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

Thu Oct 7 14:27:50 CEST 2010

On Thu, 7 Oct 2010, Buchan Milne wrote:
+
+> I don't believe that merely changing to some kind of rolling release will 
+> improve matters for end users, they will just be more confused when they find 
+> out that to install database support for OpenOffice.org, they need to upgrade 
+> all of OpenOffice.org (taking an hour to download ~ 70MB), instead of just 
+> being able to install openoffice.org-base (with a 2 minute download of 2MB).
+
+This is a misconception, even today with the current Mandriva system the 
+user has to download the same 70MB, since security updates are not diffs 
+but whole packages.
+
+To make it clearer, if the user wants to install oo-base at a later 
+point with the currend Mdv model he would have to download 20MB if there 
+has been no security updates since release, or 70MB if there has been a 
+security update in the meantime.
+
+Exactly the same would be the case with a light rolling distro.
+
+People who say that a light rolling distro (i.e. where only app upgrades 
+are made available mid-cycle, not the core packages) will increase 
+downloads for users are simply not thinking this through.
+
+No one is forced to download and install the upgrades, a user can just 
+only install those upgrades which are also security updates, just like 
+he/she would do with the current Mdv model.
+
+A security update or an upgrade imply roughly the same download size, 
+since in both cases the whole package is downloaded again, what differs 
+is only the version that's being downloaded not the size.
+
+The only real difference between the light rolling distro model 
+deescribed earlier in this thread by a few people (including myself) and 
+the current Mdv release model, is that security updates of apps are 
+provided through version upgrades whenever this is possible, i.e. 
+when the version upgrade is not a major upgrade with incompatible 
+changes.
+
+