9 ms·

Staying with the LTS release is a perfectly valid choice if you want a slower pace of changes.

by Lorkki 7y ago

ChuckMcM 7y ago
Except that these changes will eventually be part of 19.04 LTS and then what? As someone who stayed on 16.04 LTS until apt-get update started reporting "can't find respository, ignoring" on the Canonical servers, I can attest to the fact that this strategy only works for so long :-).
- levesque 7y ago
  I think you mean 20.04 LTS.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- qznc 7y ago
  16.04 is still supported for two more years. 14.04 support ends in 12 days (or longer if you pay Canonical). https://www.ubuntu.com/about/release-cycle https://www.ubuntu.com/about/release-cycle
  - j1elo 7y ago
    This page also shows a nicely presented table with Ubuntu versions and expected support dates: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases
- ohyeshedid 7y ago
  There is no 19.x LTS, next LTS release would be 20.04.
  - etrautmann 7y ago
    Which itself is not obvious to many users. I made the mistake of installing 17.04 and it was a major headache to upgrade it after support was dropped.
    - ohyeshedid 7y ago
      Totally understandable. Basically, even.04 are LTS releases and odd.04 are beta/experimental/very early rc's.
      - jrochkind1 7y ago
        wait... do all versions end in .04?
        juki 7y ago
        No, there are two releases every year; a <year>.04 in April and <year>.10 in October.
        vel0city 7y ago
        Ubuntu releases a new LTS release for the first release every two years. Ubuntu usually has two releases a year, one in April (.04) and one in October (.10). So 16.04 is a LTS release, as it was the first release in an even year. 16.10, 17.04, 17.10 were all regular non-LTS releases. 18.04 was an LTS release. 18.10 and 19.04 are regular non-LTS releases. https://www.ubuntu.com/about/release-cycle https://www.ubuntu.com/about/release-cycle
    - Lorkki 7y ago
      I don't remember how long it's been the case, but these days LTS is the first option that they show you, and it's clearly marked as such: https://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop https://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop LTS releases also don't offer upgrades to non-LTS versions unless you explicitly enable that via the "Software & Updates" tool.
      - cr0sh 7y ago
- tinus_hn 7y ago
  Slower is not the same as not moving. Long Term Support is not Infinite Term Support.
jammygit 7y ago
Agreed, but in this specific case Gnome had some performance issues that are addressed by the 18.10 / 19.04 update that really help with quality of life. Hopefully 20.04 will be snappy enough that I can use the huge support window for longer.
- johnchristopher 7y ago
  I am a huge GNOME fan (the interface, the ideas behind it, the look). But I made my peace with the fact that I need stability and performance so Kubuntu 18.04LTS it is (edit: and Gnome hasn't achieved UI coherence yet despite being 10 years in the making,so...). Performance issues shouldn't appear between LTS-1 and LTS. Ideally LTS should be the polished and stable version from all that came before it and not a rushed testbed for DE that aren't battle-tested.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
The way Linux distros have no conception of separating "system" from "application" ensures that anyone sticking with an LTS release will have a much harder time getting new software installed. Is it really so crazy to want a stable platform on which to run current applications? In the Linux world: yes.
- Barrin92 7y ago
  thanks so much for saying this. It has always baffled me. On a desktop I want to run up-to-date applications with a stable system, I don't want a feature freeze. Ideally the OS is a platform where software runs on, not in, with a standardised, backwards-compatible surface. I'm only an occasional linux user as a developer, I never dove into the history or the design. Is there a particular reason why linux distributions couple the system so heavily with the application layer?
  - hathawsh 7y ago
    When I ran Gentoo Linux, a rolling release, I came to appreciate exactly what's going on in the Linux desktop ecosystem. I enjoyed the new features that came with new releases of libraries and apps, but it was shocking to see how often library releases had new ABIs. Sometimes I could get away with running apps on old ABIs, but more often than not I would see stability issues, and those stability issues disappeared when I recompiled the apps. I learned that there are simply a lot of improvements happening at every layer of the system, all the time, and there is no one in charge. The proprietary solution to that instability is to appoint people who ensure ABIs don't change. Microsoft is a great example of that strategy. Many apps made for Windows 3.1 still run today on Windows 10, almost 30 years later. The typical open source solution to ABI instability is to freeze library ABIs and build all the applications on those temporarily frozen libraries. Applications are built for a particular release. While it would be possible to keep updating the applications during the release cycle, it appears no one has yet figured out how to do that economically. An interesting exception to the rule is web browsers. Firefox and Chromium get regular feature updates in major Linux distributions. That's probably because browsers have a very large attack surface, yet people use them all day long, so they deserve extra attention from software distributors.

