KDE 3.5.6 released w Kubuntu packages

[Derek Broughton]

Donn wrote:

>> > Now that user comes to Ubuntu. All is fine for 6 months, perhaps a
>> > year. They rely on the apps in the repos because Synaptic and apt-get
>> > are emphasized. (Actually going to a website and downloading an install
>> > file is not common on Linux.)

>> Actually, it's very common on Linux, but not in the Debian-style distros.
>> It's becoming less so in other distros, too.

> I was on Fedora for ages, it was common to use yum over there. It was rare
> to find an rpm and install it because of dep hell. Perhaps there are
> circles of experience within Linux and you move on a more advanced one
> than I do.

No, I mean that it used to be that the rpm-based distros all used rpmfind
and tended to grab their rpms from anywhere, and the non-rpm, non-debian
distros _always_ used to work from tarballs.  Now the rpm-based distros are
moving more and more towards apt, and even the big all-source distro,
gentoo, has package management, and while I'm not sure any significant
distro still works from tarballs, every app developer still produces them
and almost all the users know what to do with them.

> Sure thing. I was hoping there would be an 'upgrade helper' like the one
> in Ubuntu, but I have not seen that one yet.

I've been hoping too, and I've yet to see it.
> 
>> My personal preference would be that Ubuntu do exactly what Debian does -
>> if I point my sources.list to "stable", it is never obsolete.  Updates
>> will continue forever.
> Now, to keep me straight, when you say "stable" and "is never obsolete" do
> you mean that Debian's repos keep (many || most || some || all) apps up to
> date (i.e. on the latest stable version)?

I don't know what the current state of Debian is, but there are always three
current versions, there is "stable", "testing" and "unstable".  These are
symlinks on the mirrors.  Stable currently points to "sarge", unstable
always points to "sid", and testing points to something else :-).  When the
current "testing" version is released, the symlinks are changed.  Then
stable will point to whatever testing points to now, testing will point to
a new release, and unstable will still point to "sid".  So if you are
running servers pointing at stable, they will automatically be pointing at
a new release eventually.  If you're more cutting edge, you use "testing",
and again, it will become a new release at some point.

If Ubuntu was doing this, last summer stable would have linked to "dapper" &
testing to "edgy", now stable links to "edgy" and testing to "feisty"
(there would, of course, be really good reasons not to actually use the
names "stable" and "testing").

> From those points, I would argue that many users will stay on the version
> of Ubuntu they first install, especially if it happens to be a Long Term
> Support version. Thus they will run into the software jail I spoke of and
> thus I wanted to make the situation clear in the text, hence my version of
> the introduction.

Those who find updating tedious will do exactly what Windows users do -
they'll order a new CD every so often, but they'll be able to get them more
often than Windows users.

> PS - I meant to ask: I read the Ubuntu pages on this but I am not sure,
> will I be able to update Dapper LTS to XXX LTS, whatever XXX is in the
> future? I.e. does LTS update directly to LTS without having to go through
> all the animals in-between?

I don't have a clue - I would hope so, because many people have been
encouraged to stay with the LTS release.
-- 
derek