2009/1/1 James Tremblay aka SLEducator
Rob OpenSuSE wrote:
Doesn't simply having SUSE 12, with 12.0.0, 12.0.1, 12.1.0, 12.1.1, 12.2.1, 12.3.0 all updating themselves live to 12.3.1 (FINAL) avoid that trust problem.
Would be a good thing if and only if you could guarantee no more broken releases\ sub releases. We both know this is impossible. Otherwise I wouldn't turn the auto update feature on for my customers.
Rather than get hung up on version numbers, and having large scale changes in every release. I presume releases as they stand now, are going to be broken! 10.3 had almost a year, yet was just as bad as 11.1 for me, and with one very problematic kernel update shortly after initial release. So longer release cycle in my view does nothing to improve release quality. Therefore, I'm presuming it'll always be better to make a stability release 11.1.1 (in effect) which is 11.1 done acceptably right for most users. It sucks if the install ISO's don't get updated, leaving many boxes with boot problems. As many users, who have commented on 11.1 in forum or on the opensuse mail list, as well as "Release Cycle" survey, are asking for more quality, I think some change is desirable. Similarly I'd be happier to buy a box set, if it had decent release notes, and disks that would actually work, and enable getting to the state of the art, rather than a prematurely frozen ISO, which had to be shipped "As Is" thanks to calendar pressures and release politics. Thus I've been making a case for rapid follow up releases, actually the real thing, with what now passes for a main release, being a short term product, that however via online update, will be the "solid" version. As the version numbers for SUSE have long been meaningless, and no indicator of underlying changes to the distro, nor to quality, I'd be happy to have USTS (Ultra-Short-Term-Support) versions given a minor number, rather than the more honestly meaningful, 11.1.0 and 11.1.1. One attractive feature to me, of your first post, was that the "Solid" release, could be tied into SLE with a predictable version number. It would seem desirable to me, for openSUSE to lead into SLE in some manner, with OS 12 and SLE 12 sharing core versions of things. Having releases move via live update in small steps, and switch paths onto the LTS of SLE on subscription model would superficially at least appear attractive. Hopefully now it is clearer the assumptions I've been using, when responding.
Today, If I want to set up a customer with SLED, I had better be able to compile or install anything not on the DVD's from my own collection. How does that help "take up"?
Whilst I'm sympathetic to issues with the reality of supporting SLE in long term (there's a reason I have all the updates from SuSE 8.2 on disk still); I'm not sure it's an issue that openSUSE can solve directly. What I do see, is that focussing on key major versions, which become inputs to SLE, increase the user base for software used by SLE and would hopefully improve quality, and economies of scale and focus would act to relieve that issue. Personally I doubt that, building or finding rpm's that would work, is really difficult initially at least, surely it is the implications of LTS for a huge number of packages, where upstream loses interest, that makes only subsets of repositories feasible. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org