[Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?

Tue Oct 5 15:47:20 CEST 2010

On 5 October 2010 15:28, Tux99 <tux99-mga at uridium.org> 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.
+
+> I do agree that Mageia should be a semi-rolling distro.
+>
+> By "semi rolling distro" I mean the following:
+>
+> Release a distro every 8-12 months (the exact cyle is not the point I'm
+> debating here, it could be 6 months too, it doesn't mater for the concept
+> I'm trying to explain).
+>
+> Provide updates/security patches for all the basic stuff that has a lot of
+> dependencies (kernel, core libs, kde, gnome, xorg, etc.).
+>
+> Provide newer release rather than backported security patches for all other
+> apps.
+>
+> In other words, backports (rather than backported security fixes) should be
+> the rule for everything apart from the core system stuff that has loads of
+> dependencies.
+>
+> This would reduce the space requirements on the mirrors and it would mean
+> that Mageia is a "rolling distro" for most apps, making it more attractive
+> compared to ubuntu/Fedora/opensuse and at the same time reduce the workload
+> for packagers.
+>
+>
+
+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?
+
+-- 
+Ahmad Samir
+