On 5 October 2010 15:28, Tux99 <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Personally I think the way Mandriva maintains both updates and backports > for each release is a waste of resources. >
How is it a waste? A practical example is the college professor / school teacher (see Fernando Parra post a few emails back); he doesn't want to upgrade the boxes in the lab, he doesn't care if they have the newest/shiniest versions, just that the distro is stable and works(tm). The same applies for a company, servers... etc. We aren't talking only about personal boxes that can break without too much drastic consequences. > I do agree that Mageia should be a semi-rolling distro. > > By "semi rolling distro" I mean the following: > > Release a distro every 8-12 months (the exact cyle is not the point I'm > debating here, it could be 6 months too, it doesn't mater for the concept > I'm trying to explain). > > Provide updates/security patches for all the basic stuff that has a lot of > dependencies (kernel, core libs, kde, gnome, xorg, etc.). > > Provide newer release rather than backported security patches for all other > apps. > > In other words, backports (rather than backported security fixes) should be > the rule for everything apart from the core system stuff that has loads of > dependencies. > > This would reduce the space requirements on the mirrors and it would mean > that Mageia is a "rolling distro" for most apps, making it more attractive > compared to ubuntu/Fedora/opensuse and at the same time reduce the workload > for packagers. > > Again a rolling distro is something that's not clearly defined. And to be honest, a rolling distro isn't suitable for new or inexperienced users. Simply because you can't guarantee that a new package won't introduce regressions (or totally break an app), in this case an experienced user will know how to revert to an older version, a new or inexperienced user won't. Look at the rolling distros that've been mentioned, Debian or Gentoo, right? would anyone recommend Debian or Gentoo for a new/inexperienced/non-power user? -- Ahmad Samir
