6 ms·

> On the contrary, Debian having a longer release cycle (about every two years), release cycles don't align. Then change your release cycle. Seriously, it's no

by Touche 11y ago

> On the contrary, Debian having a longer release cycle (about every two years), release cycles don't align. Then change your release cycle. Seriously, it's not that hard. Say that browsers are different and get released frequently. Create a firefox-lts package that is updated at the beginning of your Debian release cycle -- and never again. Let the firefox package be the firefox package, updated as frequently as upstream wants.

mfontani 11y ago
$deity no, then I'd have to rebuild servers every year instead every two/three :/
- baldfat 11y ago
  I have been just doing dup on OpenSUSE for over 6 years without a single issue. :) I am getting rusty on rebuilding server skills. Debian's update system does drive me nuts, but I have never run a Debian server for longer then 6 months.
  - mfontani 11y ago
    Considering the last distro upgrade had Apache going from 2.2 to 2.4, which introduced considerable changes to the config file format, "upgrading the servers" is not something that can be done in _all_ cases.
    - baldfat 11y ago
      But that is an issue with Apache and not really a Distro issue. I'm thinking I didn't have to change anything on my Apache config since mine is very vanilla. So if you have a vanilla config on Apache it still works.
Scarbutt 11y ago
Surprisingly, Chromium is always up to date on the Debian stable release. Why can't they do the same for Iceweasel/Firefox? keep the ESR version and a version that matches upstream latest releases, but there's probably something I'm missing here.
- olasd 11y ago
  They do the same for Iceweasel: stable gets updated to the ESR x release around when version x.0.1 gets out.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
bsznjyewgd 11y ago
This is already kind of the case. Debian stable tracks the Firefox ESR releases, updating when a new one comes out. If you want the Firefox frequent releases, you get them with backports from the Debian Mozilla team (out of the main archive). (For the more adventurous desktop users, they can also use Debian unstable for the frequent releases. Unstable isn't unstable in terms of your machine falling over. Rather, there is a lot of package churn, and you need to use something like "sudo aptitude upgrade --visual-preview" when upgrading to ensure that you don't try to upgrade something in the middle of a big package transition before everything is finished and ready in the package repo.)
scrollaway 11y ago
Debian implements the comical definition of Bureaucracy really well. Missing the forest for the trees and thinking that every single piece of software is built and released the same way. For a Linux distro that has been around so long, it's mind boggling they still don't understand that. Wine used to have the same problem - Wine's cycle had the Chrome-like cycle before Chrome even existed. Release every 2 weeks like clockwork. Releases are not any more or less stable than the previous one, but they implement more functionality and a newer release will almost always be better than an older one. Wine's "Stable" releases are meaningless, other than "We spend a month working on bugfixes/regression instead of features before a stable release".
- dmm 11y ago
  > Release every 2 weeks like clockwork. Which means exciting new regressions every two weeks! When I used wine it was definitely the case that certain applications(games) worked better with specific wine versions so a continuous release cycle could result in breaking a working application. That's something users of stable are trying to avoid. If a user wants the latest version of a package you can always install it manually.
  - zanny 11y ago
    Parent is actually wrong - Wine releases with the Gnome cycle, where even releases are stable and odd ones are unstable. Debian should technically be shipping both versions according to upstream release cadences - people who want stable use 1.8 right now, and people who want latest features use 1.9.
    - scrollaway 11y ago
      In what way am I wrong? Wine releases are in fact every two weeks with a stable release once in a while. How is it relevant that stable are even and unstable are odd?
      - zanny 11y ago
        Because Wine (and Gnome) maintain them in parallel. With Chrome you have the one release version that gets constantly updated every two weeks, but unlike Firefox's ESR / Linux's LTS kernels Google doesn't want to maintain an "LTS" version of Chrome. Yes, its semantics whether you just pin arbitrary releases and call them LTS vs having dedicated versioning schema to support it, but you called it a Chrome like cycle, when its just a more general constant iteration with occasional LTS cycle. Not many products actually use the full blown constant iteration for everyone model Google uses on Chrome.
detaro 11y ago
Literally right below that it says: "To address this packaging issue, once a ESR cycle is over, Debian has been accepting uploads of new ESR releases in the stable release." As in, they accept and release new versions from upstream instead of maintaining their own fork with backports.
- Scarbutt 11y ago
  But most users don't want the ESR version, they want the latest non-ESR version, yes, you can go and get it from mozilla but some users find this inconvenient.
  - detaro 11y ago
    Then they can get it from outside the stable branch. Testing and unstable both have a Iceweasel 44, and there is the mozilla repository at http://mozilla.debian.net/ http://mozilla.debian.net/ just for mozilla software. Debian stable is "conservative and with as few changes as possible", so the ESRs are the obvious choice for it.
twunde 11y ago
If you don't like the 2 year release cycle, use Ubuntu, which is Debian-based. Debian maintains such long release cycles because the tolerance for bugs and incompatibilities are smaller than other linux distros. For long-lived applications or applications that have long planning periods Debian is ideal. NASA uses Debian, because their projects are measured in years, have low tolerances for bugs, and are developed to last 5+ years. Simply put, Debian's release model is for a different use-case than your typical web development project
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
  - mayhew 11y ago
    Ubuntu releases come every 6 months with a LTS every 2 years. The non-LTS releases are of pretty questionable quality and are only supported for 9 months, which makes them pretty awful for server use. Debian releases and Ubuntu LTS releases are about equal. New releases come every ~2 years and with Debian's new LTS policy, both are supported for 5 years in total. So you could say for server usage they have similar release cycles.
- icebraining 11y ago
  Debian has both: I use Stable on my servers and Unstable/Sid (which is a rolling-release distro) on my laptop.
  - shmerl 11y ago
    There is also Debian testing which is more polished than Sid, but is also semi-rolling.
- Touche 11y ago
  What does this have to do with Firefox? Is NASA writing rovers as Web apps? If not what does it matter which version of Firefox is installed?

