Edgy down?

[David C. Uhrig]

On Wed, Jun 4, 2008 at 9:39 AM, Bart Silverstrim
<bsilver at chrononomicon.com> wrote:
> Derek Broughton wrote:
>
> I'm confused...if new becomes old, then old was once new, so how could
> old be stable while new isn't?
>
> I expect new to fix problems with older versions, hence be more stable.
> I expect all new features to cause problems. New versions with more new
> features increases problems, I expect. Expectation does not always equal
> reality.
>
> I fully expect that a good backup is better than holding one's breath
> and not upgrading at all. Especially since developers eventually focus
> on getting newer versions fixed more and older versions are not tested
> thoroughly anymore, so bugs fixed in 2.0 may still be in 1.0 on one
> shape or another.
>
> one philosophy, shared, passed on or not up to you.
>
> --
> ubuntu-users mailing list
> ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com
> Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-users
>

Hi Derek,

    That isn't _exactly_ how it works, though. Because Ubuntu is
Debian based, they don't put new minor changes in to old releases,
i.e. if 2.6.24.x is in 8.04, they won't be including 2.6.25.x or
beyond. Instead, they take the existing release as a snapshot and
introduce bugfixes or very minor changes, a la Firefox 2.0.0.12 to
2.0.0.13. This gives a baseline for both compatibility and reliability
to be build around and upon. Therefore, an older release, such as
6.10, can both be more stable _and_ outdated compared to a newer
release like 8.04.

    Other distributions take a much different approach to this and
issues updates to a new major/minor version for anything and
everything (Fedora, in particular, comes to mind). This isn't
necessarily a bad thing, but has its own pros/cons. You will always
have access to the latest and greatest releases, but at the same time
a certain amount of stability gets tossed out the window too. This
effect can also be reached in Ubuntu or any Debian distribution by
adding repositories to aptitude (such as backports) or downloading and
manually installing a newer version of a program.

-David C. Uhrig