7 ms·

Ubuntu Rolling Release Proposal

159 points by hotice 14y ago

themstheones 14y ago
No one has ever tried this with an OS before.
- schabernakk 14y ago
  What do you mean? Arch and Gentoo are two pretty successful distributions and both use a rolling release approach.
  - wcchandler 14y ago
    Sarcasm doesn't translate very well over the Internet.
- autarch 14y ago
  Debian testing and unstable.
zalew 14y ago
considering the tipping point of me leaving buntu was being tired of the upbreak release process, I second this idea. they are basically adopting the debian scheme, only the stable releases will be more frequent.
- qznc 14y ago
  Debian also has a roughly 2 year release frequency. 2005, 2007, 2009, 2011. Stable is already frozen so 2013 is likely.
- csense 14y ago
  I thought Ubuntu's original reason for existing was because Debian releases don't happen often enough?
  - zanny 14y ago
    It existed because testing wasn't stable enough and stable wasn't fast enough. The 2 year LTS releases are basically just the slow stable thing carried over, but having 2 layers of rolling release (like Arch) where you have a base repo and a testing repo lets them having the rolling release without all the continuous integration problems if it hits enough testing users first.
andyl 14y ago
This seems like a reasonable proposal to me. I've starting using the LTS releases exclusively for my desktop and server systems. I'm planning to use the Ubuntu phone heavily, and would love that device to be on a rolling-release schedule.
olenhad 14y ago
Yes Please! I'm sick of PPA-ing for updated packages.
- homeomorphic 14y ago
  Really? I've always felt that they give me the perfect balance: the distro itself is non-rolling, so breakages (possibly) happen at known intervals, yet PPAs let me "go rolling" for a subset of packages where I want the latest and am prepared to handle breakage at any time.
  - sp332 14y ago
    PPAs should be for cutting-edge stuff, not stuff that was stable 4 months ago and hasn't been updated in "main" yet.
    - homeomorphic 14y ago
      But "stuff that was stable 4 months ago" is not a trivial case either. Suppose A version 1.1 was stable 4 months ago, but that the version of B that works with A 1.1 is horribly buggy still, and the stable version of B needs A 1.0. Do we upgrade A? I can imagine this becoming very tough to mange with 20k-30k packages. I hope Canonical can deal, but I do fear that the users will suffer.
      - sp332 14y ago
        If it's a library, it should be trivial to have the latest A 1.1 installed alongside older A 1.0 and stable B.
        homeomorphic 14y ago
        With potentially hundreds of different packages playing the role of B, this could eat up a lot of manpower. What if the breakage is subtle and not well known upstream? While it could work, it sounds like something that would take a lot of QA work by Canonical.
mattlong 14y ago
I wonder how much this proposal is driven by Ubuntu's push into the mobile space versus improving the Ubuntu project at large. Clearly it's possible rolling releases would aid both. I guess what I'm really asking is what are the possible negative implications of the plan for the more "traditional" Ubuntu users? Many of whom are likely sysadmins trying to maintain consistent package versions across their infrastructure. Sticking to the LTS versions is the first step. But then you would be delaying access to newer package versions without the interim releases.
mhw 14y ago
I think that's a very well reasoned proposal and I'd be very happy to see it implemented. I might be unusual, but I find myself in both of the user groups that the proposal identifies. For my 'utility' machines (home server, XBMC host, web servers) I prefer the stability of the LTS series, but for my laptop I'm happy to trade that stability for getting new stuff sooner, particularly new usability features that are getting baked into Unity and other components. One minor nit: in the section on benefits for Core/MOTU developers it suggests that only 2 releases would need to be supported. I think in reality that would actually be 4 releases, as with a 5 year support commitment for each LTS release there could be up to 3 LTS releases that are still being supported at any point in time. May be just a minor wording thing though - I'm sure the author knows what he's talking about.
- icebraining 14y ago
  Your use case is exactly what many of us Debian users have been doing for a long time. I use Unstable on my laptop and Stable (+ backports) on my VPS for those exact reasons.
  - takluyver 14y ago
    Technically, Debian unstable is close to what I want, but I don't want to be using something that comes with 'at your own risk' warnings day to day. I think the expectation is the important thing: if an update breaks something, the response I want to see is 'sorry, we'll fix that ASAP and try to avoid doing it again'. I get the impression that Debian unstable (and to a lesser extent testing) is only intended for people who're willing to put up with things breaking often.
    - icebraining 14y ago
      Well, yes, it comes with absolutely no guarantees. That said, many Debian developers use it, and breakages have been rare at least for the last few years, since I started using it.
ohazi 14y ago
I definitely support this. Having a rolling release was the primary reason why I decided to go with debian (unstable) vs (x)ubuntu a few weeks ago. My previous install (oneiric; non-LTS) was about to become unsupported, and the last time I decided to ignore the official support status (years ago... I think it was dapper?), the main repository upped and vanished one day. That was not a fun morning.
- IgorPartola 14y ago
  The problem is that Debian can be faster or slower whilst Ubuntu LTS releases are on a schedule. For example I believe the currently stable Debian release includes Python 2.6 because 2.7 just missed it. I prefer Ubuntu's LTS releases to Debian because they are predictable.
  - ohazi 14y ago
