1. As long as you stay out of my sight, use whatever version you 
   wish. I don't care.

2. But if you want my help, or otherwise come complaining within my
   sight, you'd better be using or have tried things out on a supported
   release, i.e. the latest release on a supported "branch". (Ion3 or 
   Ion2; Ion1 available merely as a historical curiosity. Ion2 support
   will also cease when "stable" Ion3 is released. Not that there's 
   been much of a need to support it.)

3. Distros should provide only supported releases (with a reasonable
   delay, which two years isn't), or at the very least let users know 
   (in a manner that they can not ignore) when they're installing an 
   unsupported release. 

   The reasons are simple: a) if your distro is supposedly "stable", it
   is easy for you to think that the software it provides is "stable"
   too, and hence supported. b) And if your distro supposedly provides
   the latest software, of course you assume that the program you just
   installed is the latest. But it sometimes isn't. (This latter has
   seldom been a problem with Debian, thankfully. It was at some time
   with Gentoo, but I suppose nobody uses the ebuilds anymore.)

-- 
Tuomo

Reply via email to