects? -- Regards, Rajko -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Thursday 18 December 2008 01:38:59 Rajko M. wrote:
On Wednesday 17 December 2008 02:13:42 am Jiri Srain wrote:
On Tuesday 16 of December 2008 23:28:41 Magnus Boman wrote:
On Tue, 2008-12-16 at 22:44 +0100, Stephan Kulow wrote:
Am Dienstag, 16. Dezember 2008 22:28:33 schrieb Magnus Boman:
Thought it might be worth mentioning it.
Limiting openSUSE to GNOME or KDE is just wrong. Interesting idea though.
Hmm, would it be possible to have a base openSUSE system, and have GNOME/KDE as addons? It wouldn't be *that* much of a difference compared to the LiveCD's?
Well, technically spoken, yes. I don't think many users would like this approach, installing from a single DVD is just too comfortable.
On the other hand, we might consider providing up-to-date desktop environments as add-on products during the life cycle of the distro (basically make an add-on from factory repo after new KDE/GNOME/whatever gets released and stabilized).
Jiri
That's good idea in many ways: - base distro would have to sync with smaller number of upstream projects - the addon desktop CDs can be tested out of sync with main release - current problems with last minute inclusion or time spent on backports are out for good - users that depend on physical media will get opportunity to have the newest desktop without much work to download oBS repository
Is there any adverse effects?
The problem is that you need to explain to users how to use addon desktop CDs. And this will become a problem, I'm pretty sure. There is stuff like media changing during installation, not forgetting to add it, also we would need to test quite a bit more scenarios to make sure the experience is smooth. Keep in mind that 'everything is right there' is one of the most noted advantages of openSUSE compared to other distros. Stano -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
Hi everyone, If i can say something. I suppose we could wait for a new openSUSE survey, as we did in August - http://news.opensuse.org/2008/08/21/last-call-for-opensuse-survey/ There should be a question about schedule - how should developement period take, or how long development schedule do you wish - whether 6,8,9... months etc. Result could show which period plan would be ideal for most users/developers. Btw, i also prefer longer release time, for example 8 or 9 months. 6 months is too short. Best regards, Rasto -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
Am Donnerstag, 18. Dezember 2008 09:10:40 schrieb Rastislav Krupanský:
Hi everyone,
If i can say something. I suppose we could wait for a new openSUSE survey, as we did in August - http://news.opensuse.org/2008/08/21/last-call-for-opensuse-survey/ There should be a question about schedule - how should developement period take, or how long development schedule do you wish - whether 6,8,9... months etc. Result could show which period plan would be ideal for most users/developers.
Btw, i also prefer longer release time, for example 8 or 9 months. 6 months is too short.
Oh, if you ask users they will want every 5 months a new release with tons of new features that works exactly like the release before. It's not so interesting what users prefer, this is something that is important for the developing community. My person guess is that users will accept any schedule as long as the outcoming release is good. And this is something we need to find out: how much time do we need to be good. Greetings, Stephan -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
Oh, if you ask users they will want every 5 months a new release with tons of new features that works exactly like the release before.
I think users won´t want every 5 months a new release. When i read comments in the many discussions, more people want a longer dev. schedule than 6 months. I haven´t seen comment yet, where somebody wants a shorter schedule.
It's not so interesting what users prefer, this is something that is important for the developing community. My person guess is that users will accept any schedule as long as the outcoming release is good. And this is something we need to find out: how much time do we need to be good.
Greetings, Stephan
So create yourself survey for the developing community and if need there are openSUSE members, also. Not for users. This discussion isn´t much comprendious for final decision. At least for me. Best regards, Rasto
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On Thursday 18 December 2008 01:38:59 Rajko M. wrote:
On Wednesday 17 December 2008 02:13:42 am Jiri Srain wrote:
On Tuesday 16 of December 2008 23:28:41 Magnus Boman wrote:
On Tue, 2008-12-16 at 22:44 +0100, Stephan Kulow wrote:
Am Dienstag, 16. Dezember 2008 22:28:33 schrieb Magnus Boman:
Thought it might be worth mentioning it.
Limiting openSUSE to GNOME or KDE is just wrong. Interesting idea though.
Hmm, would it be possible to have a base openSUSE system, and have GNOME/KDE as addons? It wouldn't be *that* much of a difference compared to the LiveCD's?
Well, technically spoken, yes. I don't think many users would like this approach, installing from a single DVD is just too comfortable.
On the other hand, we might consider providing up-to-date desktop environments as add-on products during the life cycle of the distro (basically make an add-on from factory repo after new KDE/GNOME/whatever gets released and stabilized).
Jiri
That's good idea in many ways: - base distro would have to sync with smaller number of upstream projects - the addon desktop CDs can be tested out of sync with main release - current problems with last minute inclusion or time spent on backports are out for good - users that depend on physical media will get opportunity to have the newest desktop without much work to download oBS repository
Is there any adverse effects?
The problem is that you need to explain to users how to use addon desktop CDs. And this will become a problem, I'm pretty sure. There is stuff like media changing during installation, not forgetting to add it, also we would need to test quite a bit more scenarios to make sure the experience is smooth.
Keep in mind that 'everything is right there' is one of the most noted advantages of openSUSE compared to other distros.
Stano I agree so here's a variation of this proposal: In my precedent post I wrote how i'd handle the situation on the update front. For user with a slow connection we could release an iso image called opensuse 11.1.1 with kde4.2 and then 11.1.2 with gnome 2.26. This way an user can choose between installing 11.1 and then use updates as
On giovedì 18 dicembre 2008 08:11:08 Stanislav Visnovsky wrote: they come or download directly the new iso. This way opensuse can concentrate on improving as a distribution rather than running behind the two DEs and users will have an easy, official and supported upgrade path rather than having to use factory or build service repos that will remain there for people who love to have the latest DE the day it's released (or even before it's released :) ) exacty as they are now. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
2008/12/18 Stephan Kulow <coolo@novell.com>:
Am Donnerstag, 18. Dezember 2008 09:10:40 schrieb Rastislav Krupanský:
Hi everyone,
If i can say something. I suppose we could wait for a new openSUSE survey, as we did in August - http://news.opensuse.org/2008/08/21/last-call-for-opensuse-survey/ There should be a question about schedule - how should developement period take, or how long development schedule do you wish - whether 6,8,9... months etc. Result could show which period plan would be ideal for most users/developers.
Btw, i also prefer longer release time, for example 8 or 9 months. 6 months is too short.
Oh, if you ask users they will want every 5 months a new release with tons of new features that works exactly like the release before. It's not so interesting what users prefer, this is something that is important for the developing community. My person guess is that users will accept any schedule as long as the outcoming release is good. And this is something we need to find out: how much time do we need to be good.
If we're voting then I much prefer the longer ~10month+ release cycle length. With only 6 months you're in feature freeze for half the year. Once you add on time to do fixes to released products, time to have a holiday, there's only about a month or so of time to do actual development between freezes. Then it's difficult to actually develop against it in that time (alpha) because there's a mad rush of changes throughout the entire stack which keep breaking your software. Longer release cycle has other benefits too. Less work for security team with fewer versions to support concurrently; Ditto third party packagers and ISVs; How many people really want to reinstall their OS every 6 months. and so on. Of course there's the argument that people always want the bleeding edge, but I think we cater for most of those quite well with unofficial packages in the buildservice and such. Changes spread out more throughout the year might also help make factory more stable for those who really want the latest, more people running factory can only be a good thing. -- Benjamin Weber -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Thursday 18 December 2008 01:11:08 am Stanislav Visnovsky wrote:
The problem is that you need to explain to users how to use addon desktop CDs. And this will become a problem, I'm pretty sure. There is stuff like media changing during installation, not forgetting to add it, also we would need to test quite a bit more scenarios to make sure the experience is smooth.