    Yes, I agree that ubuntu's time based releases are generally a better experience that debian's "whenever it's ready" stable releases. Debian's testing and unstable branches are rolling releases though, and those were the only alternatives I was actually considering.
    - gtaylor 14y ago
      Although, I'm not sure we can even look at the Debian when trying to predict what a rolling release Ubuntu would look like (even considering that they are "relatives"). The current difference in manpower and mind share is pretty big between these two related distros. Regardless of which one each of us may like better, Canonical has the manpower and mindshare to probably have a bit more success with this model. I really like Debian, so this is not a knock on them (I used Debian on servers for a very long time with great results). Heck, we may even see Debian and Ubuntu working more closely once they take on this shared dev style (I know, I am pipedreaming, but hey...).
      - IgorPartola 14y ago
        I was under the impression that the Debian team is much larger than Cannonical. This is why they have always said that they could not do what they do without Debian. The biggest problem with a rolling release is that you constantly have to reboot the server to apply kernel upgrades, which you have to do less with LTS (though the first 6 months after the release it feels like a weekly chore).
mtgx 14y ago
Canonical should just wait until the 64 bit of 14.04 LTS for ARM is ready before they put it on mobile. Should greatly simplify their lives when it comes to upgrading later.
homeomorphic 14y ago
I'm sure the decision wasn't taken lightly, and I'm sure Canonical has concluded that an 18 month LTS + rolling makes the most sense for the project. As a user, I am a bit worried about rolling releases though. Maybe someone here can alleviate my worries? As I see it, software has to change. The question for distros is just when? A rolling distro sees such changes continuously, and each package may in principle change at any point independently of any other package. Doesn't that mean that at any point, my workflow-critical programs may change their behavior or even stop working together? Sure, I can do upgrades more seldomly, but then I'm left without security updates. The main benefit I feel that non-rolling distros offer is predefined breakage points. I know that Ubuntu Quantal will work the way it works now until I upgrade to the next release. Even simply knowing in what way software is (and will remain) broken is useful. Now of course, one can stay with LTS and get the same behavior. I guess I'm simply complaining because the 6 month cycle was perfect for me. At any rate, I would guess that most users only really desire rolling behavior for a few (dozens?) of packages. Ubuntu has that nicely covered with PPAs (and also "special status" rolling packages like Firefox).
- jcastro 14y ago
  > The question for distros is just when? A rolling distro sees such changes continuously, and each package may in principle change at any point independently of any other package. The way it's set up now is there is a -proposed pocket where major transitions are being held, so the old notion of having a library upgrade breaking $foo applications doesn't really happen anymore. From my view, I've been running 13.04 everyday and about half way through the development cycle it was better than 12.10. EDIT: There is also a ton of active QA happening in Ubuntu now, we have nice things we never had before like daily builds firing off and having tests run, prerelease pocket test, and (soonish) phased updates. As far as what you're going to do when your user apps upgrade, you've been doing it on Firefox/Chrome/your phone for ages now, it's about time our desktops caught up!
- dizzystar 14y ago
  >>> As a user, I am a bit worried about rolling releases though. Maybe someone here can alleviate my worries? As an Arch Linux user, I've had no problems with rolling releases. I know that's not much to go on, but I think with a large known company running the show, there is going to be some responsibility here. Hopefully others can chime in.
jjcm 14y ago
I'll miss the bi-yearly fun with trying out a new release, and the name alliteration, but I think overall it's a smart move for Ubuntu. Does anyone have any reasons why they shouldn't move toward this? I'm curious.
- gtaylor 14y ago
  A lot of the counter argument is based on FUD and bad experiences with OTHER rolling release distros. I'm not sure we can look at Gentoo or Arch as examples of what Ubuntu would be aiming to do (and I say this as an Arch user). Within the proposal, it states that packages would be released when ready, and when stable. This doesn't mean that you are going to live on the bleeding edge like an Arch or Gentoo user may. You're going to get the updates after Ubuntu has done QA on them, and the maintainer will probably be peeking at bug trackers on other distros for tips on issues (Arch and Gentoo effectively expand their QA process). It is true that there will probably be periodic UI changes in some of the applications. It is not necessarily true that these changes will happen any more frequently than they do now (since each application has different life cycles). What will happen is you will potentially not need to wait 6+ months to get a new version of a package with a fix or improvement that is important to you. If it lets them spend more time on QA and development rather than arbitrary deadlines and bundling, this sounds like a win-win to me. If and when problems happen, they'll get it figured out and hopefully not repeat their mistakes.
  - yogo 14y ago
    I don't think it's so much on the bleeding edge in Arch as most people think and packages are usually upgraded in such a way so that dependencies don't cause problems in other packages (at least from my experience). The key has always been to always do a system upgrade and not upgrade individual packages, i.e. always run pacman -Syu or pacman -Syu <packagename>. In four years I've never seen anything break (knock on wood) aside from a minor issue with a pcre upgrade sometime ago. That has just been my experience though, I run Arch on my desktop, laptop and about 10 vps servers.
