Ubuntu upgrades

[Nils Kassube]

Sajan Parikh wrote:
> On 09/26/2014 09:27 PM, Chris wrote:
> > Thanks, so which is the better option:
> > 
> > 1. Stay with the 14.04 LTS
> > 2. Upgrade to 14.10 when released

> On the other hand, a non LTS release gets you later versions of
> things, but the operating system as a whole isn't supported for more
> than 6 months.  Meaning, by installing 14.10, I'll have access to the
> later version of PHP (5.5), but in 6 months, the system will update
> it to 5.6 potentially breaking my application.

AFAIR the non-LTS versions are supported 9 months, but of course that is 
only a minor detail. Anyway, the result is the same. If you want to run 
a supported system, you have to upgrade to the next non-LTS version once 
it is released and there is only a short time frame where upgrades are 
easy.

> For desktop users, at this point, there is almost zero conceivable
> reason not to upgrade to the new releases.  If you want, you can wait
> until 14.10.1 for some early adopter bugs to be fixed. However, for
> the MOST part, I don't think anyone really gains anything by sticking
> with an LTS version for desktop.  Unless you've completely gone into
> /etc and customized every bit of your system.

Well, I am a desktop user but I prefer to use LTS versions. I don't 
really need the very latest version of every application with all the 
new shiny features (for which I may not have a use case) and with all 
the hard to find feature changes of features I do want to use. 
Especially I don't like to find problems with the new version of a 
program when I need it urgently. So if I upgrade to a new release, I do 
it when I have enough time to check all of the applications I use 
frequently for changed / missing / faulty features. As I try to use only 
LTS versions, I have to do that only every two years and not twice a 
year which is a big difference.


Nils