Ubuntu discussing moving to LTS + rolling release model

[Posted February 28, 2013 by jake]

Rick Spencer, Canonical's VP of Ubuntu Engineering, has put out a call to discuss dropping the "interim" Ubuntu releases, which are those that are not long-term support (LTS) releases, and switching to a rolling release model in between LTS releases. Spencer's "tl;dr":

Ubuntu has an amazing opportunity in the next 7-8 months to deliver a Phone OS that will be widely adopted by users and industry while also putting into place the foundation for a truly converged OS.

To succeed at this we will need both velocity and agility. Therefore, I am starting a discussion about dropping non-LTS releases and move to a rolling release plus LTS releases right now.

The ubuntu-devel mailing list thread is already getting fairly long, as might be guessed. The idea will also be discussed at the upcoming online Ubuntu Developer Summit, March 5-6.

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Ubuntu discussing moving to LTS + rolling release model

Posted Feb 28, 2013 20:07 UTC (Thu) by nick (guest, #447) [Link]

A spaced stable release together with a continuously updated unstable distribution? That model exists: It's called Debian.

Ubuntu discussing moving to LTS + rolling release model

Posted Feb 28, 2013 21:09 UTC (Thu) by pranith (subscriber, #53092) [Link]

The equally spaced stable releases in Debian exist only in theory. Ubuntu, on the other hand, has a pretty solid history of timely releases.

Ubuntu discussing moving to LTS + rolling release model

Posted Feb 28, 2013 22:14 UTC (Thu) by stefanor (subscriber, #32895) [Link]

Debian has had a pretty solid history of timely releases. Not time *based* releases.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/timeline/90acea...
(From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian#Releases )

Ubuntu discussing moving to LTS + rolling release model

Posted Mar 1, 2013 10:31 UTC (Fri) by engla (subscriber, #47454) [Link]

Debian's wheezy has been frozen for 8 months now, and unstable is relatively frozen as well during this period. It is not a rolling release.

Ubuntu discussing moving to LTS + rolling release model

Posted Mar 1, 2013 12:19 UTC (Fri) by yarikoptic (subscriber, #36795) [Link]

And will ubuntu still "roll" as much when Debian is frozen? ;-)

To me it all sounds again like the right step of reducing the huge gap initially introduced in ubuntu by making it too much detached from Debian. So eventually we might arrive at the right level of synergy between the community and company-driven projects

Ubuntu discussing moving to LTS + rolling release model

Posted Mar 1, 2013 13:05 UTC (Fri) by stefanor (subscriber, #32895) [Link]

> Debian's wheezy has been frozen for 8 months now, and unstable is relatively frozen as well during this period. It is not a rolling release.

And Ubuntu won't do that to produce its next LTS?

Ubuntu discussing moving to LTS + rolling release model

Posted Feb 28, 2013 20:12 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

I think the main problem was the naming convention - it can hold up only until 2018 (Ubuntu Zealous Zebra). Now they can stretch it well into 2030-s!

Ubuntu discussing moving to LTS + rolling release model

Posted Feb 28, 2013 21:28 UTC (Thu) by tnoo (subscriber, #20427) [Link]

well, they started with the Warty Warthog, so, like storms, this can go on indefinitely...

Ubuntu discussing moving to LTS + rolling release model

Posted Feb 28, 2013 21:54 UTC (Thu) by ewan (subscriber, #5533) [Link]

Does anyone actually believe that Canonical is going to base a decision on what their community think, rather than on what Mark thinks?

Ubuntu discussing moving to LTS + rolling release model

Posted Feb 28, 2013 23:33 UTC (Thu) by clugstj (subscriber, #4020) [Link]

I think Mark has already floated this idea, so I'd say it is a done deal.

Ubuntu discussing moving to LTS + rolling release model

Posted Mar 1, 2013 12:23 UTC (Fri) by fdrs (guest, #85858) [Link]

If I´m not mistaken, the guy who proposed it, is the VP of engineering ... So, i guess it does have some relevance

Ubuntu discussing moving to LTS + rolling release model

Posted Mar 7, 2013 10:53 UTC (Thu) by ortalo (guest, #4654) [Link]

Unless that Mark everyone always speaks about does not agree...

BTW, I am still wondering why Canonical is not a not-for-profit company. After all, that Mark already knows how to get too rich too fast so now he should be after work for glory no? (I admit I am jalous of not having gone through the first step - but the second is the one worth it. ;-)

Ubuntu discussing moving to LTS + rolling release model

Posted Feb 28, 2013 22:12 UTC (Thu) by zlynx (guest, #2285) [Link]

I think the real problem with this model is the probable lack of QA for long interval updates.