That is smaller problem then to describe how to use oBS repo if repo has no 1-click link. One link on fresh installed desktop "Additional software" will not need explanation, it will be call for click. It seems that whole idea is to have small base that is good tested, and addons that are pretty much the same as patterns, or few patterns. Rounded selections of software needed for certain purpose. Though, for this purpose base is not necessarily the same as base pattern.
Keep in mind that 'everything is right there' is one of the most noted advantages of openSUSE compared to other distros.
Yes, and with every release is even more right :-) -- Regards, Rajko -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Thu, 2008-12-18 at 19:50 +0000, Benji Weber wrote:
If we're voting then I much prefer the longer ~10month+ release cycle length.
IMHO, This release was very much "blink and you miss it" type release. I just upgraded my employers' openSUSE 10.3 servers in late September to openSUSE 11.0 (not very long ago at all), and openSUSE 11.1 is now out. Having the longer release cycle has the following benefits: * Longer development sprints = more whiz-bang features per release (at the expense of fewer releases per time period). Plus, if you do finalize on a version and a newer version will be out soon, you could always backport the more stable new features if they are easily separable. * More stable packages (since you have more time to get fixed upstream packages, and to find and patch any bugs in packages, and to backport fixes from newer upstream releases after the upstream version to track has been finalized). This is one of the reasons I like openSUSE.. it has the benefits of a stable platform with a "fast" (fast enough) development cycle. * More time for openSUSE developers to work on creating things as opposed to just integration of upstream. After all, if I wanted a release that looks like upstream, I'd be using Foresight ;). --Justin -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
Hi, (late -- and long -- reply, apologies) Le lundi 15 décembre 2008, à 14:43 +0100, Michael Loeffler a écrit :
Moin,
openSUSE 11.1 is almost out of the door and we (coolo, aj, zonker and myself) had some discussion about the release date for openSUSE 11.2.
So I read the whole thread -- that's quite interesting. I'm replying mainly from a desktop point of view, which I guess isn't that surprising ;-) First, a few facts: + as far as I understood, KDE 4.3 will have a 5 months development cycle so that 4.3 is released before Akademy + GNOME 2.28 will be released around September 23rd (+/- one week) and this is unlikely to change + there's a hard requirement of at least 4 weeks between the release of GNOME/KDE and the release of openSUSE => I'd be interested to know how we can reevaluate this decision (there's an idea below) + for the future: KDE releases are January/July and GNOME releases are March/September + (it would have been awesome to announce the next openSUSE during the GNOME/KDE co-located conference in July, but I guess that's a bad timing) It seems there's some clear consensus that people don't want a release schedule of less than 6 months (and looking at the feedback, quite some people find that 6 months is short), and I would guess that people wouldn't like too much a cycle that lasts more than 12 months. So that leaves us with a window of end of June - beginning of December. Looking at this window: + end of June: development cycle is too short for many, we miss KDE 4.3 => not a good option + July: only possible at the end of July if we want 4 weeks after the integration of KDE 4.3. But it's not the best time to announce stuff from a marketing point of view (although this could be an opportunity to be really visible since there won't be a lot of other things) + August: technically possible, but same issue from a marketing point of view. There might also be an issue with people being away in vacation. + September: good, except that we miss GNOME for only a few weeks. This could be bad if people compare with beta of other distros that will be released at the same time with the latest GNOME + October: only end of October possible if we want 4 weeks after the integration of GNOME 2.28 + November/December: ok. Development cycle a bit long, unfortunately. I'd argue that it's highly important to consider the marketing side of things when building the schedule. Building something which is excellent from a technical point of view is not enough to have a successful openSUSE project. Sooo. First, a question: would a release at the end of July or in August be possible? I think doing this would clearly mitigate the "we don't have the latest GNOME" issue. I'd also like to hear what Zonker thinks of promoting a new release during days that are usually really quiet from a news perspective (mainly because people are away). That would be my preferred option, to be honest. Then, we have the option with a release at the end of October or in November/December. This means releasing at the same time as Ubuntu/Mandriva/Fedora unless we aim at December. Not sure it's good (because it will likely mean less media coverage). And the cycle is a bit long. (not even talking about the SUSE conference that should occur in September) Or we keep the proposed schedule. And use Magnus' idea of creating an add-on, but in a different way: release openSUSE 11.2 with GNOME 2.26 and create an (semi-?)official add-on for 2.28 that we release in early October. Looking at this add-on could be interesting to see if it's possible to ship an updated and working GNOME after less than 4 weeks after the GNOME release. I don't know how the GNOME team (and more generally, the users) would like the idea, but I find the challenge of having the distro accept a big official update as an add-on quite interesting. (the mail is getting long, so I'll stop here, but JP is probably right to mention that it's worth considering the long-term and 11.3 in the decision) I feel the pain of the eyes that were able to reach the end of this mail, but I hope it was worth it ;-) Vincent -- Les gens heureux ne sont pas pressés. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
Le lundi 15 décembre 2008, à 22:50 +0100, Stephan Binner a écrit :
On Monday 15 December 2008 14:43:03 Michael Loeffler wrote:
2009-05-28 openSUSE 11.2 Alpha 4 2009-06-25 openSUSE 11.2 Beta 1
One thing I would like to see in general is feature and version freeze not coinciding with last submission day for Beta 1 - so for above dates not on 19th June but for example on 5th (Friday) or 8th (Monday).
+1 (although I'd put the deadline on 12th in this case) Vincent -- Les gens heureux ne sont pas pressés. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
2008/12/19 Vincent Untz <vuntz@opensuse.org>:
openSUSE 11.1 is almost out of the door and we (coolo, aj, zonker and myself) had some discussion about the release date for openSUSE 11.2.
So I read the whole thread -- that's quite interesting. I'm replying mainly from a desktop point of view, which I guess isn't that surprising
First, a few facts:
That was a very clear and interesting summary.
Or we keep the proposed schedule. And use Magnus' idea of creating an add-on, but in a different way: release openSUSE 11.2 with GNOME 2.26 and create an (semi-?)official add-on for 2.28 that we release in early October. Looking at this add-on could be interesting to see if it's possible to ship an updated and working GNOME after less than 4 weeks after the GNOME release. I don't know how the GNOME team (and more generally, the users) would like the idea, but I find the challenge of having the distro accept a big official update as an add-on quite interesting.
From a current KDE 3.5 user perspective, shipping the "core" with KDE-4.3 with a stable GNOME sounds good.
The distro can get more publicity, by pre-announcing the GNOME 2.28 addition on the stable base of 11.2 + updates, and then issueing new Live CD's as a 11.2.1 or 11.2 + GNOME 2.28 Addon. In past, SuSE made significant updates available to the "attentive" user base. But it never seemed to be "loud and proud" enough to get mindshare and break the meme, that the release packages were somehow fixed in stone and unchanging, such as is case in Debian "stable" for instance. So the ppl who read SuSE usenet or forums, or mail lists would know they could install software upgrades, but not the average Linux user reading magazines or news sites. I like the idea, of big softare packages and environments, shipping when they're ready and meeting good quality standards, rather than having to ship as is, because of an important event. That leads to having to replace almost every package soon after with update. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 7:21 AM, Vincent Untz <vuntz@opensuse.org> wrote:
+ end of June: development cycle is too short for many, we miss KDE 4.3 => not a good option + July: only possible at the end of July if we want 4 weeks after the integration of KDE 4.3. But it's not the best time to announce stuff from a marketing point of view (although this could be an opportunity to be really visible since there won't be a lot of other things) + August: technically possible, but same issue from a marketing point of view. There might also be an issue with people being away in vacation. + September: good, except that we miss GNOME for only a few weeks. This could be bad if people compare with beta of other distros that will be released at the same time with the latest GNOME + October: only end of October possible if we want 4 weeks after the integration of GNOME 2.28 + November/December: ok. Development cycle a bit long, unfortunately.
