Avoiding fragmentation with a rolling release

[Dmitrijs Ledkovs]

On 28 February 2013 23:15, Mario Limonciello <superm1 at ubuntu.com> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Feb 28, 2013 at 5:07 PM, Loïc Minier <loic.minier at ubuntu.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, Feb 28, 2013, Alex Chiang wrote:
>> > If you want to avoid the daily grind, press the close button when
>> > update-manager fires. Or set the 'check for updates' frequency to
>> > monthly. I think the intended audience for monthly images could
>> > handle that workflow.
>> >
>> > If you want to avoid the extra bandwidth requirements for daily
>> > updates, I think the same solution applies. Or you use the
>> > update-manager GUI to select only the security updates and ignore
>> > the rest.
>>
>> I think this would be a valid solution; one thing to keep in mind with
>> this approach that security updates would be built based on some version
>> of the rolling release and so users of older versions of the packages
>> would be forced to update to anything pulled by these security updates.
>>
>
> What about a rolling static base instead?  Do a unionfs (or similar) on top
> of it.  Deliver an encompassing image from month to month.  Turn off apt as
> a mechanism to deliver updates.  But allow it to be turned back on.  Even if
> you don't install anything on top of it, then every month a new static base
> comes up and updates it.  If you decide to do daily updates on top, some of
> them might be in next month's new static base already, so that would need to
> be handled gracefully.
>
> Similar approaches are applied to Chrome OS and Android successfully.
>

This is a very good idea. We should definitely debate it next week. It
will also be interesting for devices. I personally prefer to flash a
new sd card for pandaboards / nexus7 then doing apt-based upgrades.

Regards,

Dmitrijs.