    - gtaylor 14y ago
stormbrew 14y ago
I'd like to see them balance out dropping the interim releases with doing slightly more frequent LTE releases. Maybe every 1 or 1.5 years instead of 2. But obviously there might be manpower issues there. I just think they're abandoning a middle ground of stability that's still a very valuable space.
smogzer 14y ago
I can't use Ubuntu, I've tried countless times, the experience sucks. I'm trying mint, and i can't even access latest libraries, everything is old, no partition resizing during installation, lack of distro tools and lack of polish; in mageia everything is fresh and if it not the free support quickly updates them. Mandriva had rolling releases with cooker and mageia has also with cauldron. Sorry for looking like a troll but i never got the hype with this ubuntu distro, i wish HN supported mageia more since distrowatch even reports mageia as the number two more popular distro.
- vacri 14y ago
  If you need the bleeding edge of a package, install that package from a pinned archive (or similar). If you need the bleeding edge of everything, I don't believe you. If you just want the bleeding edge because 'hey, it feels cool', then you're not the target demographic for ubuntu - something they stated from the outset.
Nux 14y ago
This could work, rolling-release + LTS. Archlinux seems to be doing quite well under the rolling-release auspice, so why not. Of course, never in my experience has rolling-release ever worked in anything close to production environments - it's what killed FreeBSD in the data centre, however, if you're a techie with some time on your hands it could be cool.
- lorenzfx 14y ago
  totally dead https://signup.netflix.com/openconnect/software https://signup.netflix.com/openconnect/software
  - Nux 14y ago
    Not totally dead, it still has some strongholds left, but I'm sure Netflix doesn't use the rolling-release side of it (ports mainly). :-)
loudmax 14y ago
I suppose derivative distros like Xubuntu and Edubuntu will need to follow suit. I've had pretty bad experiences with non-LTS versions of Xubuntu. The last time I had a go on it on my laptop, things broke unpredictably, a little at a time. When I say unpredictably, I mean totally by surprise, not even after performing an update. First, Pulse audio stopped working. Spent a few days trying to fix it, then gave up and reverted to Alsa. Then the graphical login got stuck in an endless loop cycle. So reverted to text login, starting X manually after I'd log in. When wireless stopped working, I gave up. I run the LTS Xubuntu on two other machines and neither of them have had problems like this. I put my laptop on the LTS Xubuntu and it's been good since. I'm guessing mainstream Ubuntu gets more QA and is more stable than Xubuntu. It might be harder for derivative distros to keep up with a rolling release. Or maybe not... this might give them more flexibility to QA stuff as needed instead of trying to keep up with a new release every six months. As long as Cannonical keeps the LTS cycle going, moving to a rolling release sounds reasonable.
- bad_user 14y ago
  One thing to keep in mind is that you're going to have far fewer problems with compatible hardware. On my older laptop things were breaking on each upgrade. Most problems I had were with the Geforce graphics card included, but wireless stopped working at some point in combination with the router that I have at home (kept working with other routers just fine, so I guess it was a protocol issue). Anyway, it required constant tinkering. So first of all, on that laptop I gave up on Nvidia's proprietary drivers and went with Nouveau, which for my needs works well. 90% of all problems I ever had were linked to these proprietary Nvidia drivers. Don't know how well Nouveau works with newer Geforce cards, but you should give it a try. I also have a new Thinkpad with Intel HD 4000 graphics and the Wifi chip is also from Intel. I rejected other models with Geforce cards on purpose. With the latest Ubuntu everything worked flawlessly out of the box on this laptop, graphics, wifi, sound, everything. People expect Linux distros to run well on any hardware they throw at it and many times it does, but if you're buying a new laptop / PC, do some research first and prefer models for which all drivers are available as open-source, or if you don't want that hassle, search for models certified for Linux. Thinkpads are good (if you get it with Intel HD at least), Dell also sells a couple of models that are Ubuntu-certified, like that new developer-targeted laptop, there's also System76 and I'm sure you can find others.
eliben 14y ago
I watch Ubuntu's recent steps with trepidation. I love using it for a home Linux machine (indeed upgrading just to LTS-es), and I could not care less about its "convergence" aspirations. I don't want Ubuntu on my phone or my tablet, or at least I don't care. I worry that eventually its mobile plans will bury the desktop Ubuntu, move it out of focus, so to say. When that happens, I wonder whither I should turn. Debian?
- dpearson 14y ago
  I used to use Debian, and I'm not sure I'd go back. On one hand, the stability was wonderful (Debian was pretty much bulletproof for me), but packages were, for stable, quite old. Hardware compatibility isn't quite as good: hardware (including a USB Wi-Fi dongle) that Ubuntu autodetects and has no trouble with became an adventure to get working. I tracked stable, so maybe testing would be better in terms of package outdating, but hardware compatibility is Debian's achilles heel right now.
  - nonamegiven 14y ago
    Depending on what you do with your machine(s), it might make sense for you to go with whatever versions come with the vast majority of the packages, but for the few that matter to you, manage them yourself. For example, I use Oracle's Virtualbox PPA, and it just updated as a normal software update last night. That's 4.2.x, compared to Ubuntu's 4.1.x. For things that aren't PPA'd, you'd need to pay closer attention. It's an option.
hristov 14y ago
