The problem ubuntu/canonical needs to address

Sat Jun 4 06:53:38 UTC 2011

I was talking about a seamless upgrade process which dabian has. Most of the times you cant upgrade ubuntu without breaking something along the way. I always had issues. Yes those issues can be solved. Most of the issues solve themselves in next update/patches. But this is ok when i'm using it at home, not ok for a production environment. The reason behind this breaking random stuff is related to the too much tweaking of the basic stack. Where as distros like debian/centos plays conservative, ubuntu plays more like fedora. But the design choices of fedora are fundamentally different from ubuntu (Freedom,First Vs Linux for human beings :)). To achieve a business adoption i guess ubuntu should follow a more conservative path in turms of adoption of new technology.

From: afrowildo at gmail.com
Date: Sat, 4 Jun 2011 00:29:11 +0100
Subject: Re: The problem ubuntu/canonical needs to address
To: ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com

It's already possible to upgrade from one LTS to another via the Update Manager. When you're running an LTS release and another such release become available, you'll see the option to upgrade to the new LTS in the update manager, alongside the upgrade option for whatever system is next in line.

On 3 June 2011 23:22, arif tuhin <etothepowerpi at hotmail.com> wrote:

(Originally posted in https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/ubuntu-user-community)
Seeing the feature list coming in 11.10, I have to admit that i'm far from impressed.

Let me elaborate.
My
 company produces Ip telephony related infrastructure solutions. Some 
components of my company's stack  is based on open source products like 
kamailio, rtpproxy, opensips, asteriks. Many closed source solutions are
 also produced like billing solutions, CDR etc. But all of them are 
tuned and meant for Linux systems. All of our production servers run on 
RED HAT. All of our development servers run on CENTOS/Ubuntu 
Server/Debian Server. My office laptop is a windows xp system. My 
development process is using Putty and Eclipse Remote C/C++ development 
plugin. We dont complain to our IT managers. because we do see the 
point. All the sales/marketing/executives cant move a mussle without 
Outlook express, exchange server, Share Point etc. and we have to use 
that too.  I know it is possible to achieve everything using linux 
systems. But A big company does not change their infrastructure that 
often(Still there is no  pushing to windows seven). And our server side 
system admins do not give a damn about those Microsoft servers. They 
maintain the Linux systems  and thats it.We the the developers may be 
interested check new stuffs and break the system(I have broken systems 
several times for loading broken kernel modules). But the laptop infront
 of my manager or the office colaboration stack cant just change over 
night. Thats the exact reason why IBM legacy systems still running in 
production environment, and my buddies in india are learning COBOL in 
IBM india :). 

The basic principles of a desktop has not changed 
for windows or mac. i had a chance to look at vintage mac os and it just
 looked a stripped down version of modern macs but i immediately 
understood which button does what. Same goes to windows. Microsoft 
produced more flashier, sexy but the same core principles. start menu, 
right click....they have added incremental change to their already 
established stack. if you look at Red hat 5/CentOs you will see a mature
 business grade Operating system. you  should make it more modern but 
dare not change everything around so that people can not associate the 
new version with old one like you can associate windows 7 with windows 
95.

I know open source is different ballgame, being a open source
 developer i think there several misconceptions running around. Open 
Source is a development model. Not a Marketing model. Like closed source
 also a development model. But marketing the product is whole new 
different thing. Microsoft succeded , DEC sunk, sun also sunk not 
because of their development model. But because of their marketing 
practices. Red hat is good because they understood the marketing more 
than mandriva or xandros. their stack is rock solid. they are stable, 
supported for a long time. Thats what you need for business 
infrastructure. Its not windows itself but the associated stack creates 
the inertia preventing the switch. 

I consider Ubuntu is a 
different beast than fedora or debian. Those are community project only.
 Fedora is a test bed. So the number of fedora boxes got deployed in 
production is irrelevent. The same goes for debian and other community 
based distros. They are concerned with making a better software stack, 
not concerned with how much they are going to be adopted in production. 
And that is more than ok for a open distrubuted development process. But
 if talk about "product", then the story is different. You have to think
 about how the product can be adopted. building a super sexy kernel is 
not enough for a "product". Nor does having the best cross compiler 
around or the fastest compiler around(llvm) matters for product if the 
product is not adopted in business. 
Yes apple took a different 
strategy to attack the home user first. Its ok when you are closest 
company ever and "your stack is only supported on the hardware you 
provide" model. but this is not possible for a open source company. Yes 
apple is breaking all the rules about portability by trying to make 
their stack most attached with hardware. Do you think a open source 
company can take such dictator like marketing philosophy(i wonder what 
happened to consumer protection laws? apples EULA seem to violate them).

I'm
 a very optimistic about ubuntu only because its backed by a commercial 
company. Because they are trying to make a business out of this. If it 
were another debian based downstream i would not have been this 
optimistic. Because Community projects are essential for the open source
 ecosystem and their evolution but its the business product that will 
push a supirior technology into mainstream. No one wants super 
computer/HPC in their home or their office desks. At your data centre 
you might be running IBM/360. but you have to push for the laptop 
sitting on everyone's desk. 

The things i want from ubuntu, is 
please slow down the release cycle. a production environment can not 
upgrade in every 6 months. And also fix the online upgrade. i've been 
using ubuntu from 7.04. but never had a upgrade without issues. Debian 
has the most impressive online upgrade process. I have old box which was
 originally running on debian 4.0. Its running squeeze now. never had a 
upgrade problem. i use this box as home router/firewall/print server. 
and debian 6.0 has a memory footprint of 190 MB. I dont know aside from 
RED Hat and downstream , which other full blown gnome distro has this 
kind of memory footprint. Also if ubuntu sticks with LTS model, then 
provide a safe way to upgrade from LTS to another LTS. And find a 
suitable stable functional desktop, Add things incrementally over this. 
It dont have to be gnome, kde. Even you have to detouch from upstream do
 it. Its very important.
I love ubuntu and i really want another successful commercial linux stack.

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