Continue with 13.10?

[craig10x]

Well, now that 13.04 will be going final next Thursday, and i'd imagine that development will start on 13.10 by the following week or so, i need to decide whether to just let this go final and stay with it, or upgrade to the next development (13.10)...of course, we don't know quite yet whether the new easier option to continue will be ready yet, so i know it will be either by that method or the old upgrade method used until now...

I'm actually using this as my ONLY install (though all my personal data such as photos, videos, documents, etc...are backed up on a flash storage drive)...and it does seem like development has generally become pretty reliable to use...(my observation since i installed it 2 months ago)...so, only question is: will it be safe for me to continue in 13.10 or is it still "risky business"...oh, i know a few minor things can come along here and there, but i am talking about the kind that like seriously borks your system and you end up re-installing again....

So, input will be appreciated, in helping me to decide...do i play it super-safe or go into the next "adventure"

I would love to be able to continue at least until 14.04 arrives....and perhaps at THAT point move over to an LTS to LTS 2 year installing cycle...but having trouble deciding...if i just stay final with 13.04, no doubt i will likely want to install 13.10 when it comes out since 13.04 will only have 9 months of updates...

[pfeiffep]

IMH the 'stability' of any development project increases with time - you're noticing that 13.04 is pretty stable for your use now. Once 13.10 development starts being available it will be at the beginning of it's cycle - so it's possible that you'd experience much more instability than you'd be willing to endure. If your hard dive is large enough you might consider installing 13.04 final release in one partition and 13.10 in another partition, or a usb hard drive for trial.

My experience with Linux is limited (since Feb), however I have 40 years computing experience.

[Morbius1]

For what it's worth I have adopted a rule that has made life far less stressful for me.

Real installs are limited to LTS releases only.

All these xx.10 releases go into a VirtualBox guest so I can keep up with the crazy direction things seem to going towards these days.

I will also install new xx.04 releases into a VBox guest and if there are things in it that I think warrant a real install I will do that but the bar is pretty high so ...

[philinux]

IMH the 'stability' of any development project increases with time - you're noticing that 13.04 is pretty stable for your use now. Once 13.10 development starts being available it will be at the beginning of it's cycle - so it's possible that you'd experience much more instability than you'd be willing to endure. If your hard dive is large enough you might consider installing 13.04 final release in one partition and 13.10 in another partition, or a usb hard drive for trial.

+1. Me has a desktop with 2 hard drives. Stable on one dev on the other.

[pqwoerituytrueiwoq]

+1. Me has a desktop with 2 hard drives. Stable on one dev on the other.

only 2? i have my main ssd and a hdd for storage then i have a hot swap bay and 4 low end HDDs (two 80gb 3.5" 7200rpm and a 80gb/120gb 5400rpm 2.5") i can put in it for testing, i can easily unplug my main drives at my modular PSU

[howefield]

...so, only question is: will it be safe for me to continue in 13.10 or is it still "risky business"...

Can't imagine that anyone here can truly answer that one

There would appear to be enough coming along that the risk of disruption is high, but the reality may well be very different.

13.04 is shaping up to be a superb release, certainly on my machines it is performing sweet as a nut. So, I'll likely replace my 12.04 with it, and do a separate install of 13.04 to keep on the development release.

[kurt18947]

Can't imagine that anyone here can truly answer that one

There would appear to be enough coming along that the risk of disruption is high, but the reality may well be very different.

13.04 is shaping up to be a superb release, certainly on my machines it is performing sweet as a nut. So, I'll likely replace my 12.04 with it, and do a separate install of 13.04 to keep on the development release.

If the support time for non-LTS releases is now 9 mos., I'm going to keep an LTS and a development release. 13.04 is very stable for me as well but there's no assurance 13.10 will be as well. 12.10 was flaky on my machine, I would not have wanted to count on it for any sort of critical use.

[Mathor]

It's very easy for dependency problems to occur, especially with major packaging changes. With the work on Mir, I foresee that there will be a lot of compiz/mir regressions, leading to a pretty borked system, especially earlier on. I think it's a good idea to try to ride the wave into 13.10, as you will learn a whole lot about the infrastructure of your machine. However, do not think that you will be able to get by without some sort of backup or failsafe usb handy. I have been using the development version as my main machine for some time now, and I would be screwed on a lot of projects if I didn't constantly protect myself in that way. Happy testing!

[EgoGratis]

Until releases system changes i recommend 1 stable release for your main operating system and 1 development release for fun.

[grahammechanical]

Here is a quote from Mark

For those of you not aware, uploads to the edge get published in a special ‘pocket’, and only moved into the edge if they don’t generate any alarms from people who are on the VERY BLEEDING EDGE.

He adds

So you can use Raring (without that bleeding edge pocket) and get daily updates that are almost certain not to bork
you.

So, how do we get the very bleeding edge pocket? Activate the pre-release updates repository I guess. At present it is called raring-proposed. So, we can have Stable (LTS), Bleeding Edge or Very Bleeding Edge. Or a mixture. I am going for 13.04 as my stable OS. (Precise looks dated). This means I will have to upgrade to 13.10 and then 14.04 and then I will stick with 14.04 as my Stable OS and run whatever development branch is available. I agree with Mark:

There is a real community that WANTS a rolling release, and the daily development release of Ubuntu satisfies this need already.