Another end-user view of showstoppers etc

[Alex Cockell]

Hi Luke, and list...

On Thu, 2009-10-29 at 03:04 -0500, Luke L wrote:
> I suggested at least a year ago that modifications be made to the
> development and maintenance schedule for releases, such as 6 month
> lifetimes for non-LTS releases, and using LTS-1 releases as the base
> for LTS instead of syncing with Debian-Unstable. I do truly hope that
> the next 'new-feature-packed' Ubuntu release is Manic Manatee, as
> Lucid should be a stabilization period.

Sounds wise to me.  

> That said, LTS's do have two beta releases and fewer alphas, which
> mean longer freeze times and bug fixes instead of frantically
> uploading the latest daily tar.gz of any given piece of software. In
> theory.
> 
> Your point about SRU'ing hardware support to LTS is well taken by me,
> but I don't understand. Are you implying something is wrong with
> Karmic, or are you simply stating your dissatisfaction with hardware
> support in Hardy?

Not my issue personally, but one thing my vendor mentioned.  One of the
guys at LE mentioned that laptop hardware changes so quickly that
sometimes older versions can't be booted on them... while buying turnkey
kit allows for the more recent versions to be rolled out - it can mean
that people who don't buy when an LTS is rolled can be left with shorter
periods before the support finishes.

Also - thinking of one of the other responses... I'm an end-user, so
would be rather worried about switching on Backports.  What I meant by
full support is similar to what was done with the Intel display driver
around 8.04.2, where the newer driver was released to everyone after
EXTREMELY thorough testing.

As an end-user, I have -security and -updates enabled, and would not
want ot go anywhere near -proposed or -backports - I'm not a tester.  I
rely on Release Management to do that for me...

Just MHO...

As long as the next LTS is nice and bulletproof and doesn't have nasty
regressions...

Thanks for all you're doing..

-- 

Alex Cockell
Reading, Berks, UK
alcockell at eclipse.co.uk