<OT> ubuntu bad press

[Graham Todd]

On Thu, 25 Aug 2011 16:43:35 -0400
Ric Moore <wayward4now at gmail.com> wrote:

> The fact remains that some people have up and left and told us about
> it. Ergo, some have up and left and said nothing. Then that article
> came out. It all is worth ~noting~, and it may be cause to reflect if
> we're doing the right thing by the average Joe Lunchbucket user, or
> the system Admin who wants to install Linux as the default for a
> small/large office setting. Are we there still? I see no crime in
> expecting packages to be upgraded to the latest STABLE version of an
> application, especially when they are as widely popular as Java and
> Firefox and possibly Libre Office, ...if that is stable yet. I don't
> think that is too much to expect from an LTS version. Again, just my
> two cents. Ric

As has been said, the latest versions go to the developers first so
that they can test them for stability.  I don't know the situation with
Ubuntu developers, but in general, developers in the open source
environment are volunteers and I would assume that with all the flack
flying about at the moment regarding the Ubiquity interface in the
latest version, it would have a higher priority than LTS upgrades.

I cannot be sure about this of course, but it seems to me to be logical
that when a perfectly able set of applications that are however LTS, do
not get automatically upgraded to the latest version or near-latest
version (perhaps as a result of the effect it might have on the
dependencies of other packages).

Again, as has been noted, perhaps Ubuntu is not the right distribution
for your purposes.  There are now some very decent Debian Live .iso
downloads you can get, test and then burn them to CD or DVD if they
are right for YOU, if you don't want to leave the apt tools formula that
Ubuntu uses.

Graham