On 07/12/12 04:31, aliasb...@gmail.com wrote:
It is a problem of stable vs rolling, the old story. I personally think
that the future is with the rolling distributions rather than with the
stable distributions, but not a rolling-on-the-second, just a simple
rolling-close-to-stable. Something that doesn't require reinstalation,
format etc...
But for this we need to change a lot of things first and we will face
the same problems as always :
- How often will we update the Installation ISO ?
- Is the base prepared to repair itself in case of upgrade problem
(which normally is handled by the user since he knows what he is doing
or else he wouldn't install a rolling distribution).
- Can the same base be updated not when the update is out but (for
example) every 5 years ? Would this corrupt anything ?
- How to handle new technologies ? Like Unity... if Ubuntu was Rolling
how Ubuntu would make Unity default and use lightdm instead of GDM
without asking the user to do anything (or even choose) ?
Only after those questions are asked correctly we will start to see
rolling distributions used in enterprises. I have myself a server
running Parabola, but I never updated it fully (only partially if any
security issue is going on) because I know that something could lead to
an important change that I can't predict and this could ruin my whole
installation.
But I'll be honest with you.. I am more of a Rolling Distribution Guy...
I just started to adapt myself (again) into the stable distributions
(since I can't get Parabola to recognize my printer every time I updated
cups) but a totally Free Rolling Distribution based on debian (since
they solve those kind of questions directly when packaging) could be
really awesome... If I knew how to build my how distribution based on
aptosid (or even Ubuntu or Trisquel) I would have already made one :D
Sorry, I forgot to say that I have been thinking about the problem of
bad upgrades. What about having a system that held backup risky
upgrades. Like xorg, glib, linux etc. Those how want too can install
them to test/conform that the are no problems and then the risky
upgrades get feed to the stabler installs of users. This way we get two
in one. Rolling and tested release based and unlike ubuntu the current
Libreoffice and Firefox versions!
It would be a compromise.
Now, How to keep upgrades back? Separate repo? Does that mean we would
need to have our own mirrors? Or a package that sets up the
excluding/delaying of upgrades according to a list on the Trisquel server?
