[Fwd: Re: Two rather negative articles about Ubuntu]

[Peter Whittaker]

On Sun, 2006-02-07 at 15:08 -0400, Lee Revell wrote: 
> My point is that someone who already knows how to use apt-get to upgrade
> a system will not read the release notes and should not have to.

I disagree strongly (with the "should not have to" perspective): From
time to time, there will be changes that change the way things have been
done; sometimes, the "old way" is preserved, but under a different name
(awk/gawk/nawk, e.g.).

Release notes are an excellent way to capture this. Especially if the
changes are the results of making overall system improvements. Sometimes
we find better ways to do things, and sometimes an aspect of the
improvements breaks the old way.

Making a major install without reading the release notes to determine
how change might affect your system seems, at best, something one should
do only on alpha test system in which one has little investment.

That said, I also believe that as a general rule of thumb, an apt-get
[dist-]upgrade should, to the greatest extent possible, only blow your
mind with positive improvements, and not cause major config shock.

> Ubuntu should not break things that have always worked.

To the greatest extent possible, I agree, in general, so long as "not
breaking things" does not prevent moving to better ways of doing things.
Case in point, the modern crontab system, the modern boot system, etc.
When I last lived under UNIX, "crontab -l" was my friend, and the boot
sequence was one great long googlymoogly of a script.

Both systems have changed, mostly for the better. Release notes let me
know these things, let me know what the retirement track is. Should we
support the old way in perpetuity? Absofrigginglutely not, that would be
ludicrous, IMNSHO.

(Please do not read more into my position than is there: I also strongly
believe that we should aim for a consistent platform where the major
elements are stable, relatively easy to master, and well-presented. But
I do not believe we should retain arbitrary backwards compatibility - in
anything other than standards-based data formats and protocols - for the
sake only of doing so. More or less. Today. Tomorrow I may rant
otherwise. YMMV.)

pww

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