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

Wed Oct 6 19:42:05 CEST 2010

>
+> Personally as a future Mageia packager I will try to concentrate on making
+> backports (apart from maintaining some specific packages) so in a way I
+> will be helping to make Mageia in practice a sort of 'light' rolling
+> distro as suggested by a few people in this thread.
+>
+> But I just want to say that based on my experience spending time since many
+> years on several Linux forums (not specifically Mandriva ones), I can say
+> for sure that the majority of 'normal' (non-geeks) users FEAR AND EVEN
+> HATE distro upgrades, they just want to be able to install new versions of
+> apps, not risky complete distro upgrades.
+>
+
+I can vouch for this as well. I help maintain 30-40 Mdv setups that I 
+volunteer to do on my spare time. They are all mostly up to date, only 
+about another 10-15 more to update to Mdv2010.1 -- Mageia soon. For most 
+regular users, a distro upgrade is pretty scary. I usually have to do a 
+lot of hand holding while we go through it and later over the phone. 
+They usually, want someone with installation experience nearby. As for 
+updating packages, in my experience, they will do it quite willingly. 
+They actually look forward to updating to a new version of their 
+favourite software -- the regulars seem to be Firefox, Thunderbird, 
+Digikam (most are using Digikam), Amarok, OpenOffice.
+
+> So a one year release cycle with lots of app backports (and maybe a kernel
+> backport mid-cycle if there is important new hardware support) is IMHO the
+> best release cycle for 'normal' users.
+>
+>
+
+I agree with this too. Most of the people I help will actually tell me 
+to forget about the 2 distro upgrade during the year as it is just too 
+much for them to worry about. I have moved most of them to a yearly 
+upgrade and only do it on the spring editions. They tend to be the 
+bug-fixed versions and lead to fewer phone calls for trouble-shooting. 
+Even then, some would rather stick with their version over the span of 2 
+years.
+
+BTW, a couple of these people have gone on to downloading ISO and 
+upgrading themselves (I've made up an installation form for them to help 
+them out). I have been doing this since Mdv2007.
+
+Marc
+
+