Kubuntu LTS

[Krzysztof Lichota]

Richard A. Johnson napisał(a):
> If we were to continue to redirect 100% of our efforts to KDE 3.5, come this 
> time next year, we will be so far behind the rest of the distributions 
> pushing KDE 4. We, Kubuntu Development Team, do not have the resources to do 
> both a KDE 3.5 LTS release as well as a KDE 4 release at the same time. We 
> cannot afford to neglect KDE 4 as a distribution. If we were to neglect it 
> now, we could never catch up to distributions such as Fedora, openSUSE, and 
> others who are just swarming with developers.

I think KDE 3.5 is not high-maintainance thing as it has been in Kubuntu
for many years and there are no changes after 3.5.8. It is just keeping
the state as it is.

> The LTS release only means that for the next 3 years, there will be security 
> updates, and I have a feeling that even if Kubuntu 8.04 didn't have an LTS 
> release, we would support security issues in time.

Official statement from Canonical would help a lot here. Noone will
seriuosly rely on such statements if they are not officially backed.

> Dropping the LTS tag could be a marketing ploy, which honestly wouldn't be a 
> bad idea and something I would support. If we were to continue trying to bust 
> our humps trying to produce both KDE 4 and KDE 3.5 side-by-side, there is 
> that chance that due to limited resources we could produce a not-so-great 
> release, and I am sure this could worry Canonical's best interest.

KDE 3.5 part does not require any significant changes. Just take what is
already available in Gutsy and pass it on.

> I am sure that if this was Canonical's decision, they did their homework and 
> spoke with any clients and/or customers which currently hold a Kubuntu 
> support contract, and they possibly have some further details about how much 
> Kubuntu Dapper is currently being used.

Dapper is already 16 months old (close to 18 months of usual support
lifecycle) and does not fit many user requirements, especially with
newer hardware. People need another LTS release.

> No matter the decision we made, people weren't going to be happy. If we went 
> and stayed the LTS course, not paying much attention to KDE 4, come time for 
> a real KDE 4 release we would have been overwhelmed. At the same time more 
> people are interested in KDE 4 more so than KDE 3.5 and LTS.

Do you have any numbers to back this statement? People who are
interested in KDE 4 are just more active on forums, blogs, etc. People
interested in LTS just sit quiet and do their work. This is what IMO LTS
was invented for.

I think putting much effort on KDE 4 i shooting yourself in the foot. It
is very new code (it isn't released even yet!) and it will contain lots
of bugs and cause a lot of problems. It also misses some features from
KDE 3. IMO 8.04 should be LTS release with mainly 3.5 support and with
option to try out KDE 4, if someone wishes to do so, but with
possibility of falling back to rock-stable 3.5 if some problems arise.
I think KDE 4 can be used as stable base since version 4.1 appears and
all young-age problems are tracked and solved. And when more apps using
KDE 4 will appear.

	Krzysztof Lichota

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