I ran into this with Gentoo all the time. If you update your Gentoo system every week you are good to go.

If, however, you wait a couple of months or more between updates something is almost certain to go wrong because the developers never considered data or configuration file conversion from version N-2 to version N, only N-1 to N.

Ubuntu *already* has this problem to some degree when you try to update from version 10 to 12.

Ubuntu discussing moving to LTS + rolling release model

Posted Feb 28, 2013 23:28 UTC (Thu) by heijo (guest, #88363) [Link]

Maybe they should stop having all sorts of dependencies and conflicts between things, and there would be no such issues.

Installing packages in their own directories like it is done on all non-Unix OSes would be a nice start, so you can't have file conflicts, and can install anything side-by-side automatically.

Then add a single configuration system that properly separates applications and distribution defaults, using prioritized option "layers", from user configuration, so configuration defaults can be upgraded trivially.

And so on...

But honestly, the distribution guys are all totally incompetent, since they had 20 years to do these blatantly obvious changes and did nothing, so I wouldn't put much trust in them.

Ubuntu discussing moving to LTS + rolling release model

Posted Mar 1, 2013 2:25 UTC (Fri) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link]

Sounds like you want GoboLinux:

http://www.gobolinux.org/

Or perhaps something based on the Nix package manager:

http://nixos.org/nixos/
http://nixos.org/nix/

Ubuntu discussing moving to LTS + rolling release model

Posted Mar 10, 2013 0:29 UTC (Sun) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link]

Actually you don't have to redefine the filesystem hierarchy like gobolinux do. This fall into what "linuxapps" are about (use containers, nor chroots).

But let the screening "security panels" for those containers be the most basic possible, or you'll have severe cases of "confused deputy" on your hands, and a flush of protests, because for most being "barred" by security is worst than a crashing app (those "containers" could have "capabilities" on the style or EROS OS, let the user choose most of the permissions, only emit the proper warnings... most of them will choose not really secure options in any case lol... but who cares ? its their responsibility clearly stated in the licenses)

OTHO nix approach is also very good, something worth to look into.

>But honestly, the distribution guys are all totally incompetent, since they had 20 years to do these blatantly obvious changes and did nothing, so I wouldn't put much trust in them.

sometimes i wonder...

Ubuntu discussing moving to LTS + rolling release model

Posted Mar 1, 2013 3:17 UTC (Fri) by ericc72 (guest, #41737) [Link]

I think this is possibly a great idea

Btw (in response to one of your responders), Gobo Linux seems dead, and I know NixOS is kind of new and experimental (hopefully they can try out some interesting stuff and see how it goes.)

It would be cool if packages could be packaged "upstream" or from the vendor where they could run on most distros because there was enough ABI compatibility that things just worked with these kinds of self-contained packages (if that were the case, more 3rd party paid apps might be release for the platform.)

I think OSX does things kind of like that with .app folders that are self-contained and exist in the /Applications folder off of root (meaning, everything is packaged in the .app folder.)

I never took too close a look at OSX Homebrew, but this seems pretty interesting as well:

http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/

I'm not a big fan of the OSX UI (the UI itself is okay, but when I click the green maximize button, I want fully maximized - I also really like the Windows 7 snap feature and cannot live without it on OSX when I am forced to use.) Nor do I like the walled Apple garden. Bring on Wayland and what I imagine will be some great ideas on the desktop once more mainstream (sorry, lots of talented people probably don't want to waste their time on outdated graphic stacks, but once something modern becomes more the norm, watch out, I bet we see some cool stuff -- this is not to say there are not talented people working on Linux desktop stuff, only saying it will be much more appealing once this transition more solidifies.)

But innovation in other means of packaging and all that, bring it on I say. There is room for some really cool ideas. And I think the current directory structure can coexist with something like the above.

Ubuntu discussing moving to LTS + rolling release model

Posted Mar 1, 2013 5:26 UTC (Fri) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

>I'm not a big fan of the OSX UI (the UI itself is okay, but when I click the green maximize button, I want fully maximized - I also really like the Windows 7 snap feature and cannot live without it on OSX when I am forced to use.)
You can use http://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/cinch/ for that. I think "maximize" can also be fixed by an extension.

Ubuntu discussing moving to LTS + rolling release model

Posted Mar 1, 2013 5:45 UTC (Fri) by ericc72 (guest, #41737) [Link]

Thanks for the tips. A quick search reveals some options. No different I suppose on my Win setup where I tweak quit a bit and run utilities that enhance the experience.

