[ubuntu-uk] fit for the purpose

[Tony Travis]

Chris Jones wrote:
> Hi
> 
> Tony Travis wrote:
>> Believe me, Debian/Ubuntu is much, much easier to upgrade!
> 
> That doesn't excuse regressions. I'm sure the QA team would love more
> help in reporting, tracking and solving them :)
> 
> I would have to agree with norman though - FOSS brings people a lot of
> advantages and features they can't get elsewhere, but selling it as a
> utopia is doing potential users a dis-service. If they know that it's a
> perpetual work-in-progress by a community and that they can be part of
> that community, they will likely be more forgiving of the flaws than if
> they are rudely shocked by some failure or other and feel isolated by it.

Hello, Chris.

We need to be clear what we mean by an upgrade, which involves changing 
from one realease of an OS to another (e.g. Dapper -> Feisty, or Win98 
to WinXP). My own strategy is to continue using Dapper 6.06.1 LTS, but 
keep it up-to-date. This does NOT involve upgrading to another version 
of the OS. It only involves updating packages in 6.06.1 LTS as security 
patches and bug-fixes are released. This is analogous to Windows update.

Ubuntu offers users OS stability in the LTS releases, which I think is 
important. However, the 'backports' repository also means you can have 
the latest software under LTS if you want it. I would not recommend the 
latest release of Ubuntu to inexperienced users unless they have help 
available from colleagues or friends who do know about Linux, and they 
want to learn about Linux.

This is not in any way to criticise people who do use the latest release 
because they are actually testing and debugging the next LTS release :-)

Best wishes,

	Tony.
-- 
Dr. A.J.Travis,                     |  mailto:ajt at rri.sari.ac.uk
Rowett Research Institute,          |    http://www.rri.sari.ac.uk/~ajt
Greenburn Road, Bucksburn,          |   phone:+44 (0)1224 712751
Aberdeen AB21 9SB, Scotland, UK.    |     fax:+44 (0)1224 716687