[Discuss] to Ubuntu or not to Ubuntu

[gaf at blu.org (Jerry Feldman)]

On 11/25/2011 07:53 AM, Edward Ned Harvey wrote:
> You ask if it's really necessary to upgrade every 6 months, and it's a wise
> question, but only one-sided.  As a consumer, you'll have less stability and
> more experimental new features with a rapid release cycle, but as a
> programmer or producer, you'll have less feedback if you don't have a rapid
> release cycle.  That's why they have varying levels of stability ...  Once
> every 18 months or so, ubuntu releases a LTS version, which is intended to
> have been fully fleshed out, highly stable configuration.  If you go to the
> latest version, you're choosing the newest most experimental thing
> available.  That's the nature of open source software.
Release cycles depend on many factors. On one side you want to get the 
features in, and the other side you want stability. This is why we have 
a big difference between consumer releases and enterprise releases. I 
prefer a short release schedule because change is the keyword in our 
industry. The different distros have their own policies. For instance, 
Ubuntu (& family) have a 6-month release schedule cast in concrete, but 
they also have LTS cycles every 2 years. Fedora and SuSe have 6 month 
cycles but will slip their releases based on bug fixes. I currently I am 
using Fedora on my desktop and netbook, but I used to use Ubuntu on my 
netbook until Unity. I use RHEL (IA 64) on my workstation at work. I 
used to use SuSE/KDE, but I was so used to Gnome at work, I decided to 
change and also because Fedora and Ubuntu are the most popular at 
installfests.



-- 
Jerry Feldman<gaf at blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id:3BC1EB90
PGP Key fingerprint: 49E2 C52A FC5A A31F 8D66  C0AF 7CEA 30FC 3BC1 EB90