That said, I'm interested to see what sort of desktop innovation comes out of having a modern graphics "stack". I actually really like Linux in many ways, but there are things that get in the way of my "workflow". To have an awesome desktop (and I know for many it already is) that runs on the same underlying core that runs (my) server stuff, that will be great. Yeah, I can do it now, but there are still some nuances that are annoying (not that for Windows not using UTF-8 by default and CRLF line feed issues are not annoying too!)

Ubuntu discussing moving to LTS + rolling release model

Posted Mar 1, 2013 13:32 UTC (Fri) by renox (guest, #23785) [Link]

> That said, I'm interested to see what sort of desktop innovation comes out of having a modern graphics "stack".

*Sigh* I wouldn't hold my breath: Wayland is a low level evolution which will simplify maintenance of the low level GUI stack for its developers, so for them it's a nice improvement but I see no reason why it would provide "desktop innovation".
To say it differently: say you use Qt to develop your desktop environment/applications, Qt/Wayland won't bring much "desktop innovation" over Qt/XCB.

Ubuntu discussing moving to LTS + rolling release model

Posted Mar 1, 2013 20:56 UTC (Fri) by ericc72 (guest, #41737) [Link]

I hear what you are saying. I guess what I am thinking, or maybe hoping, is that the reality of a more modern graphics stack will "inspire" so new lower-level toolkit stuff or whatever. Maybe some really cool, simple, yet effective window managers, etc. in addition to desktop environment things. Basically, the fact that whatever gets created can now use a modern graphics stack with much better (graphic related) performance, might just inspire some stuff. Maybe even the same workflow stuff, but better (I don't mind the classic style desktop.) Just a more polished experience maybe.

Not a not not pun

Posted Mar 4, 2013 9:33 UTC (Mon) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link]

not that for Windows not using UTF-8 by default and CRLF line feed issues are not annoying too!

Not that triple negatives cannot be said to not be becoming uncommon :)

Ubuntu discussing moving to LTS + rolling release model

Posted Mar 1, 2013 17:32 UTC (Fri) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link]

Thanks for the link. I didn't try Cinch, not liking that sort of thing much in Cinnamon, but SizeUp is really nice — it helps relieve some of OS X's inherent "Steveness."

http://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/sizeup/

Ubuntu discussing moving to LTS + rolling release model

Posted Mar 7, 2013 16:41 UTC (Thu) by fatrat (guest, #1518) [Link]

Since this is an OSS forum, there's also Slate

https://github.com/jigish/slate

which does the same sorts of things and is OSS. I use it daily.

Ubuntu discussing moving to LTS + rolling release model

Posted Mar 1, 2013 12:27 UTC (Fri) by fdrs (guest, #85858) [Link]

You can use Warp and BetterTouchTool, and you ll have a quite usable MacOSX system.
I don´t use it anymore , as I do _really_ prefer using Linux as my desktop, but, after installing those tools, MacOS became quite usable.

Ubuntu discussing moving to LTS + rolling release model

Posted Mar 1, 2013 16:51 UTC (Fri) by dashesy (guest, #74652) [Link]

.app folders are not that special, they use some rpath trickery to separate the applications, and of course plist files. It can easily be done in Linux too, just use rpath and $ORIGIN properly.

Ubuntu discussing moving to LTS + rolling release model

Posted Mar 1, 2013 23:21 UTC (Fri) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

> some rpath trickery

Ha! OS X has the most complicated rpath logic I've ever seen. The library has to declare that it supports rpath for anything to apply, which seems…backwards. Not to mention that libA.dylib having "libB.dylib" as a dependent library is resolved relative to the executable opening libA.dylib, and not at all relative to libA.dylib :( . I can see why no one wants to rely on anyone else setting the paths via otool properly and instead just ships everything they need.

Ubuntu discussing moving to LTS + rolling release model

Posted Mar 2, 2013 0:02 UTC (Sat) by dashesy (guest, #74652) [Link]

Yes, it is backward. Since 10.5 OSX has @rpath that more resembles Linux rpath however. I am not an expert in OSX but had to do some fiddling when porting some library. This is what I figured out, if libA.dylib depends on @rpath/libB.dylib (shown in otool -L) then you can use install_name_tool to add_rpath of @loader_path/. which should make the path relative to libA.dylib.

Ubuntu discussing moving to LTS + rolling release model

Posted Mar 13, 2013 15:31 UTC (Wed) by regala (guest, #15745) [Link]

yes, and like any non-Unix OSes it could happily become a mess. Thanks but no, thanks, I prefer my Gentoo to look like a sane system.