I'd argue that it's highly important to consider the marketing side of things when building the schedule. Building something which is excellent from a technical point of view is not enough to have a successful openSUSE project.
I like the way you're thinking... ;-) Let me just say, first, that let's *never* plan a release a week before Christmas again, Mmmkay? (Though we haven't failed to get the word out: http://zonker.opensuse.org/2008/12/19/opensuse-111-coverage/) For future releases, if we can just rule out anything between the week before Thanksgiving and, say, January 10th or so, that'd be spiffy.
Sooo. First, a question: would a release at the end of July or in August be possible? I think doing this would clearly mitigate the "we don't have the latest GNOME" issue. I'd also like to hear what Zonker thinks of promoting a new release during days that are usually really quiet from a news perspective (mainly because people are away).
My thoughts, from just the marketing perspective: July and August - we have major events (assuming the economic climate doesn't torpedo them...) during those months, and the opportunities for coverage are really good. We did a push for the openSUSE Build Service 1.0 in July, and did pretty well, all things considered. Yes, a lot of people are away on vacation, but by the same token, they're good months because (usually) little else is going on. Missing GNOME is bad. I'd *much* rather have a release with new GNOME + KDE to talk about. We will get dinged in reviews if we ship an "old" desktop. (Whether that is right or wrong can be debated separately - but that's what will happen.) I much prefer October, with one exception: We want to do the openSUSE conference in September, and I'd really love to have the latest release there. As for the "add-on" idea... if we released 11.2 in time for the conference, with an update (11.2.1? 11.2.5?) for GNOME, that would give us an additional chance for a small press bump. If the GNOME team (and others) is OK with that approach, I certainly have no objection on the marketing side. Best, Zonker -- Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier openSUSE Community Manager jzb@zonker.net http://zonker.opensuse.org/ http://blogs.zdnet.com/community/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Fri, 2008-12-19 at 01:10 -0500, Justin Haygood wrote:
On Thu, 2008-12-18 at 19:50 +0000, Benji Weber wrote:
If we're voting then I much prefer the longer ~10month+ release cycle length.
Me as well.
Having the longer release cycle has the following benefits: * Longer development sprints = more whiz-bang features per release (at the expense of fewer releases per time period). Plus, if you do finalize on a version and a newer version will be out soon, you could always backport the more stable new features if they are easily separable. * More stable packages (since you have more time to get fixed upstream packages, and to find and patch any bugs in packages, and to backport fixes from newer upstream releases after the upstream version to track has been finalized). This is one of the reasons I like openSUSE.. it has the benefits of a stable platform with a "fast" (fast enough) development cycle. * More time for openSUSE developers to work on creating things as opposed to just integration of upstream. After all, if I wanted a release that looks like upstream, I'd be using Foresight ;).
--Justin
Absolutely. -- Kevin "Yeaux" Dupuy - openSUSE Member Public Mail: <kevin.dupuy@opensuse.org> Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays from the Yeaux! -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Fri, 2008-12-19 at 13:21 +0100, Vincent Untz wrote:
Sooo. First, a question: would a release at the end of July or in August be possible? I think doing this would clearly mitigate the "we don't have the latest GNOME" issue. I'd also like to hear what Zonker thinks of promoting a new release during days that are usually really quiet from a news perspective (mainly because people are away).
That would be my preferred option, to be honest.
I agree that releasing during quiet periods is definitely a nice thing if we can do it, but do we really want to do another quick 6-month cycle?
Then, we have the option with a release at the end of October or in November/December. This means releasing at the same time as Ubuntu/Mandriva/Fedora unless we aim at December. Not sure it's good (because it will likely mean less media coverage). And the cycle is a bit long. (not even talking about the SUSE conference that should occur in September)
As long as we release either before or after mid-October we should miss the Ubuntu news frenzy. Fedora is more of a wild card, but late November is probably a good bet for them. So pretty much anytime up until mid-October, then from late October until the U.S. Thanksgiving week (per what Zonker's said).
Or we keep the proposed schedule. And use Magnus' idea of creating an add-on, but in a different way: release openSUSE 11.2 with GNOME 2.26 and create an (semi-?)official add-on for 2.28 that we release in early October. Looking at this add-on could be interesting to see if it's possible to ship an updated and working GNOME after less than 4 weeks after the GNOME release. I don't know how the GNOME team (and more generally, the users) would like the idea, but I find the challenge of having the distro accept a big official update as an add-on quite interesting.
By "add-on", what do you mean? An extra CD to download, or an online update (like a Service Pack, basically)? I'm not so hot on the idea, especially considering it'd be only a month or so after 11.2's official release anyway. -- Kevin "Yeaux" Dupuy - openSUSE Member Public Mail: <kevin.dupuy@opensuse.org> Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays from the Yeaux! -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Fri, 2008-12-19 at 11:48 -0500, Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier wrote:
I like the way you're thinking... ;-)
Let me just say, first, that let's *never* plan a release a week before Christmas again, Mmmkay?
(Though we haven't failed to get the word out: http://zonker.opensuse.org/2008/12/19/opensuse-111-coverage/)
For future releases, if we can just rule out anything between the week before Thanksgiving and, say, January 10th or so, that'd be spiffy.
Absolutely. From a logistical perspective, this release has made the boxed edition shipments to North America slip until after the beginning of 2009. Already I've seen some disappointed users who purchased boxed editions as Christmas gifts become angry at the fact they won't be arriving on time. Although that's another problem (in another thread), if we're still going to have this issue with the boxed editions taking a few weeks to arrive in North America, that needs to be counted into the decision (read: no right-before-major-gift-giving-holiday releases!)
My thoughts, from just the marketing perspective:
July and August - we have major events (assuming the economic climate doesn't torpedo them...) during those months, and the opportunities for coverage are really good. We did a push for the openSUSE Build Service 1.0 in July, and did pretty well, all things considered.
Yes, a lot of people are away on vacation, but by the same token, they're good months because (usually) little else is going on.
Good point, although couldn't we get some coverage also if we show off a beta of the product at these shows? Do some demos of cool new stuff that we're certain to have in 11.2, even if it's not the final version? -- Kevin "Yeaux" Dupuy - openSUSE Member Public Mail: <kevin.dupuy@opensuse.org> Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays from the Yeaux! -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Friday 19 December 2008 10:03:34 pm Kevin Dupuy wrote:
By "add-on", what do you mean? An extra CD to download, or an online update (like a Service Pack, basically)? I'm not so hot on the idea, especially considering it'd be only a month or so after 11.2's official release anyway.
Add-on as GNOME 2.28 packages, or any other "late to the show" software. It should be as existing add-on CDs. The openSUSE selected packages. IMHO, just easy way to access software to the people that for various reasons must rely on physical media. -- Regards, Rajko -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
Am Donnerstag 18 Dezember 2008 20:50:55 schrieb Benji Weber:
If we're voting then I much prefer the longer ~10month+ release cycle length.
Madriva switched away from a 12 months cycle after a community survey because it was considered too long. IMHO the release cycle should not exceed 10 months. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
Le vendredi 19 décembre 2008, à 22:03 -0600, Kevin Dupuy a écrit :
On Fri, 2008-12-19 at 13:21 +0100, Vincent Untz wrote:
Sooo. First, a question: would a release at the end of July or in August be possible? I think doing this would clearly mitigate the "we don't have the latest GNOME" issue. I'd also like to hear what Zonker thinks of promoting a new release during days that are usually really quiet from a news perspective (mainly because people are away).
That would be my preferred option, to be honest.
I agree that releasing during quiet periods is definitely a nice thing if we can do it, but do we really want to do another quick 6-month cycle?
July-August would be 7-8 months, not 6 months. I would say it's okay, but there are indeed quite a number of people willing something around 9-10 months.