This repeated notion of a truly converged OS is really annoying and it is very disappointing to see Ubuntu continue to pursue it despite the loud complaints of most of their users. Lets point out the obvious: the user interaction of a small handheld device is very different than that of a computer with a full size monitor and mouse. Thus any os's on those two devices have to have different UI features. That's it. Of course the parts of the OS that are not UI can be converged. In that sense Linux is already a fully converged OS. But you are never going to fully converge the UI of two devices that use vastly different UI methods.
- Recoil42 14y ago
  >Lets point out the obvious: the user interaction of a small handheld device is very different than that of a computer with a full size monitor and mouse. And what happens in-between? What happens in the case of tablets? Notebooks with a touchscreen? Future devices like large format displays with full UI, and future paradigms like gesture control?
  - kijin 14y ago
    You just make another couple of custom UIs for "in-between" cases. Notebooks with a touchscreen can be treated either as tablets with a bunch of integrated USB/Bluetooth peripherals, if you want to use them like MS Surface, or alternatively, a regular notebook with an oversized multitouch-enabled trackpad that happens to be the display. So there's no need for a new UI paradigm there. Super-large or gesture-controlled devices will probably need their own UI paradigms when they become mainstream. None of this is meant to imply that every device will need its own, incompatible, radically different UI. Competent designers should be able to come up with a "line-up" of 3-4 UIs that "gracefully degrade" into one another, e.g. a menu bar appears if the device has a mouse, and non-maximized apps are allowed if the screen is larger than X inches. And of course, lots of options for power users, e.g. I want non-maxed apps in my 7-inch device even though the default only triggers them in 10-inch devices, and I want Alt+Tab to switch between windows rather than apps.
  - kinleyd 14y ago
    At this stage the key differentiation point is touch (ie. your finger as the pointer) v. the pointer (mice/keyboard, etc.) The UI for these two categories is naturally different, and convergence would be possible only when the UI can handle both. Even in the case of notebooks with touchscreens, the UI has to handle both requirements well, that of the finger and of the mouse/keypad. I personally feel Ubuntu is neglecting the latter. In time, that may well be the right choice. At present, it's definitely only part of the story.
moxie 14y ago
What's interesting is that they are in part re-creating the original problem they were trying to solve. The complaints about Debian were that they only cut a release like every two years. The Debian response was that people who wanted more timely updates could run the "testing" branch, which was a "rolling" release. Ubuntu promised to solve the slow release cycles and the instability of a rolling branch by cutting stable and well-composed releases on a rigorous six month schedule. This announcement sounds a lot like the original Debian model they were trying to get away from.
- gizmo686 14y ago
  A difference is that Debians testing branch was a testing branch, and as such did not have the same effort and priority put in to keeping it stable. Even as a rolling release, I would expect Ubuntu's main reopositories to be more stable than debian tesdting.
  - fulafel 14y ago
    labels and your expectations aside, testing usually is pretty stable and non-lts Ubuntu releases are sometimes not.at least with testing you can hope for fixes in less than six months - Ubuntu generally doesn't fix bugs until the next release in non-lts releases.
  - meaty 14y ago
    From extensive experience, debian testing is way more stable than Ubuntu's current LTS release even.
    - BUGHUNTER 14y ago
      I would like to learn from others: how do you handle security with testing? I like debian testing very much, and occassionally I have the idea of using this in production, too, but I fear the responsibility to take care of many security fixes on my own. here are the high-urgency vulnarable sources for testing: https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/status/release/testing?show_high_urgency=1 https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/status/release/t... but even more surprisingly, this list for stable is even longer: https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/status/release/stable?show_high_urgency=1 https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/status/release/s... Can anybody explain this? (Yes, I will take the shame on me and ask this on a debian mailing list, however, maybe anybody has a good explanation here...)
moxie 14y ago
What's interesting is that they are in part re-creating the original problem they were trying to solve. The complaints about Debian were that they only cut a release like every two years. The Debian response was that people who wanted more timely updates could run the "testing" branch, which was a "rolling" release. Ubuntu promised to solve the slow release cycles and the instability of a rolling branch by cutting stable and well-composed releases on a rigorous six month schedule. This announcement sounds a lot like the original Debian model they were trying to get away from.
lorenzfx 14y ago
I really like the way FreeBSD does it: stable base system but all (ok, most) 3rd party software is still fresh.
JulianMorrison 14y ago
One thing I'd add as a suggestion: if they do a rolling release, hot-rebuild the package so that if you download an "Ubuntu rolling" ISO, you get a 100% up to the minute copy with all the latest security patches and so forth. This so that starting a new Ubuntu install is not annoying (which it would be if you basically had to throw away and redownload the whole OS as updates as soon as you installed).
- takluyver 14y ago
  There's already a daily ISO of the development release, so I imagine that would carry on under a rolling release.

