Let's Discuss Interim Releases (and a Rolling Release)

[Scott Kitterman]

On Thursday, February 28, 2013 12:07:02 PM Jeremy Bicha wrote:
> On 28 February 2013 16:31, Scott Kitterman <ubuntu at kitterman.com> wrote:
> > This may be true for Canonical and the Ubuntu desktop, but I strongly
> > believe it's not the case for Kubuntu.  For me, a Kubuntu release means
> > the most current KDE.  I generally run the latest regular release and I
> > think that most of our user base does too.
> > 
> > KDE releases on a regular 6 month cadence, just like Ubuntu has, so this
> > has worked very well.
> 
> On the other hand, Kubuntu makes the latest KDE available to the
> current stable release through their official PPAs. People that use
> that PPA already are effectively running a rolling Kubuntu release. If
> the rolling release happens then y'all won't need to maintain that PPA
> any more.

Not at all.

While those PPAs are very popular, they are popular because they are new KDE 
on a stable release.  We probably need more PPAs, not fewer.

For rolling to have consistent quality, that means no more KDE betas in 
rolling.  So new development work would all have to be done in a PPA.

We'd also need per KDE release PPAs for at least some transitional period for 
LTS + KDE version.

What that never gets us, however, is a release with the current KDE release 
more often than every two years.  That's a significant issue that I don't know 
how to solve without building ISOs from PPAs.

I expect we can manage, but it will almost certainly be more complex, not 
less, if we are to maintain Kubuntu in a manner that's recognizable.

Scott K