Then, we have the option with a release at the end of October or in November/December. This means releasing at the same time as Ubuntu/Mandriva/Fedora unless we aim at December. Not sure it's good (because it will likely mean less media coverage). And the cycle is a bit long. (not even talking about the SUSE conference that should occur in September)
As long as we release either before or after mid-October we should miss the Ubuntu news frenzy. Fedora is more of a wild card, but late November is probably a good bet for them. So pretty much anytime up until mid-October, then from late October until the U.S. Thanksgiving week (per what Zonker's said).
Anytime up until mid-October is not an option if we need four weeks after GNOME 2.28.0. So it'd leave us with late October to US Thanksgiving.
Or we keep the proposed schedule. And use Magnus' idea of creating an add-on, but in a different way: release openSUSE 11.2 with GNOME 2.26 and create an (semi-?)official add-on for 2.28 that we release in early October. Looking at this add-on could be interesting to see if it's possible to ship an updated and working GNOME after less than 4 weeks after the GNOME release. I don't know how the GNOME team (and more generally, the users) would like the idea, but I find the challenge of having the distro accept a big official update as an add-on quite interesting.
By "add-on", what do you mean? An extra CD to download, or an online update (like a Service Pack, basically)?
This is undefined as of now :-) It's up to us to define this if we want to go this way. Intuitively, if we go this route, I'd like to see: + some re-spinned DVD/Live CD for GNOME (version 11.2.1, eg) + some online repository that people can add + some CD containing packages from this repository and that people could put in their cd-rom drive, which would automatically propose the update (one issue I forgot to mention in my previous mail about this solution is: what would we maintain? One or two versions of GNOME?)
I'm not so hot on the idea, especially considering it'd be only a month or so after 11.2's official release anyway.
Can you develop this point? I only see this as a problem to handle from a marketing point of view (and that can turn into a nice opportunity). (note that I still prefer the july/august option ;-)) Vincent -- Les gens heureux ne sont pas pressés. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
Vincent Untz wrote:
Le vendredi 19 décembre 2008, à 22:03 -0600, Kevin Dupuy a écrit :
On Fri, 2008-12-19 at 13:21 +0100, Vincent Untz wrote:
Sooo. First, a question: would a release at the end of July or in August be possible? I think doing this would clearly mitigate the "we don't have the latest GNOME" issue. I'd also like to hear what Zonker thinks of promoting a new release during days that are usually really quiet from a news perspective (mainly because people are away).
That would be my preferred option, to be honest.
I agree that releasing during quiet periods is definitely a nice thing if we can do it, but do we really want to do another quick 6-month cycle?
July-August would be 7-8 months, not 6 months. I would say it's okay, but there are indeed quite a number of people willing something around 9-10 months.
Then, we have the option with a release at the end of October or in November/December. This means releasing at the same time as Ubuntu/Mandriva/Fedora unless we aim at December. Not sure it's good (because it will likely mean less media coverage). And the cycle is a bit long. (not even talking about the SUSE conference that should occur in September)
As long as we release either before or after mid-October we should miss the Ubuntu news frenzy. Fedora is more of a wild card, but late November is probably a good bet for them. So pretty much anytime up until mid-October, then from late October until the U.S. Thanksgiving week (per what Zonker's said).
Anytime up until mid-October is not an option if we need four weeks after GNOME 2.28.0. So it'd leave us with late October to US Thanksgiving.
Or we keep the proposed schedule. And use Magnus' idea of creating an add-on, but in a different way: release openSUSE 11.2 with GNOME 2.26 and create an (semi-?)official add-on for 2.28 that we release in early October. Looking at this add-on could be interesting to see if it's possible to ship an updated and working GNOME after less than 4 weeks after the GNOME release. I don't know how the GNOME team (and more generally, the users) would like the idea, but I find the challenge of having the distro accept a big official update as an add-on quite interesting.
By "add-on", what do you mean? An extra CD to download, or an online update (like a Service Pack, basically)?
This is undefined as of now :-) It's up to us to define this if we want to go this way. Intuitively, if we go this route, I'd like to see:
+ some re-spinned DVD/Live CD for GNOME (version 11.2.1, eg) + some online repository that people can add + some CD containing packages from this repository and that people could put in their cd-rom drive, which would automatically propose the update
(one issue I forgot to mention in my previous mail about this solution is: what would we maintain? One or two versions of GNOME?)
How about just getting the Yast Product Creator to the point where one can easily "re-spin" installation medium with the updated packages? Add updated repos to repositories, open Product Creator, click option to Update packages and create a new ISO. The needed tools to do such a thing are already there, they just have to be glued together. Dean Hilkewich -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
Le samedi 20 décembre 2008, à 14:48 -0600, Dean Hilkewich a écrit :
How about just getting the Yast Product Creator to the point where one can easily "re-spin" installation medium with the updated packages?
I think we can already do this with the build service. At least, home:coolo:LiveCD makes me believe this. Vincent -- Les gens heureux ne sont pas pressés. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
I posted a quick forum poll to try and ask fairly and directly the user preferences, that have been speculated on in this thread. http://forums.opensuse.org/surveys-polls/402364-release-style-preferences-wt... View Poll Results: What Release Model Would You Like Best? Current One - 3 Releases in 2 Years, Some Upgrades via Build Service 2 22.22% Rolling Release - "stable", "current" and "factory" well tested upgrade for stable 5 55.56% 6 Monthly Release following KDE & GNOME 0 0% Annual Release with more time for Development & Testing 1 11.11% Other (please explain your preference) 1 11.11% Only 9 results back so far Saturday (no attempt to draw attention to it made yet), but it's interesting; the 'Other' is a variant on "Rolling Release"; no user has asked for more releases (6 monthly cycle), but there is a vote for a longer annual cycle, with more development and testing. Need to increase the sample size, to get meaningful results. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
Vincent Untz wrote:
Le samedi 20 décembre 2008, à 14:48 -0600, Dean Hilkewich a écrit :
How about just getting the Yast Product Creator to the point where one can easily "re-spin" installation medium with the updated packages?
I think we can already do this with the build service. At least, home:coolo:LiveCD makes me believe this.
Vincent
The build service is a horrible option for Joe User to attempt to create their own "updated" installation medium. It's not layman friendly, installing off live medium doesn't work on but the most basic of setups, adds additional unnecessary load the the build service, doesn't allow for 3rd party "morally gray" packages, requires a complete redownload of medium which is costly to some or just not feasible because they do not have high speed net, etc. Put the ability back into the average users. Give them the capability with their local existing tools that they have on their machines without having to read a thousand man pages to figure out how to pull such an endeavor off. Product creator should have the ability to do this with some refinement . Dean -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
The quick forum poll has 42 replies 22nd December at 1600h GMT : http://forums.opensuse.org/surveys-polls/402364-release-style-preferences-wt... View Poll Results: What Release Model Would You Like Best? Current One - 3 Releases in 2 Years, Some Upgrades via Build Service 11 Rolling Release - "stable", "current" and "factory" well tested upgrade for stable 13 6 Monthly Release following KDE & GNOME 2 Annual Release with more time for Development & Testing 13 Other (please explain your preference) 3 The votes for annual took off, after posting in the "install" section of forum. A lot of ppl seem to be upgrading from 11.0, without a clear reason why, just to have the latest. Then running into forseeable troubles and known issues. There's some comments about the "stress" factor of upgrading the release. Rolling release appeals, precisiely because many small steps are less worrying than a huge automatic one, that updates the whole system. So the proposed schedule would appear to be popular with most of the user base, who've responded. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
Am Montag, 22. Dezember 2008 schrieb Rob OpenSuSE:
The quick forum poll has 42 replies 22nd December at 1600h GMT :
http://forums.opensuse.org/surveys-polls/402364-release-style-preferences-w th-poll.html
View Poll Results: What Release Model Would You Like Best?