Staying with the LTS release is a perfectly valid choice if you want a slower pace of changes.

by Lorkki 7y ago

Staying with the LTS release is a perfectly valid choice if you want a slower pace of changes.

Except that these changes will eventually be part of 19.04 LTS and then what? As someone who stayed on 16.04 LTS until apt-get update started reporting "can't find respository, ignoring" on the Canonical servers, I can attest to the fact that this strategy only works for so long :-).

levesque 7y ago
I think you mean 20.04 LTS.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
qznc 7y ago
16.04 is still supported for two more years. 14.04 support ends in 12 days (or longer if you pay Canonical). https://www.ubuntu.com/about/release-cycle https://www.ubuntu.com/about/release-cycle
- j1elo 7y ago
  This page also shows a nicely presented table with Ubuntu versions and expected support dates: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases
ohyeshedid 7y ago
There is no 19.x LTS, next LTS release would be 20.04.
- etrautmann 7y ago
  Which itself is not obvious to many users. I made the mistake of installing 17.04 and it was a major headache to upgrade it after support was dropped.
  - ohyeshedid 7y ago
    Totally understandable. Basically, even.04 are LTS releases and odd.04 are beta/experimental/very early rc's.
    - jrochkind1 7y ago
      wait... do all versions end in .04?
      - juki 7y ago
        No, there are two releases every year; a <year>.04 in April and <year>.10 in October.
      - vel0city 7y ago
        Ubuntu releases a new LTS release for the first release every two years. Ubuntu usually has two releases a year, one in April (.04) and one in October (.10). So 16.04 is a LTS release, as it was the first release in an even year. 16.10, 17.04, 17.10 were all regular non-LTS releases. 18.04 was an LTS release. 18.10 and 19.04 are regular non-LTS releases. https://www.ubuntu.com/about/release-cycle https://www.ubuntu.com/about/release-cycle
  - Lorkki 7y ago
    I don't remember how long it's been the case, but these days LTS is the first option that they show you, and it's clearly marked as such: https://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop https://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop LTS releases also don't offer upgrades to non-LTS versions unless you explicitly enable that via the "Software & Updates" tool.
    - cr0sh 7y ago
tinus_hn 7y ago
Slower is not the same as not moving. Long Term Support is not Infinite Term Support.

jammygit 7y ago

Agreed, but in this specific case Gnome had some performance issues that are addressed by the 18.10 / 19.04 update that really help with quality of life. Hopefully 20.04 will be snappy enough that I can use the huge support window for longer.

johnchristopher 7y ago
I am a huge GNOME fan (the interface, the ideas behind it, the look). But I made my peace with the fact that I need stability and performance so Kubuntu 18.04LTS it is (edit: and Gnome hasn't achieved UI coherence yet despite being 10 years in the making,so...). Performance issues shouldn't appear between LTS-1 and LTS. Ideally LTS should be the polished and stable version from all that came before it and not a rushed testbed for DE that aren't battle-tested.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago

The way Linux distros have no conception of separating "system" from "application" ensures that anyone sticking with an LTS release will have a much harder time getting new software installed. Is it really so crazy to want a stable platform on which to run current applications? In the Linux world: yes.

Barrin92 7y ago
thanks so much for saying this. It has always baffled me. On a desktop I want to run up-to-date applications with a stable system, I don't want a feature freeze. Ideally the OS is a platform where software runs on, not in, with a standardised, backwards-compatible surface. I'm only an occasional linux user as a developer, I never dove into the history or the design. Is there a particular reason why linux distributions couple the system so heavily with the application layer?
- hathawsh 7y ago
  When I ran Gentoo Linux, a rolling release, I came to appreciate exactly what's going on in the Linux desktop ecosystem. I enjoyed the new features that came with new releases of libraries and apps, but it was shocking to see how often library releases had new ABIs. Sometimes I could get away with running apps on old ABIs, but more often than not I would see stability issues, and those stability issues disappeared when I recompiled the apps. I learned that there are simply a lot of improvements happening at every layer of the system, all the time, and there is no one in charge. The proprietary solution to that instability is to appoint people who ensure ABIs don't change. Microsoft is a great example of that strategy. Many apps made for Windows 3.1 still run today on Windows 10, almost 30 years later. The typical open source solution to ABI instability is to freeze library ABIs and build all the applications on those temporarily frozen libraries. Applications are built for a particular release. While it would be possible to keep updating the applications during the release cycle, it appears no one has yet figured out how to do that economically. An interesting exception to the rule is web browsers. Firefox and Chromium get regular feature updates in major Linux distributions. That's probably because browsers have a very large attack surface, yet people use them all day long, so they deserve extra attention from software distributors.