Commercial Support

[John Dong]

On 3/2/06, Naaman Campbell <naamanc at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> During the last few months, I have been preparing a mass migration of
> our current Solaris 8 CDE desktops to an Ubuntu Breezy Badger
> environment.  The current ratio of Solaris to Windows desktops is
> about 90% Solaris / 10% Windows with the Windows ratio falling.  We
> support 9 sites across Australia with all Solaris users running on
> SunRay thin clients (see http://www.sun.com/sunray/sunray1/index.xml).
>
> Throughout the development and testing stages of the project, a number
> of issues have appeared for which I am seeking answers for.  At
> present, we are covered by Sun Support contracts for all of our Sun
> hardware and software that we run.  Our support contracts are solid
> fallbacks when things go wrong and this has been a frequent topic of
> discussion with the System Adminstrator about the support mechanisms
> available in the operating system we will be rolling out next -
> Ubuntu.  In short, it is hard to quantify the purchasing of support
> for Ubuntu when it appears to not match the level of support offered
> by other vendors, namely Sun & Microsoft.
>
> The main reoccurring topic of discussion is the fixing of bugs in the
> current Ubuntu release version.  Below are the paths on how it appears
> bugs get fixed in Solaris, Windows and Ubuntu.
>
> Solaris
> ----------
> Problem discovered -> Call Sun Support -> Sun acknowledge it is a bug
> -> Sun release a patch -> Install patch on current release
>
> Windows
> -------------
> Problem discovered -> Call MS Support -> MS acknowledge it is a bug ->
> MS release a Windows Update -> Install Windows Update
>
> Ubuntu (without paid support)
> -----------
> Problem discovered -> Log bug on Malone (and upstream) ->
> Upstream/Malone acknowledge it is a bug -> Upstream/Ubuntu release fix
> into development tree
>
> In order to receive the bug fixes in Ubuntu, the method that seems to
> be offered is to wait until the current development version is
> released.  In a production environment, waiting up to 6 months for a
> bug fix and/or updating the operating system every six months is an
> unacceptable practice.  I do not see how this situation would change
> with the purchase of paid support either.  A main catalyst for the
> purchasing of paid support would be the provision of product updates
> when needed on the current release version.
>
> For Ubuntu, and Canonical Support, to make a leap forward in providing
> commercial-grade support for the current release version, there needs
> to be an improvement to the current patching mechanism - Ubuntu
> Backports.  Backports currently seems like a side project being driven
> by a handful of non-Canonical volunteers which is still in the early
> stages of being an official part of Ubuntu.  If Canonical were to put
> some serious resources and staff into the Backports system, it would
> greatly improve the profile of Ubuntu in the enterprise desktop
> market.  Patching of the current release version of an OS is key to
> providing true support to end users and customers.


Yes,  I have brought up the issues of bugfix patches to various
developers before, but nobody I talked to seemed to think it was important.

The current trouble is, Backports is not authorized to modify source
packages, so while development packages may contain a fix, often there's
enough other changes mixed in that backporting the package would result in
even more issues.

I believe that isolated bugfixes and non-security patches should be an area
that the -updates repository is responsible, not Backports. Not just the
ultra severe program-doesn't-work-at-all bugs, but the minor fixes also.
Take a look at an RHEL Update pack -- it's full of bugfixes and improvements
to existing packages. We need something like that. Forcing users to upgrade
to a newer version of Ubuntu every 6 months to get their bugfixes is not an
ideal option.


I'm not trying to shove the burden to someone else, I'm just saying that
-updates sounds more correct to me for this job than Backports. If that's
not possible, then sure, we can find a way for Backports to be able to
provide minor bugfixes.


> I am willing to illustrate further my points that I raised above with
> scenarios I have come across during the development of the new user
> environment.
>
> Looking forward to your reply,
>
>
> Naaman Campbell.
>
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