Current One - 3 Releases in 2 Years, Some Upgrades via Build Service 11 Rolling Release - "stable", "current" and "factory" well tested upgrade for stable 13 6 Monthly Release following KDE & GNOME 2 Annual Release with more time for Development & Testing 13 Other (please explain your preference) 3
The votes for annual took off, after posting in the "install" section of forum. A lot of ppl seem to be upgrading from 11.0, without a clear reason why, just to have the latest. Then running into forseeable troubles and known issues.
Annual has its pros too. We only have to decide for once and for all, where between KDE and GNOME we release and can in the future blame KDE and GNOME for not sticking to their schedule once we hit the problem again. And I wouldn't have to lookup holidays for every new release either - always first thursday in november and we're done. But that's of course the project manager's view :) Greetings, Stephan -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
Short question -- sorry it was already brought up and I missed it. Has anyone considered GNOME 2.26 + backports for 11.2? In typical GNOME style 2.28 won't probably have any earth-shaking new features, but maybe there will be some nice little feature here and there, like 2.16's Evolution has Exchange 2007 connectivity. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Tue, 2008-12-16 at 12:18 +0100, Dirk Müller wrote:
On Monday 15 December 2008, JP Rosevear wrote:
I agree, I think its odd to make a lengthy 10 month schedule and then not add on 2-4 weeks to grab the final version of GNOME.
final version? GNOME finally ceases to exist? ;)
I don't see the point, there will always be yet-another-release of major software that we'll miss.
well, in this case (Sep 10th) it would just miss GNOME 2.28 by a few days.
I don't understand why a shorter release cycle was dismissed, there was no reason given? How about a release in ~ May, which includes kernel 2.6.28 and gcc 4.4, and then a release around October/November for 11.3?
I like this, at least from the GNOME POV it allows us to even have a .1 release of the current stable GNOME. And yes, it probably is a better idea to drive the releases from foundational aspects of the distro (kernel, compilers, new system daemons, integration of new software, etc) -- Rodrigo Moya <rodrigo@novell.com> -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Wed, 2008-12-17 at 07:57 +0100, Andreas Jaeger wrote:
"Rajko M." <rmatov101@charter.net> writes:
[...] It is getting hard to follow 6 months release cycle. I barely had time to see 11.0 and it is already candidate for deletion.
I hear on the other hand also suggestions for openSUSE to go on a planned 6-month release cycle like Ubuntu and Fedora does - and release say every November and May.
Is that something we should do for the future (after 11.2) - or what is the best way to do releases in general?
I like the idea. It might sound a short release cycle, but once we fine tune it, and preset clear objectives for each release, I think it might work very well -- Rodrigo Moya <rodrigo@novell.com> -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Wednesday 17 December 2008 12:57:49 am Andreas Jaeger wrote:
"Rajko M." <rmatov101@charter.net> writes:
[...] It is getting hard to follow 6 months release cycle. I barely had time to see 11.0 and it is already candidate for deletion.
I hear on the other hand also suggestions for openSUSE to go on a planned 6-month release cycle like Ubuntu and Fedora does - and release say every November and May.
Is that something we should do for the future (after 11.2) - or what is the best way to do releases in general?
Whatever will be release cycle length the load should be proportional to available number of people that will test it and later on maintian it. It would be good to try testing focused on the part of the system. Bootloader, kernel, X and desktop are important to everyone. Focusing all testers on fewer important parts will create reliable base system. With that system set in low speed everybody can go and test favorite applications. Upstream development will for sure benefit from more testers and that as a common interest can help to synchronize major projects, with smaller following the trend. -- Regards, Rajko -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Wed 17 Dec 2008 10:44:08 NZDT +1300, Stephan Kulow wrote:
Limiting openSUSE to GNOME or KDE is just wrong. Interesting idea though.
Not new, Ubuntu has always been doing that - except they treat KDE as something between an afterthought and couldn't-care-less. Ideally I would like to see both KDE and Gnome in a well-rounded distribution, but with a priority on KDE, for two reasons: I personally find Gnomes outside the garden seriously infuriating (enough to have to put up with that with gimp, OO and firefox, thanks SUSE for knocking that at least into usable shape!), and, by way of response to JPR's "what about Fedora, Ubuntu, Mandriva shipping the latest Gnome 2 weeks after", those who like to have the latest and greatest Gnome should use one of the above. As there isn't a distribution with an emphasis on KDE I would see this as a distinguishing feature. And by "emphasis on KDE" I don't mean treating Gnome as secondary, but if it's impossible to align with both KDE and Gnome release dates, to align with the KDE ones. Volker -- Volker Kuhlmann is list0570 with the domain in header http://volker.dnsalias.net/ Please do not CC list postings to me. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Wed 17 Dec 2008 21:13:42 NZDT +1300, Jiri Srain wrote:
On the other hand, we might consider providing up-to-date desktop environments as add-on products during the life cycle of the distro (basically make an add-on from factory repo after new KDE/GNOME/whatever gets released and stabilized).
How well tested would they be? As a case of unsupported/bleed-if-you- want? I would find that very useful, as long as it's easy to go back t stable baseline if it doesn't work out. In case of OpenOffice wouldn't it be more or less trivial to detach the OO release completely from the desktop/distro release? Unlike the desktop software without which a desktop computer doesn't go, neither OO nor the desktop depend on each other. One less upstream date to worry about. Volker -- Volker Kuhlmann is list0570 with the domain in header http://volker.dnsalias.net/ Please do not CC list postings to me. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Sat 20 Dec 2008 05:48:39 NZDT +1300, Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier wrote:
Let me just say, first, that let's *never* plan a release a week before Christmas again, Mmmkay?
Uhhmm, wasn't it sort of obvious that the boxes weren't gong to make it under the tree?? ;)
For future releases, if we can just rule out anything between the week before Thanksgiving and, say, January 10th or so, that'd be spiffy.
Is that the USA Thanksgiving? The Canadian one seems to be about 6 weeks earlier, and the world is bigger than just those two. If you mean after November, totally agree. There was an early December release once which was cutting it a bit fine but did make it in time. There is the issue with needing time to install it too. I need the holidays (finishing today) for upgrading all my systems, and I doubt there are any 11.1 boxes in this country yet, so basically those boxes missed their chance. December releases don't work well. Volker -- Volker Kuhlmann is list0570 with the domain in header http://volker.dnsalias.net/ Please do not CC list postings to me. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
Volker Kuhlmann a écrit :
In case of OpenOffice wouldn't it be more or less trivial to detach the OO release completely from the desktop/distro release? Unlike the desktop software without which a desktop computer doesn't go, neither OO nor the desktop depend on each other. One less upstream date to worry about.
what we should absolutely do is separate the distro in important chunks: * kernel * console only system * X * kde / gnome / whatever ... that is, if the kernel is buggy and don't boot, having openoffice is absolutely pointless :-( if gnome is good, we can test it even if kde is not... that could make the devs ask for specific tests (like they do sometie, but more planned) jdd -- http://www.dodin.net http://valerie.dodin.org http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-eic8MSSfM -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Saturday 20 December 2008 11:47:20 Markus wrote:
Am Donnerstag 18 Dezember 2008 20:50:55 schrieb Benji Weber:
If we're voting then I much prefer the longer ~10month+ release cycle length.
Madriva switched away from a 12 months cycle after a community survey because it was considered too long. IMHO the release cycle should not exceed 10 months.