159 points by hotice 14y ago

themstheones 14y ago

No one has ever tried this with an OS before.

schabernakk 14y ago
What do you mean? Arch and Gentoo are two pretty successful distributions and both use a rolling release approach.
- wcchandler 14y ago
  Sarcasm doesn't translate very well over the Internet.
autarch 14y ago
Debian testing and unstable.

zalew 14y ago

considering the tipping point of me leaving buntu was being tired of the upbreak release process, I second this idea. they are basically adopting the debian scheme, only the stable releases will be more frequent.

qznc 14y ago
Debian also has a roughly 2 year release frequency. 2005, 2007, 2009, 2011. Stable is already frozen so 2013 is likely.
csense 14y ago
I thought Ubuntu's original reason for existing was because Debian releases don't happen often enough?
- zanny 14y ago
  It existed because testing wasn't stable enough and stable wasn't fast enough. The 2 year LTS releases are basically just the slow stable thing carried over, but having 2 layers of rolling release (like Arch) where you have a base repo and a testing repo lets them having the rolling release without all the continuous integration problems if it hits enough testing users first.

andyl 14y ago

This seems like a reasonable proposal to me. I've starting using the LTS releases exclusively for my desktop and server systems. I'm planning to use the Ubuntu phone heavily, and would love that device to be on a rolling-release schedule.

olenhad 14y ago

Yes Please! I'm sick of PPA-ing for updated packages.

homeomorphic 14y ago
Really? I've always felt that they give me the perfect balance: the distro itself is non-rolling, so breakages (possibly) happen at known intervals, yet PPAs let me "go rolling" for a subset of packages where I want the latest and am prepared to handle breakage at any time.
- sp332 14y ago
  PPAs should be for cutting-edge stuff, not stuff that was stable 4 months ago and hasn't been updated in "main" yet.
  - homeomorphic 14y ago
    But "stuff that was stable 4 months ago" is not a trivial case either. Suppose A version 1.1 was stable 4 months ago, but that the version of B that works with A 1.1 is horribly buggy still, and the stable version of B needs A 1.0. Do we upgrade A? I can imagine this becoming very tough to mange with 20k-30k packages. I hope Canonical can deal, but I do fear that the users will suffer.
    - sp332 14y ago
      If it's a library, it should be trivial to have the latest A 1.1 installed alongside older A 1.0 and stable B.
      - homeomorphic 14y ago
        With potentially hundreds of different packages playing the role of B, this could eat up a lot of manpower. What if the breakage is subtle and not well known upstream? While it could work, it sounds like something that would take a lot of QA work by Canonical.

mattlong 14y ago

I wonder how much this proposal is driven by Ubuntu's push into the mobile space versus improving the Ubuntu project at large. Clearly it's possible rolling releases would aid both. I guess what I'm really asking is what are the possible negative implications of the plan for the more "traditional" Ubuntu users? Many of whom are likely sysadmins trying to maintain consistent package versions across their infrastructure. Sticking to the LTS versions is the first step. But then you would be delaying access to newer package versions without the interim releases.

mhw 14y ago

I think that's a very well reasoned proposal and I'd be very happy to see it implemented. I might be unusual, but I find myself in both of the user groups that the proposal identifies. For my 'utility' machines (home server, XBMC host, web servers) I prefer the stability of the LTS series, but for my laptop I'm happy to trade that stability for getting new stuff sooner, particularly new usability features that are getting baked into Unity and other components. One minor nit: in the section on benefits for Core/MOTU developers it suggests that only 2 releases would need to be supported. I think in reality that would actually be 4 releases, as with a 5 year support commitment for each LTS release there could be up to 3 LTS releases that are still being supported at any point in time. May be just a minor wording thing though - I'm sure the author knows what he's talking about.

icebraining 14y ago
Your use case is exactly what many of us Debian users have been doing for a long time. I use Unstable on my laptop and Stable (+ backports) on my VPS for those exact reasons.
- takluyver 14y ago
  Technically, Debian unstable is close to what I want, but I don't want to be using something that comes with 'at your own risk' warnings day to day. I think the expectation is the important thing: if an update breaks something, the response I want to see is 'sorry, we'll fix that ASAP and try to avoid doing it again'. I get the impression that Debian unstable (and to a lesser extent testing) is only intended for people who're willing to put up with things breaking often.
  - icebraining 14y ago
    Well, yes, it comes with absolutely no guarantees. That said, many Debian developers use it, and breakages have been rare at least for the last few years, since I started using it.

ohazi 14y ago

I definitely support this. Having a rolling release was the primary reason why I decided to go with debian (unstable) vs (x)ubuntu a few weeks ago. My previous install (oneiric; non-LTS) was about to become unsupported, and the last time I decided to ignore the official support status (years ago... I think it was dapper?), the main repository upped and vanished one day. That was not a fun morning.

