About ubuntu server packages

[Ante Karamatic']

Jim Tarvid wrote:

> If everything is backported as it evolves, it is more like a perpetual beta instead of long term support.

> I moved two servers from Edgy back to Dapper LTS based on the "promise" of
> LTS. What I got was security patches backported to an intermediate version
> of PHP. That makes sense as some sort of compromise of syntax and security.
> As with all compromises, the result was not totally pleasing to either
> point of view.

> PHP and MySQL are my "bread and butter"  and we have an organizational
> commitment to run the latest versions of both if at all possible. I
> acknowledge this is a thinly veiled manifestation of "bleeding edge
> disease". Most of our servers are now running Feisty and all will
> migrate to
> Gutsy. If I had non Internet facing servers Dapper LTS would make some
> sense.

You have some contradictions. You correctly say that if everything would
be backported, we would get beta, not LTS. For an example, that would be
Fedora - always gets newer versions of packages - always beta. On the
other hand RHEL does the same thing as Ubuntu LTS - RHEL 4. still has
2.6.9 kernel; yes, a mighty one, but still 2.6.9.

Then you say you wouldn't put LTS on Internet, but I guess you do that
with Feisty, right?

Perfect deployment goes something like this - developers create
php/mysql appplication; system admins choose platform for it based on
requirements of application. During lifetime of that application neither
the devs and neither the sysadmins want/dream about version change of
any component of the system. This is why you need 5 year support. In
stable environment there's no room for new features, new drivers, etc...
You want and get only security fixes.

If you are developer, you should rethink 'bleeding edge' tactic. It's
suicidal if you can't get a stable platform for your application. I
understand that latest and newest looks good and has options old one
doesn't, but this is something that'll always happen and as soon as you
finish your app, it wouldn't look good cause there was newer PHP version
with some features your application doesn't utilize.