[ubuntu-x] plans for Lucid?

[Timo Aaltonen]

On Wed, 18 Nov 2009, Bryce Harrington wrote:

> As I see it, there are 3 choices with the following trade-offs:

<snip>

> There are a few factors which play into the decision:
>
> 1.  Lucid is LTS, so by default we would prefer a known-stable release
> already in hand, unless a newer version looks like it will be supported
> in debian or upstream for a longer period.
>
> 2.  What goes into Debian Testing.  (1.7 so far presumably.)
>
> 3.  For boot speed improvement it is desired to drop HAL.  We need HAL
> for tablet support, so to avoid regression we need a udev-enabled wacom
> driver.  xf86-input-wacom 1.x with udev will be supported only on 1.7
> and newer, thus ruling out 1.6.
>
> 4.  We plan to place a focus on proprietary driver support improvement
> this release.  Thus it would be beneficial to have -nvidia and -fglrx
> functional as much as possible during the release, rather than block
> waiting on rebuilds by the vendors.  This would suggest preferring 1.7
> or earlier.
>
> A couple caveats to #4: The drivers may end up blocking anyway due to
> kernel version change.  An approach which has us on 1.7 (not a git
> snapshot) up until when 1.8 is available, would provide a period where
> the proprietary drivers work, for us to do packaging/testing.
>
> Given all the above I'm leaning more towards xserver 1.7.  I know a lot
> of new features are planned for 1.8, but don't know yet that those
> features are absolutely required in Ubuntu.

Good points, and I forgot that RHEL6 should be based on F12 which has 1.7, 
so it will likely get a few point releases and a lot of testing. We'd 
need to patch libudev support though, and possibly the vga-arb stuff 
unless it's in 1.7.. can't remember nor check.

>> drivers:
>>
>> - intel 2010Q1 release (might need mesa 7.8 and perhaps kernel 2.6.33?) -
>
> Sounds like the kernel will be 2.6.32.  Perhaps we should look to what
> is released for 2009Q4?  jbarnes - advice?

right, I forgot there was one release left for this year ;)

>> - xf86-input-wacom 1.x (new clean release with support for properties etc)
>
> As mentioned above, for this we'll want 1.7 or newer to get the udev
> support here so hal can be dropped.

yep

>> kernel:
>>
>> generally, we want the latest and the greatest.. AIUI it's not yet decided
>> if it's going to be 2.6.32 or .33.
>
> I think latest and greatest is good for normal releases, but since this
> is LTS I would really prefer something known to be stable and safe.

Sure, and as it seems that (again) Debian and RHEL6 are going to use .32, 
it'll likely get several point releases and plenty of testing. There's 
still going to be at least some backporting to do, but that's business as 
usual.


-- 
Timo Aaltonen
Systems Specialist
IT Services, Helsinki University of Technology