IgorPartola 14y ago
The problem is that Debian can be faster or slower whilst Ubuntu LTS releases are on a schedule. For example I believe the currently stable Debian release includes Python 2.6 because 2.7 just missed it. I prefer Ubuntu's LTS releases to Debian because they are predictable.
- ohazi 14y ago
  Yes, I agree that ubuntu's time based releases are generally a better experience that debian's "whenever it's ready" stable releases. Debian's testing and unstable branches are rolling releases though, and those were the only alternatives I was actually considering.
  - gtaylor 14y ago
    Although, I'm not sure we can even look at the Debian when trying to predict what a rolling release Ubuntu would look like (even considering that they are "relatives"). The current difference in manpower and mind share is pretty big between these two related distros. Regardless of which one each of us may like better, Canonical has the manpower and mindshare to probably have a bit more success with this model. I really like Debian, so this is not a knock on them (I used Debian on servers for a very long time with great results). Heck, we may even see Debian and Ubuntu working more closely once they take on this shared dev style (I know, I am pipedreaming, but hey...).
    - IgorPartola 14y ago
      I was under the impression that the Debian team is much larger than Cannonical. This is why they have always said that they could not do what they do without Debian. The biggest problem with a rolling release is that you constantly have to reboot the server to apply kernel upgrades, which you have to do less with LTS (though the first 6 months after the release it feels like a weekly chore).

mtgx 14y ago

Canonical should just wait until the 64 bit of 14.04 LTS for ARM is ready before they put it on mobile. Should greatly simplify their lives when it comes to upgrading later.

homeomorphic 14y ago

I'm sure the decision wasn't taken lightly, and I'm sure Canonical has concluded that an 18 month LTS + rolling makes the most sense for the project. As a user, I am a bit worried about rolling releases though. Maybe someone here can alleviate my worries? As I see it, software has to change. The question for distros is just when? A rolling distro sees such changes continuously, and each package may in principle change at any point independently of any other package. Doesn't that mean that at any point, my workflow-critical programs may change their behavior or even stop working together? Sure, I can do upgrades more seldomly, but then I'm left without security updates. The main benefit I feel that non-rolling distros offer is predefined breakage points. I know that Ubuntu Quantal will work the way it works now until I upgrade to the next release. Even simply knowing in what way software is (and will remain) broken is useful. Now of course, one can stay with LTS and get the same behavior. I guess I'm simply complaining because the 6 month cycle was perfect for me. At any rate, I would guess that most users only really desire rolling behavior for a few (dozens?) of packages. Ubuntu has that nicely covered with PPAs (and also "special status" rolling packages like Firefox).

jcastro 14y ago
> The question for distros is just when? A rolling distro sees such changes continuously, and each package may in principle change at any point independently of any other package. The way it's set up now is there is a -proposed pocket where major transitions are being held, so the old notion of having a library upgrade breaking $foo applications doesn't really happen anymore. From my view, I've been running 13.04 everyday and about half way through the development cycle it was better than 12.10. EDIT: There is also a ton of active QA happening in Ubuntu now, we have nice things we never had before like daily builds firing off and having tests run, prerelease pocket test, and (soonish) phased updates. As far as what you're going to do when your user apps upgrade, you've been doing it on Firefox/Chrome/your phone for ages now, it's about time our desktops caught up!
dizzystar 14y ago
>>> As a user, I am a bit worried about rolling releases though. Maybe someone here can alleviate my worries? As an Arch Linux user, I've had no problems with rolling releases. I know that's not much to go on, but I think with a large known company running the show, there is going to be some responsibility here. Hopefully others can chime in.

jjcm 14y ago

I'll miss the bi-yearly fun with trying out a new release, and the name alliteration, but I think overall it's a smart move for Ubuntu. Does anyone have any reasons why they shouldn't move toward this? I'm curious.

gtaylor 14y ago
A lot of the counter argument is based on FUD and bad experiences with OTHER rolling release distros. I'm not sure we can look at Gentoo or Arch as examples of what Ubuntu would be aiming to do (and I say this as an Arch user). Within the proposal, it states that packages would be released when ready, and when stable. This doesn't mean that you are going to live on the bleeding edge like an Arch or Gentoo user may. You're going to get the updates after Ubuntu has done QA on them, and the maintainer will probably be peeking at bug trackers on other distros for tips on issues (Arch and Gentoo effectively expand their QA process). It is true that there will probably be periodic UI changes in some of the applications. It is not necessarily true that these changes will happen any more frequently than they do now (since each application has different life cycles). What will happen is you will potentially not need to wait 6+ months to get a new version of a package with a fix or improvement that is important to you. If it lets them spend more time on QA and development rather than arbitrary deadlines and bundling, this sounds like a win-win to me. If and when problems happen, they'll get it figured out and hopefully not repeat their mistakes.
- yogo 14y ago
  I don't think it's so much on the bleeding edge in Arch as most people think and packages are usually upgraded in such a way so that dependencies don't cause problems in other packages (at least from my experience). The key has always been to always do a system upgrade and not upgrade individual packages, i.e. always run pacman -Syu or pacman -Syu <packagename>. In four years I've never seen anything break (knock on wood) aside from a minor issue with a pcre upgrade sometime ago. That has just been my experience though, I run Arch on my desktop, laptop and about 10 vps servers.
  - gtaylor 14y ago

stormbrew 14y ago

I'd like to see them balance out dropping the interim releases with doing slightly more frequent LTE releases. Maybe every 1 or 1.5 years instead of 2. But obviously there might be manpower issues there. I just think they're abandoning a middle ground of stability that's still a very valuable space.

