Florian Hubold wrote: > Our update policy already has an exception for Firefox, and so far there were > no bigger issues during updates from our initial 4.0 to 10.0. And if most > other > distros don't use ESR, we're kind of alienated, and users will ask why we do > that, > because we're not aimed at enterprise usage currently.
There have been plenty of issues in the transition from 3.6 to 10.0, and I'm not talking about Mageia specifically. There's been lots of extensions broken, major UI changes, functionality ripped out, etc. It hasn't been smooth or easy at all. Major changes in FF have never come like this in its history. If they are going to continue to make radical changes at the pace they have been, it's going to continue to be a headache. It's a pain for less sophisticated users who have a harder time adjusting to UI changes, broken extensions, and lost functionality. It's a pain for sysadmins who support these users, sometimes supporting them remotely. It's a pain for the distro to have to keep building these updates, deal with changed and upgraded dependencies, rebuild tons of dependent stuff, and have to try to QA something that's changing. Sticking to the ESR will mean less work for the distro, less stress for sysadmins, and less pain for users. It seems like an obvious choice. Yes, we all know there are users (sometimes more sophisticated, sometimes not) who always want the latest and greatest shiny new version numbers. I don't claim to have numbers to back it up, but I'd like to think that most users prefer major changes, adjustments, and possible breakage to occur infrequently, and only when it is expected (distro upgrade), rather than happening frequently and by surprise. I'd like to think that most would prefer things to continue to work, and work the same, and for updates to only fix bugs most of the time. I would also like to think that those who are overly obsessed about the new shiny version numbers can find ways to manage.