by Touche 11y ago

mfontani 11y ago

$deity no, then I'd have to rebuild servers every year instead every two/three :/

baldfat 11y ago
I have been just doing dup on OpenSUSE for over 6 years without a single issue. :) I am getting rusty on rebuilding server skills. Debian's update system does drive me nuts, but I have never run a Debian server for longer then 6 months.
- mfontani 11y ago
  Considering the last distro upgrade had Apache going from 2.2 to 2.4, which introduced considerable changes to the config file format, "upgrading the servers" is not something that can be done in _all_ cases.
  - baldfat 11y ago
    But that is an issue with Apache and not really a Distro issue. I'm thinking I didn't have to change anything on my Apache config since mine is very vanilla. So if you have a vanilla config on Apache it still works.

Scarbutt 11y ago

Surprisingly, Chromium is always up to date on the Debian stable release. Why can't they do the same for Iceweasel/Firefox? keep the ESR version and a version that matches upstream latest releases, but there's probably something I'm missing here.

olasd 11y ago
They do the same for Iceweasel: stable gets updated to the ESR x release around when version x.0.1 gets out.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

bsznjyewgd 11y ago

This is already kind of the case. Debian stable tracks the Firefox ESR releases, updating when a new one comes out. If you want the Firefox frequent releases, you get them with backports from the Debian Mozilla team (out of the main archive). (For the more adventurous desktop users, they can also use Debian unstable for the frequent releases. Unstable isn't unstable in terms of your machine falling over. Rather, there is a lot of package churn, and you need to use something like "sudo aptitude upgrade --visual-preview" when upgrading to ensure that you don't try to upgrade something in the middle of a big package transition before everything is finished and ready in the package repo.)

scrollaway 11y ago

Debian implements the comical definition of Bureaucracy really well. Missing the forest for the trees and thinking that every single piece of software is built and released the same way. For a Linux distro that has been around so long, it's mind boggling they still don't understand that. Wine used to have the same problem - Wine's cycle had the Chrome-like cycle before Chrome even existed. Release every 2 weeks like clockwork. Releases are not any more or less stable than the previous one, but they implement more functionality and a newer release will almost always be better than an older one. Wine's "Stable" releases are meaningless, other than "We spend a month working on bugfixes/regression instead of features before a stable release".

dmm 11y ago
> Release every 2 weeks like clockwork. Which means exciting new regressions every two weeks! When I used wine it was definitely the case that certain applications(games) worked better with specific wine versions so a continuous release cycle could result in breaking a working application. That's something users of stable are trying to avoid. If a user wants the latest version of a package you can always install it manually.
- zanny 11y ago
  Parent is actually wrong - Wine releases with the Gnome cycle, where even releases are stable and odd ones are unstable. Debian should technically be shipping both versions according to upstream release cadences - people who want stable use 1.8 right now, and people who want latest features use 1.9.
  - scrollaway 11y ago
    In what way am I wrong? Wine releases are in fact every two weeks with a stable release once in a while. How is it relevant that stable are even and unstable are odd?
    - zanny 11y ago
      Because Wine (and Gnome) maintain them in parallel. With Chrome you have the one release version that gets constantly updated every two weeks, but unlike Firefox's ESR / Linux's LTS kernels Google doesn't want to maintain an "LTS" version of Chrome. Yes, its semantics whether you just pin arbitrary releases and call them LTS vs having dedicated versioning schema to support it, but you called it a Chrome like cycle, when its just a more general constant iteration with occasional LTS cycle. Not many products actually use the full blown constant iteration for everyone model Google uses on Chrome.

detaro 11y ago

Literally right below that it says: "To address this packaging issue, once a ESR cycle is over, Debian has been accepting uploads of new ESR releases in the stable release." As in, they accept and release new versions from upstream instead of maintaining their own fork with backports.

Scarbutt 11y ago
But most users don't want the ESR version, they want the latest non-ESR version, yes, you can go and get it from mozilla but some users find this inconvenient.
- detaro 11y ago
  Then they can get it from outside the stable branch. Testing and unstable both have a Iceweasel 44, and there is the mozilla repository at http://mozilla.debian.net/ http://mozilla.debian.net/ just for mozilla software. Debian stable is "conservative and with as few changes as possible", so the ESRs are the obvious choice for it.

twunde 11y ago

If you don't like the 2 year release cycle, use Ubuntu, which is Debian-based. Debian maintains such long release cycles because the tolerance for bugs and incompatibilities are smaller than other linux distros. For long-lived applications or applications that have long planning periods Debian is ideal. NASA uses Debian, because their projects are measured in years, have low tolerances for bugs, and are developed to last 5+ years. Simply put, Debian's release model is for a different use-case than your typical web development project

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
- mayhew 11y ago
  Ubuntu releases come every 6 months with a LTS every 2 years. The non-LTS releases are of pretty questionable quality and are only supported for 9 months, which makes them pretty awful for server use. Debian releases and Ubuntu LTS releases are about equal. New releases come every ~2 years and with Debian's new LTS policy, both are supported for 5 years in total. So you could say for server usage they have similar release cycles.
icebraining 11y ago
Debian has both: I use Stable on my servers and Unstable/Sid (which is a rolling-release distro) on my laptop.
- shmerl 11y ago
  There is also Debian testing which is more polished than Sid, but is also semi-rolling.
Touche 11y ago
What does this have to do with Firefox? Is NASA writing rovers as Web apps? If not what does it matter which version of Firefox is installed?