smogzer 14y ago

I can't use Ubuntu, I've tried countless times, the experience sucks. I'm trying mint, and i can't even access latest libraries, everything is old, no partition resizing during installation, lack of distro tools and lack of polish; in mageia everything is fresh and if it not the free support quickly updates them. Mandriva had rolling releases with cooker and mageia has also with cauldron. Sorry for looking like a troll but i never got the hype with this ubuntu distro, i wish HN supported mageia more since distrowatch even reports mageia as the number two more popular distro.

vacri 14y ago
If you need the bleeding edge of a package, install that package from a pinned archive (or similar). If you need the bleeding edge of everything, I don't believe you. If you just want the bleeding edge because 'hey, it feels cool', then you're not the target demographic for ubuntu - something they stated from the outset.

Nux 14y ago

This could work, rolling-release + LTS. Archlinux seems to be doing quite well under the rolling-release auspice, so why not. Of course, never in my experience has rolling-release ever worked in anything close to production environments - it's what killed FreeBSD in the data centre, however, if you're a techie with some time on your hands it could be cool.

lorenzfx 14y ago
totally dead https://signup.netflix.com/openconnect/software https://signup.netflix.com/openconnect/software
- Nux 14y ago
  Not totally dead, it still has some strongholds left, but I'm sure Netflix doesn't use the rolling-release side of it (ports mainly). :-)

loudmax 14y ago

I suppose derivative distros like Xubuntu and Edubuntu will need to follow suit. I've had pretty bad experiences with non-LTS versions of Xubuntu. The last time I had a go on it on my laptop, things broke unpredictably, a little at a time. When I say unpredictably, I mean totally by surprise, not even after performing an update. First, Pulse audio stopped working. Spent a few days trying to fix it, then gave up and reverted to Alsa. Then the graphical login got stuck in an endless loop cycle. So reverted to text login, starting X manually after I'd log in. When wireless stopped working, I gave up. I run the LTS Xubuntu on two other machines and neither of them have had problems like this. I put my laptop on the LTS Xubuntu and it's been good since. I'm guessing mainstream Ubuntu gets more QA and is more stable than Xubuntu. It might be harder for derivative distros to keep up with a rolling release. Or maybe not... this might give them more flexibility to QA stuff as needed instead of trying to keep up with a new release every six months. As long as Cannonical keeps the LTS cycle going, moving to a rolling release sounds reasonable.

bad_user 14y ago
One thing to keep in mind is that you're going to have far fewer problems with compatible hardware. On my older laptop things were breaking on each upgrade. Most problems I had were with the Geforce graphics card included, but wireless stopped working at some point in combination with the router that I have at home (kept working with other routers just fine, so I guess it was a protocol issue). Anyway, it required constant tinkering. So first of all, on that laptop I gave up on Nvidia's proprietary drivers and went with Nouveau, which for my needs works well. 90% of all problems I ever had were linked to these proprietary Nvidia drivers. Don't know how well Nouveau works with newer Geforce cards, but you should give it a try. I also have a new Thinkpad with Intel HD 4000 graphics and the Wifi chip is also from Intel. I rejected other models with Geforce cards on purpose. With the latest Ubuntu everything worked flawlessly out of the box on this laptop, graphics, wifi, sound, everything. People expect Linux distros to run well on any hardware they throw at it and many times it does, but if you're buying a new laptop / PC, do some research first and prefer models for which all drivers are available as open-source, or if you don't want that hassle, search for models certified for Linux. Thinkpads are good (if you get it with Intel HD at least), Dell also sells a couple of models that are Ubuntu-certified, like that new developer-targeted laptop, there's also System76 and I'm sure you can find others.

eliben 14y ago

I watch Ubuntu's recent steps with trepidation. I love using it for a home Linux machine (indeed upgrading just to LTS-es), and I could not care less about its "convergence" aspirations. I don't want Ubuntu on my phone or my tablet, or at least I don't care. I worry that eventually its mobile plans will bury the desktop Ubuntu, move it out of focus, so to say. When that happens, I wonder whither I should turn. Debian?

