[ubuntu-studio-devel] How would it be if we had fewer releases? Say, only one per year?

[Jimmy Sjölund]

On Tue, Aug 26, 2014 at 6:31 PM, Kaj Ailomaa <zequence at mousike.me> wrote:

> I was thinking today about the possibility of not releasing a new ISO
> every 6 months, and instead focus more on the LTS releases. For example,
> we could release only once every year, or once every two years, even.
>
> But, what would this mean for Ubuntu Studio?
>
> * Users would still be able to upgrade to a newer release, just not be
> able to do a fresh install from ISO (since Ubuntu Studio is in fact just
> another flavor of Ubuntu)
> * We would still need to keep our packages up to date for every Ubuntu
> vanilla release (so, in fact, we don't actually save much work)
> * Instead of QA testing our ISO, we would need to QA test the upgrade -
> as that would be the primary way to get the most recent release. This
> could very well be more problematic than doing a fresh installation.
> * We could focus more on backporting packages to the LTS release, though
> this works best for packages that don't need the latest versions of its
> dependencies. The kernel will be backported from now on, so a LTS user
> will always have access to the latest kernel.
> * In the end, the change might be more psychological, telling the user
> to stick with their LTS releases.
>
> Any opinions?
>

It's not a straight forward decision, I think. The trouble is the small
size of the team and it makes sense then to focus on the LTS releases. Also
people want stability in their environment. The other side of the coin is
that some of the feedback I read about Ubuntu Studio is that it's never up
to speed with development, meaning having the latest (or nearly latest)
version of different applications.

For my own creations I'm happy with "old" versions and LTS since I already
have everything I want in the release and prefer a stable system rather
than the latest and the greatest with the risk of something breaking every
6/12 months.

I'm not sure how backporting works, but if that would mean the users would
have a LTS base and get newer applications I think that might be the best
way to go. Also with some documentation on how to preserve the "ordinary"
LTS versions if one doesn't want to upgrade applications.

In an ideal world we would do both. Backporting and have another version
every 6 months (or until Ubuntu changes the release schedule), but with the
size of the team and shortness of time already that's for the future.

/Jimmy
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