Planning Dapper+1

[David M]

Mark Shuttleworth wrote in gmane.linux.ubuntu.announce 
 about: Planning Dapper+1 

> First things first. The codename of Dapper+1 will be:     The Edgy Eft
>
> And here's why. Edgy is all about cutting edge, perhaps bleeding edge,
> brand new code and infrastructure. It will be the right time to bring in
> some seriously interesting but definitely edgy new technologies which
> lay the groundwork for the next wave of Ubuntu development.

Phrases such as these tend to worry me *a little* ;-/

While Ubuntu has done an absolutely first-class job of natural, gradual
evolution, I guess it's not a bad thing to sometimes think a little away
from that and to consider new ideas that are "on the edge". However, I 
just hope that this won't mean that Eft veers too far towards 'radical 
innovation' and away from the stability and quality for which Ubuntu 
has become well-known and respected.

I appreciate that Dapper will have longer-term support for more cautious
users, but I suspect that for many people, the balance between stability 
*and newness* that Ubuntu has managed to maintain very well up until now 
has been a key factor in attracting a userbase from Debian or other 
distros. 

I'd like to be sure that Eft becomes a "normal" upgrade path in the usual 
6-monthly course, rather than having to remain with Dapper with 
increasingly 'stale' applications, if the alternative is perhaps going 
a little too far out on a limb. 

For example, Dapper itself can't come soon enough for me, given that 
it's been a hassle [1] to add extensions to Firefox for some months as
Mozilla block access to the extensions site for the version of Firefox
installed by Breezy.

[1] Workaround: visit Mozilla with a different browser, save the
extensions to disk, then load locally with Firefox.


> So dream a little about Xen for virtualisation, Xgl/AIGLX and other 
> wonderful wobbly window bits, the goodness of Network Manager, a first 
> flirt with multiarch support for true mixed 32-bit and 64-bit computing 
> on AMD64, the interesting possibilities of the SMART package manager... 
> and other  pieces of infrastructure which have appeared tantalisingly 
> on the horizon.

I have no idea what any of these things are(!), but my main concerns 
would be that they don't represent excessive bloat, introduce stability 
issues or unnecessarily hasten the day when Ubuntu cannot be installed
on older hardware (which has always been a key benefit of Linux).


Nevertheless, good luck to all Ubuntu developers in getting their
imaginations working for Eft, but, please, just make sure you don't come
up with a "Homer 3000".. :-)


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