dpearson 14y ago
I used to use Debian, and I'm not sure I'd go back. On one hand, the stability was wonderful (Debian was pretty much bulletproof for me), but packages were, for stable, quite old. Hardware compatibility isn't quite as good: hardware (including a USB Wi-Fi dongle) that Ubuntu autodetects and has no trouble with became an adventure to get working. I tracked stable, so maybe testing would be better in terms of package outdating, but hardware compatibility is Debian's achilles heel right now.
- nonamegiven 14y ago
  Depending on what you do with your machine(s), it might make sense for you to go with whatever versions come with the vast majority of the packages, but for the few that matter to you, manage them yourself. For example, I use Oracle's Virtualbox PPA, and it just updated as a normal software update last night. That's 4.2.x, compared to Ubuntu's 4.1.x. For things that aren't PPA'd, you'd need to pay closer attention. It's an option.

hristov 14y ago

This repeated notion of a truly converged OS is really annoying and it is very disappointing to see Ubuntu continue to pursue it despite the loud complaints of most of their users. Lets point out the obvious: the user interaction of a small handheld device is very different than that of a computer with a full size monitor and mouse. Thus any os's on those two devices have to have different UI features. That's it. Of course the parts of the OS that are not UI can be converged. In that sense Linux is already a fully converged OS. But you are never going to fully converge the UI of two devices that use vastly different UI methods.

Recoil42 14y ago
>Lets point out the obvious: the user interaction of a small handheld device is very different than that of a computer with a full size monitor and mouse. And what happens in-between? What happens in the case of tablets? Notebooks with a touchscreen? Future devices like large format displays with full UI, and future paradigms like gesture control?
- kijin 14y ago
  You just make another couple of custom UIs for "in-between" cases. Notebooks with a touchscreen can be treated either as tablets with a bunch of integrated USB/Bluetooth peripherals, if you want to use them like MS Surface, or alternatively, a regular notebook with an oversized multitouch-enabled trackpad that happens to be the display. So there's no need for a new UI paradigm there. Super-large or gesture-controlled devices will probably need their own UI paradigms when they become mainstream. None of this is meant to imply that every device will need its own, incompatible, radically different UI. Competent designers should be able to come up with a "line-up" of 3-4 UIs that "gracefully degrade" into one another, e.g. a menu bar appears if the device has a mouse, and non-maximized apps are allowed if the screen is larger than X inches. And of course, lots of options for power users, e.g. I want non-maxed apps in my 7-inch device even though the default only triggers them in 10-inch devices, and I want Alt+Tab to switch between windows rather than apps.
- kinleyd 14y ago
  At this stage the key differentiation point is touch (ie. your finger as the pointer) v. the pointer (mice/keyboard, etc.) The UI for these two categories is naturally different, and convergence would be possible only when the UI can handle both. Even in the case of notebooks with touchscreens, the UI has to handle both requirements well, that of the finger and of the mouse/keypad. I personally feel Ubuntu is neglecting the latter. In time, that may well be the right choice. At present, it's definitely only part of the story.

moxie 14y ago

What's interesting is that they are in part re-creating the original problem they were trying to solve. The complaints about Debian were that they only cut a release like every two years. The Debian response was that people who wanted more timely updates could run the "testing" branch, which was a "rolling" release. Ubuntu promised to solve the slow release cycles and the instability of a rolling branch by cutting stable and well-composed releases on a rigorous six month schedule. This announcement sounds a lot like the original Debian model they were trying to get away from.

gizmo686 14y ago
A difference is that Debians testing branch was a testing branch, and as such did not have the same effort and priority put in to keeping it stable. Even as a rolling release, I would expect Ubuntu's main reopositories to be more stable than debian tesdting.
- fulafel 14y ago
  labels and your expectations aside, testing usually is pretty stable and non-lts Ubuntu releases are sometimes not.at least with testing you can hope for fixes in less than six months - Ubuntu generally doesn't fix bugs until the next release in non-lts releases.
- meaty 14y ago
  From extensive experience, debian testing is way more stable than Ubuntu's current LTS release even.
  - BUGHUNTER 14y ago
    I would like to learn from others: how do you handle security with testing? I like debian testing very much, and occassionally I have the idea of using this in production, too, but I fear the responsibility to take care of many security fixes on my own. here are the high-urgency vulnarable sources for testing: https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/status/release/testing?show_high_urgency=1 https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/status/release/t... but even more surprisingly, this list for stable is even longer: https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/status/release/stable?show_high_urgency=1 https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/status/release/s... Can anybody explain this? (Yes, I will take the shame on me and ask this on a debian mailing list, however, maybe anybody has a good explanation here...)

moxie 14y ago

lorenzfx 14y ago

I really like the way FreeBSD does it: stable base system but all (ok, most) 3rd party software is still fresh.

JulianMorrison 14y ago

One thing I'd add as a suggestion: if they do a rolling release, hot-rebuild the package so that if you download an "Ubuntu rolling" ISO, you get a 100% up to the minute copy with all the latest security patches and so forth. This so that starting a new Ubuntu install is not annoying (which it would be if you basically had to throw away and redownload the whole OS as updates as soon as you installed).

takluyver 14y ago
There's already a daily ISO of the development release, so I imagine that would carry on under a rolling release.