There are IMO the following ways to release a distribution: * on a strict regular schedule. This could be 6 months like Ubuntu or the 12 months as proposed. I would not propose a strict schedule with another number of months since that would lead again to a non-regular schedule * on a non-regular schedule - this is what we're doing right now where we aim for 8 months but achieve 6-10 months depending on other factors Andreas -- Andreas Jaeger, Director Platform/openSUSE, aj@suse.de SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg) Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany GPG fingerprint = 93A3 365E CE47 B889 DF7F FED1 389A 563C C272 A126
On Tuesday 16 December 2008, JP Rosevear wrote:
Sorry, but how many 10.3 online updates you had to push because the final GNOME was broken? We need to have the last GNOME GM-4 weeks. No discussion there. If we delay GM or skip autumn GNOME I don't mind. I don't know now - how many?
there were around 20 updates of gnome related packages within 4 months after 10.3 release. Thats too many. Greetings, Dirk -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Tuesday 16 December 2008, Stephan Kulow wrote:
Actually many complained that 11.1 had a too short release cycle - so they did not really start testing because they hardly finished their 11.0 polishing and I guess that's right for many. And if you go with a may release with many developers having prolonged christmas holidays and ask for an extended RC phase to stabilize and translate, this gives very little time over a kernel and a gcc update. Does pretty hard to sell to users to me.
Well, perhaps we shouldn't focus so much on "selling openSUSE" but rather on selling the addons of openSUSE, namely a well-maintained contrib repository, various build service projects and make it easy for them to be installed in parallel on openSUSE and the community support around it. Thats where the openSUSE as a product looses a bit of focus and rather provides a regularly updated base system (including new hardware enablement etc), and the focus is shifted towards openSUSE as a community project. As an example: I recently bought a new notebook and 11.0 didn't even boot on it upon first start, so I had to start installing it with a horribly broken 11.1 Beta in order to get something out of it at all. I would have preferred a 11.1 that was just as good as 11.0 but had the newer kernel etc which I needed for being able to complete installation. There are plans of various chipset vendors to release new hardware platforms before mid of 2009, and possibly 11.1 will again no longer boot on them and will need a newer base system. Greetings, Dirk -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Sunday 21 December 2008, Dean Hilkewich wrote:
I think we can already do this with the build service. At least, home:coolo:LiveCD makes me believe this. The build service is a horrible option for Joe User to attempt to create their own "updated" installation medium.
It is actually quite easy to do. The reason it appears to be complex is because it is not documented and nobody did it publically before (well, except if you watch the livecd project really closely). I think it is really easy with the buildservice to create "spinoffs" or "openSUSE flavors", so there could be a "latest GNOME" flavor of openSUSE 11.2 being created automatically. In a future life when I have more time I would also like to create a "latest KDE" flavor based on the latest released openSUSE base distro. Greetings, Dirk -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Wed, 17 Dec 2008, Bryen wrote:
We do have a 2 year support cycle, so people don't *have* to jump to the next version out.
Historically Novell has been providing two years of security updates for openSUSE releases. (Support is something different.) This is not cast in stone, though.
The downside of course is with a 6-month cycle, we have 4 versions to support in a 2 year support cycle. Actually 5 if you consider the support going into the development of the next version.
The maximum I feel we should do is two releases plus two months of overlap between N-2 and N.
I think the focus of discussion should be more about how we can improve the experience, thus making people likelier to participate earlier on.
Fully agreed. Gerald -- Dr. Gerald Pfeifer E gp@novell.com SUSE Linux Products GmbH Director Inbound Product Mgmt T +49(911)74053-0 HRB 16746 (AG Nuremberg) openSUSE/SUSE Linux Enterprise F +49(911)74053-483 GF: Markus Rex -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Thu, 18 Dec 2008, Benji Weber wrote:
Longer release cycle has other benefits too. Less work for security team with fewer versions to support concurrently;
Only under the assumption that the two years of security update are going to stay, versus two releases + two months (for example).
Ditto third party packagers and ISVs
ISVs and openSUSE is not exactly in focus. Even a year or two are short as far as ISVs are concerned. Gerald -- Dr. Gerald Pfeifer E gp@novell.com SUSE Linux Products GmbH Director Inbound Product Mgmt T +49(911)74053-0 HRB 16746 (AG Nuremberg) openSUSE/SUSE Linux Enterprise F +49(911)74053-483 GF: Markus Rex -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Mon, 5 Jan 2009, Andreas Jaeger wrote:
There are IMO the following ways to release a distribution: * on a strict regular schedule. This could be 6 months like Ubuntu or the 12 months as proposed. I would not propose a strict schedule with another number of months since that would lead again to a non-regular schedule
...assuming a cycle of one year. Looking at two years, an eight month schedule would be a third option. Gerald -- Dr. Gerald Pfeifer E gp@novell.com SUSE Linux Products GmbH Director Inbound Product Mgmt T +49(911)74053-0 HRB 16746 (AG Nuremberg) openSUSE/SUSE Linux Enterprise F +49(911)74053-483 GF: Markus Rex -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Mon, 2009-01-05 at 12:23 +0100, Dirk Müller wrote:
On Tuesday 16 December 2008, JP Rosevear wrote:
Sorry, but how many 10.3 online updates you had to push because the final GNOME was broken? We need to have the last GNOME GM-4 weeks. No discussion there. If we delay GM or skip autumn GNOME I don't mind. I don't know now - how many?
there were around 20 updates of gnome related packages within 4 months after 10.3 release. Thats too many.
Ok - and is the only factor driving the "too many" designation resource constraints? -JP -- JP Rosevear <jpr@novell.com> Novell, Inc. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Sun, 2009-01-04 at 08:48 +1300, Volker Kuhlmann wrote:
On Wed 17 Dec 2008 21:13:42 NZDT +1300, Jiri Srain wrote:
On the other hand, we might consider providing up-to-date desktop environments as add-on products during the life cycle of the distro (basically make an add-on from factory repo after new KDE/GNOME/whatever gets released and stabilized).
How well tested would they be? As a case of unsupported/bleed-if-you- want? I would find that very useful, as long as it's easy to go back t stable baseline if it doesn't work out.
In case of OpenOffice wouldn't it be more or less trivial to detach the OO release completely from the desktop/distro release? Unlike the desktop software without which a desktop computer doesn't go, neither OO nor the desktop depend on each other. One less upstream date to worry about.
OO is relatively easy to detach, in fact its largely detached for SLED currently. -JP -- JP Rosevear <jpr@novell.com> Novell, Inc. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Monday 05 January 2009, JP Rosevear wrote:
there were around 20 updates of gnome related packages within 4 months after 10.3 release. Thats too many. Ok - and is the only factor driving the "too many" designation resource constraints?
Well, your question sounds to me like "Did he die because his heart stopped working?". Of course, assuming infinite amount of ressources we can do everything. The "too many" was more expressing the fuzzy feeling of why people think the 10.3 model was bad (shipping many updates shortly after release doesn't give a good impression of the product). Greetings, Dirk -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Tue, 16 Dec 2008, Rob OpenSuSE wrote:
So how about a more "Tick Tock" based approach, does that provide more flexibility and is it more natual?
X.0 - kernel, glibc, gcc, binutils, base utitlities, filesystems (rest feature stable, bug fixes only) X.1 (KDE) (OOo) - core stuff proven (and stabilised), latest applications X.2 (GNOME) - more application updates (FINAL release goes to retail, upgrade from X.1 & 11.1)
That would work best if upstream projects would align their releases with this schedule. If not, we might end up being woefully behind the curve in key areas, I'm afraid. (Within any given release cycle, having such a staged approach at least as a goal certainly makes sense, and we have been doing this to some extent.) Gerald -- Dr. Gerald Pfeifer E gp@novell.com SUSE Linux Products GmbH Director Inbound Product Mgmt T +49(911)74053-0 HRB 16746 (AG Nuremberg) openSUSE/SUSE Linux Enterprise F +49(911)74053-483 GF: Markus Rex -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Mon, 2009-01-05 at 16:42 +0100, Dirk Müller wrote:
On Monday 05 January 2009, JP Rosevear wrote:
there were around 20 updates of gnome related packages within 4 months after 10.3 release. Thats too many. Ok - and is the only factor driving the "too many" designation resource constraints?
Well, your question sounds to me like "Did he die because his heart stopped working?". Of course, assuming infinite amount of ressources we can do everything.
The "too many" was more expressing the fuzzy feeling of why people think the 10.3 model was bad (shipping many updates shortly after release doesn't give a good impression of the product).
