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I often make this point and people often tell me "just use an LTS". But that's not my point; my point is, if I use an LTS, I can't (easily) get new versions of

by acabal 14y ago

I often make this point and people often tell me "just use an LTS". But that's not my point; my point is, if I use an LTS, I can't (easily) get new versions of software I need. Upgrading one piece of software necessitates upgrading the entire system. Because of this, it's impossible to live in a stable and bug-free OS, because the core is always shifting underfoot. On a Windows system, does upgrading Photoshop also upgrade your network drivers? Of course not, but it does in Ubuntu (and most Linuxes). Shuttleworth's mistake is his intent on releasing alpha- and beta-quality software every 6 months, but without giving the community the easy and foolproof ability to pin certain software at certain versions, so they can get updates to some things but not others. That's why people got mad at Pulseaudio, at Unity, and (partly) at the half-baked Amazon stuff: because the very structure of Ubuntu and Linux forces these things on them, and they didn't have a choice if they also want the other shiny features of release X. Edit: Also, I was personally mad at Pulseaudio because when it was included in Ubuntu, it was so broken on my laptop that I literally had to hotkey `killall pulseaudio` to a keyboard shortcut. That's how bad it got, and it was like that for 2 releases!

fafner 14y ago
I agree that they should provide optionally new versions of LibreOffice, Gimp, and similar software for LTS releases. But I think it's highly unrealistic that this will include more than a few selected software packages. It takes probably quite some effort because Linux software is not only constantly changing but so are the dependencies. At some point it simply is not possible to use new software with an old plumbing. E.g. some package might depend on a newer version of gnome-libs which depend on a new version of something in the plumbing layer. As far as I see it the non-LTS releases are just the beta tests for the next LTS release. But somehow Canonical does not seem to fully agree with that. If I remember correctly the biggest issue with PA was that it was introduced in an LTS release. They should have probably waited one release and use the 4 releases to get it right. btw. PPAs and backports can help you if you want new versions in older releases.
- takluyver 14y ago
  Actually, they're moving towards having many more applications updated and added for stable releases. Ubuntu's developer portal now has a system where developers can upload their own apps to the software centre, separately from the Ubuntu release cycle. It's still a work in progress, though - they've had some trouble scaling it up. Traditionally, distributions have been responsible for packaging 'upstream' software, which quickly becomes a bottleneck as more software is created. The key is getting developers to do the packaging themselves, aided by automated systems.

by acabal 14y ago

fafner 14y ago

I agree that they should provide optionally new versions of LibreOffice, Gimp, and similar software for LTS releases. But I think it's highly unrealistic that this will include more than a few selected software packages. It takes probably quite some effort because Linux software is not only constantly changing but so are the dependencies. At some point it simply is not possible to use new software with an old plumbing. E.g. some package might depend on a newer version of gnome-libs which depend on a new version of something in the plumbing layer. As far as I see it the non-LTS releases are just the beta tests for the next LTS release. But somehow Canonical does not seem to fully agree with that. If I remember correctly the biggest issue with PA was that it was introduced in an LTS release. They should have probably waited one release and use the 4 releases to get it right. btw. PPAs and backports can help you if you want new versions in older releases.

takluyver 14y ago
Actually, they're moving towards having many more applications updated and added for stable releases. Ubuntu's developer portal now has a system where developers can upload their own apps to the software centre, separately from the Ubuntu release cycle. It's still a work in progress, though - they've had some trouble scaling it up. Traditionally, distributions have been responsible for packaging 'upstream' software, which quickly becomes a bottleneck as more software is created. The key is getting developers to do the packaging themselves, aided by automated systems.