[ubuntu-za] People sticking to LTS?

[Lee Sharp]

On 08/09/2013 08:23 AM, Peter Nel wrote:
> I was just wondering why people think that LTS releases are better than
> regular releases.

As someone who just recently started to migrate off 10.04, let me 
address that...

1) Kernal - What do you need in 3.8 that is not in 2.6?  Seriously... 
What does not run that you need?  (Actually, I do have an answer for 
3.2, and a good reason to upgrade off of 2.6 and that is TRIM.)  The 
point is that having the latest number is not a reason for a lot of 
work. (and bug fixes are backported)

2) UI changes - Yes, thus is a Unity hating post.  Fact is that Unity 
gets in the way of how I work.  There were lots of "fixes" for this, but 
it took a while for them to shake out and get stable.  The answer 
eventually became a more stable Gnome Panel, that now has a maintainer 
going forward.  It just was decided to not be dropped in the last few 
weeks...

3) Compatibility - Every major version change, there are regressions. 
Sometimes major ones.  Mostly they are worked out in 3 to 6 months, but 
not always.  (As the 6 months version expire...)  However, in the LTS, 
if they are not worked out in main, there WILL be a PPA.  Generally 6 
months after release, you have a very stable system, and the upgrade 
flood of packages slows to a trickle.

4) Consistency - There is something to be said for all of your systems 
running the same version.  If that is 2 machines, change is easy.  If it 
is 20, it is a lot harder, especially if some are servers.  Yes, you can 
run servers on an LTS and your desktop on something else, but it sure is 
nice having a local sandbox for your server...

5) Lack of change - This is a tough one...  A lot of people respond to 
this with "Well you are afraid of change" but that is missing the point. 
  Change is a cost.  Menus move, features change, and compatibility 
changes.  Software packages are even dropped, and default packages are 
different.  That has a learning curve.  It may be small, or it may be 
large, but there is some time that must be spent getting to know the new 
system.  And for what?  Change for a purpose is good. (Like adding TRIM 
to the 3.x kernels) Change for the latest shiny is a wast of my time.

			Lee