On Wed, 30 Mar 2011 11:38:14 -0400 Marc Deslauriers <marc.deslauri...@canonical.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 2011-03-30 at 11:00 -0400, Etienne Goyer wrote: > > On 11-03-30 10:40 AM, Chuck Short wrote: > > > I do not have the statistics in front of me, but I believe most of > > > users are using LTS releases of Ubuntu. The policy of > > > cherrypicking fixes from the development releases does not scale > > > in my opinon. We should offer PPAs for users who want to use a > > > new version of for example Apache. Or go through the list of > > > packages we support and see if we can get it to qualify as a > > > micro release update. > > > > Agreed. Some mechanism to "modularize" the distribution is in > > order. From an end-user perspective, it does no make any sense that > > you need to upgrade the OS to run a new version of Apache. I > > understand why we are doing this from the distribution perspective, > > and I know a lot of people are very attached to the way things are > > being done now, but it really baffles people coming to Ubuntu from > > other platforms at time. > > On the other hand, it doesn't make sense to break everyone's servers > every month when we update the apache or php version and the config > files/features/ABI change and their applications stop working. This is > the type of thing that enterprises dread...and is why IE6 took so long > to die... > > Most people in enterprise scenarios that I've seen who use stuff like > Apache on other platforms tend to install the latest version once, and > stick with that version for the life of the server once it goes into > production...foregoing any security updates. In fact, the constant > update of Apache to remain secure on Windows is one of the reasons > I've seen listed in security audits that recommend either migrating > to IIS, which remains at the same version throughout the life of the > OS, but gets constant security updates, or switching to Linux to > benefit from stable release security updates. > > Apache may be a bad example here for the type of application that > should get updated instead of fixed, as it is not something that is > stand-alone enough and updating it would have a great impact on > Ubuntu use in enterprise environments. > > Besides backports, there is also a process to obtain micro-release > exceptions. Unfortunately, upstream projects who don't change > ABI/config files/features with new versions are the exception and the > massive QA effort to test upgrading them in stable releases would be > orders of magnitude bigger than backporting a patch to fix a specific > issue with a specific test case. > > Marc. > > > Hi Marc, I agree with the points that you brought up and software such as Mysql and Apache are probably not a good idea for such a process because of their history. However I just wanted to put into people's minds that users do want to this. Like your experience in the past I would just install a server and leave it alone. But there is times where I wish the distro developers would have version X rather than version Y. As developers we have to make sure that we are making the best choice of backporting the packages that users want. chuck -- ubuntu-server mailing list ubuntu-server@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-server More info: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ServerTeam