Ubuntu discussing moving to LTS + rolling release model

Posted Feb 28, 2013 23:32 UTC (Thu) by clugstj (subscriber, #4020) [Link]

If you arrange it that you have to install every interim version, you can avoid that problem at the cost of wasted time and bandwidth.

Ubuntu discussing moving to LTS + rolling release model

Posted Mar 1, 2013 13:41 UTC (Fri) by jbicha (subscriber, #75043) [Link]

I'm thinking it shouldn't be too difficult to support upgrades from now ("R") until the next LTS (let's call it "S"), since Ubuntu already supports upgrading from one LTS to the next. Once the next LTS is released, you'll have to upgrade to the LTS stack first then you can hop back on the daily or monthly train ("T"). This allows that T train to drop the migration code for upgrades to S.

Although if you've gone a year or so without upgrading, then maybe you should just stay on the LTS.

Ubuntu discussing moving to LTS + rolling release model

Posted Mar 1, 2013 13:54 UTC (Fri) by redden0t8 (guest, #72783) [Link]

I'll be curious to see how Ubuntu handles it. It's definitely an inherent problem in a rolling release distro, but it's far from insurmountable. Of all distro's, I'd expect Ubuntu to try and tackle it since it'll the first(?) non-power user distro to try a rolling release model.

Example:
Keep configuration file conversion information separate from the versioned packages. Then if a user tries upgrading package foo-10 to foo-14, but there was a configuration file conversion between foo<=12 and foo>=13, the package manager knows to still do it.

Ubuntu discussing moving to LTS + rolling release model

Posted Mar 2, 2013 10:15 UTC (Sat) by jospoortvliet (guest, #33164) [Link]

http://opensuse.org/tumbleweed would be the first. But it isn't exactly what Ubuntu proposes or what debian has - it is more a have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too solution and not as truly rolling as say Gentoo is.

Ubuntu discussing moving to LTS + rolling release model

Posted Mar 1, 2013 1:43 UTC (Fri) by hadrons123 (guest, #72126) [Link]

Rolling release = high maintainence. You can't argue your way around it. I am really worried that all the newbies might flock fedora, that might force fedora devs to dumb it down still further than it already is.

Ubuntu discussing moving to LTS + rolling release model

Posted Mar 1, 2013 10:46 UTC (Fri) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link]

I assume the intention is to flock newbies to LTS releases, instead. It's doable if key applications (the ones that matters to users: LibreOffice, the browser, games and such) are kept up-to-date in LTS.

Ubuntu discussing moving to LTS + rolling release model

Posted Mar 1, 2013 12:34 UTC (Fri) by fdrs (guest, #85858) [Link]

I guess that's a very strong point.
I think the new user should really be using LTS, but, they to need to find a way to keep applications updated. Not the whole stack, but things like Inkscape, Gimp, Firefox, Chromium, Blender, etc...
Nowadays, if a graphics enthusiast comes to Ubuntu, and wanna try the latest version of Gimp, for example, he must:
- Get away from LTS
- Search for a PPA (too much work, lots of options.. which one do I choose)
- Download tarball from gimp.org website (completely bypass the package manager and makes things harder).
LTS users should have an 'oficial' way to use new applications. They already have the tools for that: ppa´s ..
They just need to sort things out
It´s doable, and, a rolling release + LTS (with updated _applications_) is a way better way (and more natural to users that don´t wanna update the system each 6 months)

Ubuntu discussing moving to LTS + rolling release model

Posted Mar 1, 2013 17:38 UTC (Fri) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]

The LTS model puts Canonical in a bit of a pickle strategically.

If Canonical really was competing with Red Hat on server iron, LTS made some sense.

But for a push into mobile? Working with OEMs who are pushing new devices into the retail market every year? Competing with Android which is revving out production capable releases on a yearly basis.

I really don't think mobile OEMs are going to want to sit on LTS releases.
I realise that Canonical is gearing up for the next LTS release to be very important for their mobile push...but then what. That LTS release is going to show its age within a year and OEMs moving new product will expect interface enhancements to keep showing up. I don't think the LTS model is geared to deliver what OEMs need.

We sort of saw this happen in their netbook push. OEMs didn't sit on the LTS release.

Ubuntu discussing moving to LTS + rolling release model

Posted Mar 2, 2013 10:21 UTC (Sat) by jospoortvliet (guest, #33164) [Link]

This is how openSUSE solved it: software.opensuse.org + one-click-install. A bit similar to PPA but better integrated as it is a part of our development workflos (oS builds its distro in a kind of github way).

