Jaunty still in Beta?

[Thorny]

On Sun, 26 Apr 2009 02:50:40 -0400, H.S. posted:

[...]
> 
> Well, I have learned my lesson a while back. Using Unstable is not for
> the feint of heart. Using Testing, one needs to be careful. Regardless,
> one has to be always careful during upgraded, even in Ubuntu. Else, it
> is just like playing Russian roulette with one's system.
>

I agree.
 
>> number of people who use "testing" in their sources.lst instead of
>> codename and get a big shock right after release when migration starts
>> again.
> 
> Yes, that happens with many users. Primarily because they are not clear
> about what a release really means and how Testing differs from a named
> release. But users learn this quite fast after the lack of this
> knowledge bites them on their behinds :)
> 
 
I agree.

> 
>> And the change in the way the kernel enumerates drives and udev and
>> etc., etc.
>> 
>> 
> Yes, that happens. But to fair though, I experienced that in Hardy as
> well several months ago. Kernel upgrades created a problem with labels
> and uuids of disks. It was on our univ. network. I was quite surprised
> since it was on an LTS. And the other common problem is the change in
> naming of ethx devices by udev. This has confused many an admins when
> they loose network after a new kernel and/or udev upgrade I think.
> 
 
Well, it has to happen with Ubuntu as well as Debian, as changes migrate
down from upstream.

> Coming back to Ubuntu though (and on topic), going the update path is
> not everyone's cup of tea. I have a feeling Ubuntu does not really
> encourage that overtly. Take Nvidia driver for example. After the
> installation of the driver, the package manager always tells the user to
> reboot when a simple gdm restart suffices. I have taken this as Ubuntu
> devs taking the safest route assuming a very novice user. We can call
> this being conservative, erring towards side of extreme caution.
> Thinking in this manner, I wouldn't be surprised users are given big
> warning regarding upgrading from alphas to betas to rcs to stable
> releases ... just an attempt to keep things clean.

Yes, I agree that many of the Ubuntu methods are targeted at novice users
and rightly so, the nice thing is that more experienced users can have a
bit more fine-grained control outside of the click and run stuff. I think
most successful and competent sid users could run Ubuntu, however, I do
not think the reverse is necessarily true. Ubuntu fills a specific need
well and allows a great deal of choice.