Could definitely be true - I installed ubuntu 8.10 today though and it yielded 215 package updates (to be fair a lot from the same source package, something like 75 actual changes, more than half were recommended), so I'm not sure how much negativity this concern might generate. How did this compare to 11.0? I don't disagree that 10.3 was pretty tight though and not ideal. -JP -- JP Rosevear <jpr@novell.com> Novell, Inc. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
Can I suggest that the discussion is caused by a difference between the development processes and the delivery. Combining a development environment that is open source where there are no absolute deadlines with a delivery process that is commercial and based upon marketing plans, industrial (contracted) production and store sales plans will inevitable that there will be mismatches. As openSuSe will be open source, it is clear that the only solution is to change the delivery mechanism. The question is how. David -- D Hodgson P: 020 71 833 722 M: 07984 069 846 F: 0845 86 75 74 1 E: david@different-perspectives.com On Monday 05 Jan 2009, JP Rosevear wrote:
On Mon, 2009-01-05 at 16:42 +0100, Dirk Müller wrote:
On Monday 05 January 2009, JP Rosevear wrote:
there were around 20 updates of gnome related packages within 4 months after 10.3 release. Thats too many.
Ok - and is the only factor driving the "too many" designation resource constraints?
Well, your question sounds to me like "Did he die because his heart stopped working?". Of course, assuming infinite amount of ressources we can do everything.
The "too many" was more expressing the fuzzy feeling of why people think the 10.3 model was bad (shipping many updates shortly after release doesn't give a good impression of the product).
Could definitely be true - I installed ubuntu 8.10 today though and it yielded 215 package updates (to be fair a lot from the same source package, something like 75 actual changes, more than half were recommended), so I'm not sure how much negativity this concern might generate. How did this compare to 11.0?
I don't disagree that 10.3 was pretty tight though and not ideal.
-JP -- JP Rosevear <jpr@novell.com> Novell, Inc.
-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
2009/1/5 Dirk Müller <dmueller@suse.de>:
The "too many" was more expressing the fuzzy feeling of why people think the 10.3 model was bad (shipping many updates shortly after release doesn't give a good impression of the product).
10.3 install for me with net access, many rpm's downloaded from the net. That was fine. The problem was, that there were serious kernel bugs. Until the updates that finally fixed those (with at least one unpleasant interim kernel), 10.3 was essentially broken for me on 3/3 machines. It was the release quality that gave the bad impression, not the need for updates later. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
2009/1/5 Gerald Pfeifer <gp@novell.com>:
On Tue, 16 Dec 2008, Rob OpenSuSE wrote:
So how about a more "Tick Tock" based approach, does that provide more flexibility and is it more natual?
X.0 - kernel, glibc, gcc, binutils, base utitlities, filesystems (rest feature stable, bug fixes only) X.1 (KDE) (OOo) - core stuff proven (and stabilised), latest applications X.2 (GNOME) - more application updates (FINAL release goes to retail, upgrade from X.1 & 11.1)
That would work best if upstream projects would align their releases with this schedule. If not, we might end up being woefully behind the curve in key areas, I'm afraid.
(Within any given release cycle, having such a staged approach at least as a goal certainly makes sense, and we have been doing this to some extent.)
Tried to illustrate a point simply and clearly, choosing suggested point releases based on the previous discussion. No intention to set in stone things like a total freeze on gcc, without incorporating bug fix point releases. Or preventing any kernel updates. There's not really a need for alignment, if you have release managers, making informed decisions based on the cost/benefit analysis of updating a version. And falling "woefully behind the curve" would be a strong argument for change. I see the kernel as being the main problem area there, where new hardware support is required, or changes cause a regression. For instance since 2.6.18 when libata/pata_ was introduced as "experimental", there's been drivers which consistently have problems. These tended to go unfixed upstream, as hardware with the problem generates a report, but on a production system, it uses a workround (like the older IDE ATA drivers), hardwares replaced, or machine rolls back to previous working release. Really I'm arguing for more minor releases, with smaller better focussed changes, done in a way that does get used, so that the FINAL retail release is of higher quality. Once you've been burned badly, with a 'main' release with too much stuff broken, so you could not even make clear bug reports, it acts as a huge disincentive to giving up more time on testing. The natural inclination is to avoid breaking things by experimentation. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Tue, 6 Jan 2009, Rob OpenSuSE wrote:
Really I'm arguing for more minor releases, with smaller better focussed changes, done in a way that does get used, so that the FINAL retail release is of higher quality.
Would these minor releases be true releases, or more like milestones on the way to a true release? For example, once .2 has been released, will there still be security updates for .1 or will users be asked to move to .2? Perhaps it will be beneficial (for the sake of this discussion) to separate the question of naming from the contents, since numbers like x.1 or terms like Beta have certain connotations. My feeling is that openSUSE Betas generally have not been more stable than Alphas, and RCs not necessarily more so than Betas. One way to combine this with what I _think_ you are proposing is to do, say, a mini-release (call it milestone or whatever) every 2, 3, or 4 months that brings a succint set of changes and has a _short_ stabilization phase, and then do a full release every three, four such mini-releases. Only full releases will see security updates for 18-24 months, users of mini-releases will be asked to move to the next mini-release (which is still more stability than FACTORY provides today). Full launching happens for the full release, but we'll certainly want to also be a bit vocal about mini-releases. Is this in line with what you are thinking, a sensible variation thereof, or quite something different? Gerald -- Dr. Gerald Pfeifer E gp@novell.com SUSE Linux Products GmbH Director Inbound Product Mgmt T +49(911)74053-0 HRB 16746 (AG Nuremberg) openSUSE/SUSE Linux Enterprise F +49(911)74053-483 GF: Markus Rex -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
2009/1/7 Gerald Pfeifer <gp@novell.com>:
On Tue, 6 Jan 2009, Rob OpenSuSE wrote:
Really I'm arguing for more minor releases, with smaller better focussed changes, done in a way that does get used, so that the FINAL retail release is of higher quality.
Would these minor releases be true releases, or more like milestones on the way to a true release? For example, once .2 has been released, will there still be security updates for .1 or will users be asked to move to .2?
I'd be ruthless, if you install .0, .1 then you *MUST* online update (or if absolutely necessary do a YaST upgrade to get to .2) if you want any form of support. Perhaps 12.0.0, 12.0.1, 12.0.2 would be more accurate, but these days marketing seems to prefer regular major version changes. Traditionally SuSE version numbers have been effectively meaningless. Having an annual major version bump, after the development phase of cycle, would keep openSUSE on a higher major version than Ubuntu however, which might be a useful side benefit. Having 3 or 4 minor version increments, every 8 months, and then upping the major version will fall behind the years eventually. ( I used SuSE 6.1 in '99, and am only at 11.1 in '08 now )
Perhaps it will be beneficial (for the sake of this discussion) to separate the question of naming from the contents, since numbers like x.1 or terms like Beta have certain connotations.
My feeling is that openSUSE Betas generally have not been more stable than Alphas, and RCs not necessarily more so than Betas. One way to combine this with what I _think_ you are proposing is to do, say, a mini-release (call it milestone or whatever) every 2, 3, or 4 months that brings a succint set of changes and has a _short_ stabilization phase, and then do a full release every three, four such mini-releases.
Only full releases will see security updates for 18-24 months, users of mini-releases will be asked to move to the next mini-release (which is still more stability than FACTORY provides today). Full launching happens for the full release, but we'll certainly want to also be a bit vocal about mini-releases.
Is this in line with what you are thinking, a sensible variation thereof, or quite something different?
