Distro release question?

For all you Linux vets. Is there a reason why most developers chose a 6 month release path for most of their releases?

OpenSUSE does it every 8 months, Canonical and others based on Ubuntu chose every 6 months and then you have a rolling or LTR. Wouldn't the devs be better served by NOT spreading themselves thin and drop the 6-8 month release schedule and just do a rolling release instead?

Just asking from a different POV. The Mint team has 4 or 5 different releases and if i'm not mistaken the teams are spread out amongst all of those distros. As nice as Mint is, at face value the differences between version 9, 10, 11 are small and could be rolled out via updates.

 

Well I havent been with debian very long, but I have been on a debian based system (ubuntu) for a long while and for the longest time they offer new releases as a update. For instance I upgraded to 11.04 from 10.10 through update manager and all I had to do was restart and I was on 11.04. Thank God cause if I had to reformat/install from scratch 11.04 I would have been even more upset.

 

Well IMO Canonical's doing a lot less work than OpenSUSE is, since OpenSUSE is kinda its own code base at this point while Ubuntu is still very much based on Debian.

As far as why not rolling-release? 'cause it sucks. It's good for getting the latest and greatest software, but as far as developing a consistent release, a stable release, or a release with a coherent design it absolutely sucks.

Now that may be OK for distros that prioritize new-ness over everything else. Arch, for example, is a great way to keep running the latest code. But for distros that want to produce the most stable, bug-free release they can -- distros like Debian -- a rolling release is not an option.

 

I think that what you describe is true for many, if not most, rolling releases. However, rolling-release is not synonymous with bleeding edge. The devs for a rolling release can roll out updates that are tested and stable. This is one of many aspects of PCLOS that I like: it is both a rolling release and stable. In fact, at times I think it is boringly stable.

 

They both have their ups and downs, nothing sucks more than having to wipe your install and start over because there are too many changes to do a direct/rolling upgrade.

I think they moved to a 6mo release cycle because that is about the rate that new hardware gets released, and rather than push out small updates they just roll the changes into a newer kernel that has been tested to not conflict with anything?

 

Yeah, OpenSUSE branched off Slackware in the 90's. I think 6 months is way too fast. 8 months to a year seems more reasonable. I went the stable router to SL which will be supported for 5 years. So, at least we have a lot to choose from

 

Fair point. It's not impossible to make a stable rolling release distro, but I would say that it's quite a bit harder than a fixed-release distro. I haven't used PCLinuxOS, but my experiences with Arch certainly haven't reassured me...

 

In my experience, Arch is pretty stable as long as you don't use stuff like the testing repository, or replace system packages with packages from the AUR.

But a rolling release distro needs that the user reads information about the updates, i.e. updates are not something "set and forget".

 

I'm afraid it has nothing to do with hardware. Main Gnome-centric distros like Fedora and Ubuntu (and subsequently most derivatives) have a 6 months release cycle for the simple reason they sync-ed with upstream Gnome release cycle.

 

You're slipping hakira, this newbie has you beat. He is correct. This cycle is also linked with the the X.org and KDE release cycle. There may be a few other big packages that link with this cycle that I am forgetting.

As for it's origin, I don't know exactly but I have a feeling it started with Debian not releasing new versions on time so most of the big packages decided to stick out their tongue at Debian.

 

Uh... define "on time". Debian didn't really do a time-based release cycle -- they went with more of a "when it's ready" approach.

 

It's exactly that. "On time". They (the ones who made the current schedule) weren't happy with release when ready, they wanted more frequent releases based on time, not maturity or stability.

 

I'm not sure I'm getting what you mean.

Debian only recently switched to a time-based release model -- up until Wheezy there was no such thing as an "on time" Debian release or a "late" Debian release because there was no defined timeline.

 

I'm talking about how people who push(ed) for a speedier cycle think. Maybe it's a bit confusing.

 

There have never been serious discussions about "on time" Debian release dates. All the discussions were about "on time" freeze dates. That's an important difference.

 

Yeah, that's why I'm a bit puzzled by the whole thing. I mean... I know that there have been disputes about when to freeze -- but as far as I know the releases have *always* been driven by bug counts rather than time.

 

That's what I meant. Now I see how you got confused.

 

Righto. I was sitting here re-reading that and thinking "Wait, since when has the Debian community cared about timing? Did I miss a good flamewar?"