Ubuntu to halve support length for non-LTS releases

[monkeybrain2012]

For true long term support when all this takes effect, users will be switching to Debian and other Debian derivatives, or CentOS, or Slackware (really long-term support) or whatever else. I don't want to deal with all the breakage and bugs and stuff that seems to always go along with "new and shiny."

Really? I am typing on Debian Whizzy now. It is a pain to have to compile updated versions of something simple like Smplayer (say with Youtube support) at every turn and this is not even Lenny! I am not afraid of compiling but just saying, I have better things to do than to compile many apps just to be reasonably up to date. Next thing: to get Firefox and get rid of icewesel.

I would rather take some risks (and I doubt that it would be more risky than running Fedora, which I also like) than be stuck with Debian "stability" (It can be worse, like Cenos, which is good for servers but not on the desktop especially if you need anything remotely workable in terms of multimedia). I am not an "entreprise" and I am not running a server, I like to get new features and bug fixes rather than something "stable" in the sense of predictably broken or predictably limited.

[snowpine]

Really? I am typing on Debian Whizzy now. It is a pain to have to compile updated versions of something simple like Smplayer (say with Youtube support) at every turn and this is not even Lenny! I am not afraid of compiling but just saying, I have better things to do than to compile many apps just to be reasonably up to date. Next thing: to get Firefox and get rid of icewesel.

I would rather take some risks (and I doubt that it would be more risky than running Fedora, which I also like) than be stuck with Debian "stability" (It can be worse, like Cenos, which is good for servers but not on the desktop especially if you need anything remotely workable in terms of multimedia). I am not an "entreprise" and I am not running a server, I like to get new features and bug fixes rather than something "stable" in the sense of predictably broken or predictably limited.

Iceweasel=Firefox

In the enterprise environment "users can't easily play Youtube" might be seen as a pro, not a con.

Anyway, Ubuntu blows Debian away as a multimedia platform.

[monkeybrain2012]

Icewisel = Firefox crippled. I have been having problems on some sites, e.g Facebook (probably some parts are missing) and the version is probably old too. But then not being able to go to FB is probably a good thing for "entreprises" too. I hate grey guys in suits and ties for a reason.

[kungfupete]

Agree with monkeybrain & snowpine: While I love Debian, and most Debian based distros, as I get older the challenge of beating a distro into submission to work on my hardware just doesn't have the allure anymore. While I still love experimenting with various thing (such as ACLs & LXC more recently), the time spent trying to get wireless, multiple displays, printers, multimedia support, special keyboard buttons, fonts, etc is just not that fun anymore (although not sure it ever was).

I have a several (I'm embarrassed to say how many) computers in my house, and one distro has consistently worked out of the box on nearly everything: Ubuntu. No doubt Linut Mint would be the same.

Ahhh Gentoo....how I don't miss thee!

[snowpine]

I can access Facebook just fine on my Debian Wheezy computer.

Debian uses the "ESR" version of iceweasel/firefox, which according to Mozilla:

Mozilla will offer an Extended Support Release (ESR) based on an official release of Firefox for desktop for use by organizations including schools, universities, businesses and others who need extended support for mass deployments. You can read more about the plan here.

http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/faq/

I think using ESR is a great choice for a Stable operating system such as Debian. Of course (and this simple detail is often overlooked) users have complete and total freedom to install/update any applications they wish to any versions they wish. A Linux "distribution" is merely a collection of "sane defaults" that gives the target users a starting base system, from which they can customize to their needs.

[Peripheral Visionary]

I've found a great Debian mixture for the technically challenged here.

[Paddy Landau]

There is something that I hope this halving will help. By freeing essentially nine months' worth of resources, there may be significantly more resources available to handle the bugs.

I have noticed in the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, time and again, that the number of bugs has steadily increased to a frightening level. Take a look at the stats in the latest newsletter (Issue #310):

• Open (104914) +218 over last week
• Critical (76) +1 over last week
• Unconfirmed (51456) +62 over last week

Ouch! That's nearly 105,000 confirmed bugs and over 51,000 unconfirmed bugs. They need addressing, and I hope that the Ubuntu teams will be able to address them once they have less pressure to support the in-between versions.

[Elfy]

There is something that I hope this halving will help. By freeing essentially nine months' worth of resources, there may be significantly more resources available to handle the bugs.

I have noticed in the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, time and again, that the number of bugs has steadily increased to a frightening level. Take a look at the stats in the latest newsletter (Issue #310):

• Open (104914) +218 over last week
• Critical (76) +1 over last week
• Unconfirmed (51456) +62 over last week

Ouch! That's nearly 105,000 confirmed bugs and over 51,000 unconfirmed bugs. They need addressing, and I hope that the Ubuntu teams will be able to address them once they have less pressure to support the in-between versions.

Is that bugs for versions for release still in support or is that just a total of all the bugs on Launchpad? I'd guess it's all of them - it would be more productive to know how many there are for currently supported releases.

If it is all then I doubt if doing anything to the length of support will make any noticeable difference to the total.

[Paddy Landau]

Is that bugs for versions for release still in support or is that just a total of all the bugs on Launchpad?

That is an interesting question. I would hope that bugs are closed when they apply only to older, unsupported releases!

[Elfy]

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...ls/+bug/511988 bug in Lucid, which is supported - but I'd question anything being done with it or it being counted - give it 6 weeks and it's not be supported

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...nux/+bug/35000 bug in Dapper - which appears to be live still. Marked as a duplicate, which received a fix - but is this but itself counted.

If I remember when I'm somewhere that it'd be useful to ask I will

Edit -

I did

"I believe it's only the open actve bugs, remember things can expire.. and I'm not sure what they do with bugs that are open after EOL for releases"

at which point someone else joined in

"most bugs expire if it's set to expire on a project, Ubuntu ones and LP ones dor for exxample, but some people who have their projects on there don't have expiring bugs"

I'm not sure that set of stats mean very much to be honest.