Ubuntu discussing moving to LTS + rolling release model

Posted Mar 3, 2013 8:18 UTC (Sun) by misc (guest, #73730) [Link]

Yeah, everybody want to have up to date userspace, because there is some percentage of the user base who want it. Then, you also want newest kernel, because, there is new hardware to support. And of course, some new software requires new libraries, so you have to update them. So in the end, you end up updating almost everything, except glibc, and some low level plumbing.

Ubuntu discussing moving to LTS + rolling release model

Posted Mar 3, 2013 17:44 UTC (Sun) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]

That's not necessarily a bad thing. I think the fear of version number updates should be continuously re-evaluated to see if it makes sense, for a lot of software it doesn't. Software can have regular stable updates without breaking the world, browsers have been pretty successful and I'd argue that the kernel is fairly successful as well. Just because it's a "rolling release" doesn't mean that the version updates have to be uncontrolled, and what gets updated depends on how well the upstream community values stability.

If there aren't too many regressions and ABI stability then why not update and get the most bug-fixes rather than aggressively back-porting changes just to keep the number the same? Keeping ABI stability might also help protect you from dependency hell where everything is constantly being churned and broken, since it limits the amount of change you can do.

Ubuntu discussing moving to LTS + rolling release model

Posted Mar 1, 2013 4:08 UTC (Fri) by AndreE (guest, #60148) [Link]

I can't help but think that the rolling release is a far too heavy handed way of solving the issue of outdated software (which I'm going to assume is a big motivation). It's clear that some OS components should be on a conservative update path, whereas for others this is not hugely important. I've always like the FreeBSD dichotomy of system and world, and it would make a lot of sense to keep "system" relatively stable between releases whilst allowing the software in "world" to updated on a rolling basis. To me it makes sense that your display server or sound framework would have different updating policies to your IDEs, video players, and web browsers.

Ubuntu discussing moving to LTS + rolling release model

Posted Mar 2, 2013 11:09 UTC (Sat) by giner (guest, #89643) [Link]

> To me it makes sense that your display server or sound framework would have different updating policies to your IDEs, video players, and web browsers.
Make sense for home user but would be nightmare for huge enterprise installations. Even when Firefox updates from 18 to 19 for 100 users at the same time we can have 100 issues with a "corporate self-developed extension".

Ubuntu discussing moving to LTS + rolling release model

Posted Mar 3, 2013 2:50 UTC (Sun) by AndreE (guest, #60148) [Link]

Well, in the corporate case a rolling distribution is even worse. No corporation is ever going to move to a rolling release distro for their mainstream users if they find my a rolling world/system delineation too disruptive.

In any case, there is nothing preventing POLICY mechanisms being implemented anyway to prevent updates not pushed by the administrators. That's how it works in all enterprises and corporations I have worked in (using Windows and Linux desktops) : user very rarely have the ability to update software themselves, it is all handled centrally by the system administrators.

Ubuntu discussing moving to LTS + rolling release model

Posted Mar 1, 2013 9:06 UTC (Fri) by dowdle (subscriber, #659) [Link]

To me this seems more like a way to divert Ubuntu desktop developers to the phablet development. If you don't have to worry about getting out another Ubuntu release in 6 months or 6 months after that, you can spend more of your time working on the phablet stuff which, as they said, needs to get done in the next 6-8 months. Same goes for the UDC switch from physical to virtual... more phablet development hours become available.

Ubuntu discussing moving to LTS + rolling release model

Posted Mar 2, 2013 17:36 UTC (Sat) by andrewsomething (guest, #53527) [Link]

That does seem to be the sub-text...

Ugh

Posted Mar 4, 2013 13:43 UTC (Mon) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link]

"Phablet"... Is that a word? Ugh, it doesn't even look cool. In any case, according to the wikipedia article it is supposed to refer to a device between a phone and a tablet, not to the combination of phones + tablets as you seem to imply (the target of Canonical's efforts).

Ubuntu discussing moving to LTS + rolling release model

Posted Mar 2, 2013 11:05 UTC (Sat) by giner (guest, #89643) [Link]

If they have done this they also should have changed LTS release period from 2 years to 1 year. 2 years is too long period in terms of software updates.

Ubuntu discussing moving to LTS + rolling release model

Posted Mar 3, 2013 14:48 UTC (Sun) by xxiao (guest, #9631) [Link]

sounds reasonable to me, LTS for server and serious development machine, rolling release for fun.