You are right. It seems attempts to explain and discuss this seem to founder, because of pre-conceptions associated with the words. What you propose there, seems to be inline with ideas that I've tried to explore in the discussions. Incidentally I stumbled on this piece, http://derstandard.at/?id=3413801&_artikelIndex=1 which suggests it's an issue for other distro's to, even with an apparently larger user base. Shuttleworth discussing a rocky Ubuntu 8.04 LTS - "So we didn't see a sufficient level of beta-testing during the test-period and many bugs are only filed when the release has already been made. So one option that we considered was: "Let's not call 8.04 the LTS, let's call 8.04.1 the LTS", so many people would upgrade who wouldn't use a beta and you get better feedback. So that's something we might do differently with the next LTS. " Yesterday, I actually wished that when the 11.2 proposed schedule discussion was started, that I'd responded with something like. "11.2 should be released in March, it should contain KDE 4.2, and bug fixes to 11.1; basically it should be 11.1 done right. As it seems this is a common problem, it seems rather pointless to freeze the GM's with so many end users facing installation blocking problems (and if they do install, a whole load of known but unfixed regressions). And it was those involved most with the release, who originally aired points about shortage of testers and such. Other Novell employees have commented on lack of resources. That sounds very much like a reason to change, and a longer cycle was done with 10.3, and that still needed a huge number of updates post-release. So as it stands in Zonker's news item release plan, why would 11.2 in autumn be any different?
mini-release (call it milestone or whatever) every 2, 3, or 4 months that brings a succint set of changes and has a _short_ stabilization phase, and then do a full release every three, four such mini-releases.
That would appear to solve the problem of falling behind the curve of KDE, GNOME, Go-OO and the kernel, and any other noteworthy hotstuff & coolness. Assuming, that a goal at the end of the series is stabilised code for SLE, then you can limit the large internal developments to a merge window in Q1/Q2 in year say, with an increasing burden of 'proof' required as the Major release approaches in Q4. It would also permit, releasing with beta test versions, like KDE 4.2 for 11.1 (rather than 4.1.3 + backports), or as in the Shuttleworth example going with the clearly superior Firefox 3, rather than being lumbered with Firefox 2 for 2 years. My other main suggestion was to reward early adoption by online update, so that security patches only need developing for same number of kernels, OpenSSH and so forth as now. So in effect development goes on : Factory : the very latest in packages, no guarantees -- Debian "experimental" Current : bleeding edge, latest "mini-release" plus updates. Previous mini-releases updated live online if possible, or via an upgrade procedure with YaST booting from ISO. - Debian "unstable" Final Release : the stabilised product, that is fit for box sets, and paid support by easy migration to SLE Something like that, has a chance to build a community of beta testers, around an evolving release, which would actually run on real hardware. So to summarise : User Benefits : Less installing from scratch. A choice of stability, or current software. More involvement with the community distro. Fewer used versions (because of online updates) but better supported. Hope for higher quality in future eg) kernel driver regressions more likely to get back upstream in timely manner. Developer Benefits : Wider User Base, that grows with time as Full releases stabilise Getting usuable code out earlier, more time for real user Feedback Significant applications updates go onto a known base. Similarly core changes, can occur without having a load of unstable application changes as well. Fewer package versions to support (because "sick" versions, can be force upgraded) Less pressure to rush and opportunity to include "solid" beta's if it makes sense to online update later -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
Reading this (again): http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/lexicon.html#moenslaw-hardware may be devs (and testers) should publish a summary of they hardware... let only to show what is worked on... jdd -- http://www.dodin.net http://valerie.dodin.org http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-eic8MSSfM http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1412160445 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
Am Montag 05 Januar 2009 schrieb JP Rosevear:
On Mon, 2009-01-05 at 12:23 +0100, Dirk Müller wrote:
On Tuesday 16 December 2008, JP Rosevear wrote:
Sorry, but how many 10.3 online updates you had to push because the final GNOME was broken? We need to have the last GNOME GM-4 weeks. No discussion there. If we delay GM or skip autumn GNOME I don't mind.
I don't know now - how many?
there were around 20 updates of gnome related packages within 4 months after 10.3 release. Thats too many.
Ok - and is the only factor driving the "too many" designation resource constraints? LiveCD being buggy would be another I think.
Greetings, Stephan -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Tue 06 Jan 2009 02:04:29 NZDT +1300, Gerald Pfeifer wrote:
I think the focus of discussion should be more about how we can improve the experience, thus making people likelier to participate earlier on.
Fully agreed.
Here are reasons why I don't participate as much as I'd like to: * Installation is totally broken. When I have a weekend to do testing, I can install beta X during a third of that, and then play with applications for the rest of it, thus generating useful (and for user acceptance important) bug reports. If after a dreadful installation experience I can foresee that I will be spending the rest of the weekend trying to get the system to a state where I can finally start an application, the period of beta X is over before I've found enough non-existant time during the week to do useful testing. So my metrics for the length of the beta period is the length of time a *testable* beta is available. So if a release doesn't install and it takes 2 weeks to fix (or six weeks, as the case may be), then extend following milestones by that much, or consider the beta period shortened. This is the main reason I didn't file any reports for 11.1. * Lack of test environment. I need a stable and dependable computer for daily use. I don't have the reasources to be an identical new computer just for testing. The old computer(s) are inefficient, and nobody cares about their driver-related bugs. It would really help if there were good rundowns of how to test the current beta on the previous(!) (preferably two) stable releases - what the options are, and how to use them. I tried vmware once, but it wasted more time on vmware itself than what it was worth. The beta guest didn't run properly either, and just forget about any time-related software. There was always one more peice of whatnot to install in the guest which wasn't readily available and would have taken heaps of time to obtain. Too inefficient to do useful beta testing with. Running a risk of being forced to say "no I can't do this for you right now because my Linux is broken" is not an option when I keep saying to people they should try Linux over XYZ because things just work today, tomorrow, and the day after. Of course it's also my fault that I haven't put together that wiki page. * A large part why I participate in testing is so that I end up with a system which works reliably and is reasonably bug free in the areas I use myself. Finding that bugs I reported are still present in GM is disillusioning. For example I have given up on counting the years I've entered the same bugs now for RAID1 use on a desktop machine (IMHO it's nuts not to use it, yet it doesn't work out of the box unless you know what you're doing). If each release has 5 bugs fixed and 3 new ones (and sometimes 3 fixed, 5 new) then it's too much like Microsoft. If my efforts make a difference here I'd be more motivated. * Nothing to do with SUSE: my weekends are too full with everything else... ;) Volker -- Volker Kuhlmann is list0570 with the domain in header http://volker.dnsalias.net/ Please do not CC list postings to me. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
Søndag 15 marts 2009 01:09:46 skrev Volker Kuhlmann:
So my metrics for the length of the beta period is the length of time a *testable* beta is available.
Because of the scrample to get stuff in before feature freeze beta1 is usually the most broken release in the entire development cycle, it would prolly be a good idea to address this problem. For example by having an extra week or so between feature freeze and beta1 release.
* Lack of test environment. I need a stable and dependable computer for daily use. I don't have the reasources to be an identical new computer just for testing.
My model is keeping a partition of 5-8 gigs on both my workstation and laptop for testing purposes. I then install the development releases in dual boot with my stable installation. This way I can test on my own real hardware without having to run beta/factory full time. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
participants (33)
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Administrator
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Alberto Passalacqua
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Andreas Jaeger
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Andrew Joakimsen
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Benji Weber
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Bryen
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Carlos E. R.
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Carlos Goncalves
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Dean Hilkewich
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Dirk Müller
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Dominique Leuenberger
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Gerald Pfeifer
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Giovanni Masucci
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jdd
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Jiri Srain
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Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier
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JP Rosevear
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Justin Haygood
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Kevin Dupuy
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Magnus Boman
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Markus
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Martin Schlander
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Michael Loeffler
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Rajko M.
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Rastislav Krupanský
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Rob OpenSuSE
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Rodrigo Moya
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Sascha Manns
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Stanislav Visnovsky
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Stephan Binner
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Stephan Kulow
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Vincent Untz
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Volker Kuhlmann