[Gllug] Ubuntu and me - suggestions requested (polite ones

[John Edwards]

On Fri, Nov 14, 2008 at 09:11:55AM +0000, Chris Bell wrote:
> On Thu 13 Nov, John Edwards wrote:
> 
>> Ubuntu's 5 year support cycle for LTS (Long Term Support) releases
>> allow for a more planned rollout on servers than Debian's unplanned
>> release cycle.
>> 
>    I prefer to have releases occur when they are ready, not because of the
> calendar.

I can understand the technical reasons for that (Ubuntu 8.04 had
a lot of package bug fixes released in the first few months), but
businesses like to be able to plan ahead.


The problem is not so much that Debian don't have a fixed release
date, but that they don't have a fixed end of support date - just
12 months from the next release. This is fine for small scale
installations, but in a large organisation can you really find the
resources to test all your software on the new OS and deploy in 12
months? And then do the same thing again in a year or two?


If I install Debian 4.0/etch today, when will I be need to upgrade?
We can guess that the next release will be around the end of this
year, so I will need to upgrade by the end of next year. Given
roughly two years for a release would mean that I will also need
to upgrade 3 years into the server's life, then 5 years.

I've looked after servers that are now coming up for 8 years old
and still running. With Debian the server would be looking at it's
5th OS upgrade, with a long term support OS (eg Ubuntu or
RedHat/Centos) it would probably coming up for it's second.


I've met too many servers that are running old versions of Debian
that have not been upgraded, either because the downtime can not
be arranged or someone has relied on a particular software version.

I know that this can all be fixed from a technical point of view,
but given the choice many businesses would like to know how long
the software they use is going to be supported.



-- 
#---------------------------------------------------------#
|    John Edwards   Email: john at cornerstonelinux.co.uk    |
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