Olivier Méjean a écrit :
Le mardi 5 octobre 2010 16:27:20, Ahmad Samir a écrit :
On 5 October 2010 16:21, Olivier Méjean<[email protected]> wrote:
Le mardi 5 octobre 2010 15:47:20, Ahmad Samir a écrit :
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.
No need to update. What on earth is that feeling that a rolling distro
forces users to update ?
Really? they wouldn't be interested in security updates at all?
I just say that updating is not something imposed, you are free to update or
not to update, you are free to just install security updates. Either under
fixed or rolling no one is imposed to do updates. When reading the topic i get
the feeling that some think that rolling distro means to be forced to do
updates.
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?
PCLinuxOS is a rolling distro and is to inexperienced users.
Olivier
And nothing breaks? no critical apps get broken in that model?
Personally I haven't use PCLinuxOS before, so can't tell for sure; my
guess would be yes, stuff break because new versions are prone to
introduce regressions. Note that this happens in cooker, which is
indeed a rolling distro.
From what i've heard (mainly former users of Mandriva who switched to PCLOS
because they did not want to change their distro every 6 months while wishing
to have up-to-date softwares) there is no major break.
Rolling distro does not mean no test for updates or no development version.
I find it odd for a user llike me to read that we can have a rolling
distribution unstable, but we can't have a stable rolling distribution
Olivier
The point is that to ensure that the distro collectively is stable, is a
lot more work than just ensuring that each single application works.
There are a lot of factors, such as timing and interaction between
modules that come into play. The advantage of periodic releases is that
these problems tend to get resolved.
If there is a constant flux of applications, that will be much less the
case.
If you are worried about updating as often (although it isn't a
difficult process), you can always update the distro release once every
12, 18, or 24 months, and depend on security and bug updates (of
course), and whatever backport and other updates wanted in the interim.
The advantage of the current system is that the various applications are
much more likely to play nicely together.
By the way, I do understand that many users have limited bandwidth for
download.
Maybe some sort of program to distribute Mageia DVDs - for a nominal fee
to cover costs - would be a good idea.
- André (andre999)
