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

[Benjamin Roe]

On Wed, 2004-11-10 at 15:34 +1100, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> On Tue, 2004-11-09 at 23:19 -0500, Tim Hull wrote:
> > I was not suggesting a supported archive for software updates, I was
> > suggesting an unsupported archive along the lines of
> > universe/multiverse that instead contains updates compatible with the
> > stable release of Ubuntu.

Somebody could always package up major software releases and host an
unofficial ubuntu repository somewhere, I suppose. I don't think adding
yet more to the workload of the Ubuntu developers is a good idea really.

>From my point of view, the major updates I needed/wanted were firefox
1.0 and openoffice 1.1.3, which are self-contained pieces of software
I'm quite happy to download and install myself.

It is a difficult tradeoff, however. If you track new releases, you end
up with a distro like Arch, with daily package breakage. However, the
versions of software in Warty have *many* bugs that are fixed in more
recent versions. Firefox 0.9.3 is much buggier than 1.0; Openoffice
1.1.2 has some obvious bugs which are fixed in 1.1.3; even sound-juicer
has annoying bugs. So Ubuntu, by remaining "stable" actually ends up
more buggy than it could be.

Ben