On Fri, Sep 26, 2014 at 10:36 AM, Wolfgang Rosenauer <wolfgang@rosenauer.org> wrote:

Hi,

time to answer finally. So as you probably know I'm the "founder" of Evergreen just in case.

Am 26.09.2014 um 16:52 schrieb Timothy Butterworth:

...

If a new LTS release with a maintenance period of 5 release's + 6 Month's was produced with a new version released every 4th release to provide a 1 release + 6 Month stabilizing testing and migration period overlap would you guys be more inclined to upgrade? It would mean upgrading around every 4.5 years.

[...]

More importantly is anyone interested in performing some of the work to make it because it would be a all community release?

Your ideas are quite ok. I actually always would liked to have an LTS version maintained for say 5 years free of charge. I discussed this years ago as well but people like to discuss with no action being taken. That's why I just turned it around and started Evergreen for 11.1 to see what can be done.

After 11.1, 11.2 and 11.4 I can tell you the following: - no, it's not that much effort to continue maintenance up to 3 years and probably a bit more - it'll get hard starting from 3 years if you cannot do for example service packs to upgrade parts which cannot be maintained anymore - service packs are a big beast. Not sure if the community can or want to help enough to get that tested and shipped.

I have been thinking about how we could release service packs or even updated installers for a while now as well. I have been considering simply rolling updated installation medium. It would still keep the same branding version but just include the latest software that was published through OSS/Update repo. I looked at doing this with SUSE Studio a while back but did not have time to devote to it at that point in time. I was thinking of possibly a yearly updated DVD installer. I do not see the need for other installers for a server specialized release.

- you need more people but they didn't show up during all the time - we had some contributors for certain packages (don't know the number but something in the range from 5-10) but almost all monitoring and responsibility for everything which was not taken by someone else was on two people (thanks Stefan) - this was also the reason we had to end 11.4 maintenance after the announced lifetime. It was getting to exhausting as a spare time project

If the number of releases were cut down to open two active releases and the packages were cut down to only server target packages this would essentially change the resource dynamic creating less work of course.

I'm totally proud what we achieved because it showed that it's not too much effort but if you get too few people to help you are screwed.

I agree it would be relatively impossible to maintain particularly if many packages required back porting with only a small number of people. Starting out with LTS versions of major OSS projects like BIND, Apache, etc would help some. Some of The components in 13.1 may need dropped down like including Firefox to its LTS edition. If a number of people are actively maintaining software on EOL versions currently then it would just be a matter of getting to a initial software version baseline the majority is happy with and getting them to share what they are already doing anyway. Which would save work for everyone. I am sure these were some of The conversations you had initially discussing Evergreen as well.

That is also why the Evergreen plans for now are not going to change unless I see changes in "resources". That might be more contributors or also other incentives to increase the motivation of the volunteer ;-) If we have a better understanding what resources are available we can talk about what to change in the Evergreen/LTS structure. Discussing it, and this is what I've learned, doesn't bring us anywhere. There are a lot of people demanding it but practically almost noone want to invest anything.

I'll enjoy to have a rest until Evergreen for 13.1 is starting again and being able to do a few other things instead.

What I am think about doing would be different than Evergreen because it would not include a desktop variant. Evergreen already covers The desktop well in my opinion and desktops are much easier to clean install if needed every three years of so. I personally move my desktops/notebooks/laptops up to each and every new version usually within the first 3 months of the release but these are only my personal use systems and I do not have large numbers of them. In the past it was actually vitally necessary to do this just to take advantage of the latest drivers. That is less of an issue for me know as my hardware is older and the newer hardware I do have was better planned out. Also with more OEM's actively supporting The Linux Kernel now the latest systems I bought all worked without issue but I did go with The ASUS+Intel+Atheros hardware combination intentionally. I'm currently not going to plan on trying to take on The full openSUSE release with this and include all Desktop targeted applications at all. I am looking at only core server functionality: NTP, LDAP, HTTP/S, NFS, NIS, SMTP, FTP, SSH, OwnCloud, as well as possibly UTM components Snort, Squid, ClamAV etc. I do not really want to include new moving target stuff but make this much more like a Community Enterprise Server Release. If this works out I eventually would not mind working on building a optional turnkey appliance web interface for it like Zyental offers http://www.zentyal.org/ I have wanted something like this running on openSUSE for a number of years now, as I currently have time available for the first time to actually put serious work into it I think I am going to start by targeting software parity to Zentyal with openSUSE added components WebYaST and Machinery Project. I eventually want to also include a quick turn key for Trouble Ticket/Request system, CRM, IPAM, ITSM, etc web based services which could be treated as Installation patterns in Zypper as this would of course be a Server targeted release.

Wolfgang -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org