Suggestion for new repository of software - new versions, of software in between Ubuntu releases

[Jeff Waugh]

On Wed, 2004-11-10 at 09:50 +0000, Chris Jones wrote:
> Hi
> 
> On Wed, November 10, 2004 4:34, Jeff Waugh said:
> > Who would trust a stable release that keeps changing on them, with new
> 
> That ought to be true, but Gentoo and the usage of sid by people other
> than debian developers suggest otherwise.

That's a very, very, very limited audience, however. It might seem like
a big audience on mailing lists and techie websites, but it's not the
case out there in the real world.

> My experience of ISVs is that they won't really bother tracking the
> updates of a frozen-almost-solid stable release (especially the ones that
> release binary kernel modules). Meanwhile users get frustrated because
> they can't run the latest stuff anymore, or have to hack on great piles of
> stuff just to keep vaguely current (I'm pointing at the huge mess that is
> the third party fedora repositories).

There is a big difference between the type of user who gets frustrated
by not having the latest stuff, and the type of user who is only
interested in having a supported, secure, working system they can choose
to upgrade if they wish.

> A vastly more unified packaging system across all distros and everything
> being more mature so API/ABI changes are rarer (for the few things that
> wouldn't just be autobuilt up to the latest version) would allow a
> "rolling stable" distro, imo.

> For one final and even more tenuous imo, said rolling stable will be
> extremely popular.

But then, it wouldn't be stable or supportable. Remember, 'stable' does
not mean 'robust', it means 'unchanging'.

- Jeff

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