[SLL] Debian testing to Stable: Is it forever woody or something?

[Glenn Stone]

On Fri, May 06, 2005 at 12:52:48PM -0700, Xeno Campanoli wrote:
>It seems like every year I come around to see if Sarge is stable yet, and it
>never is.  Has it been a decade yet?

This gives me a chance to address a point somebody tried to make earlier...

I noticed today (it's probably been there for some time) that Ubuntu
releases, while being based off Sid, and released every six months, are
maintained for at least eighteen.  This is a reasonable window for
Enterprise-class houses to maintain... especially given the whole "apt-get
dist-upgrade" functionality that makes upgrading a Debian-based box so
bloody easy... 

The difference in running Ubuntu and actually running Sid is that Ubuntu
takes the time to make Sid *stable*, and guarantee that it works... then it
*sits on it* for six months except for security upgrades.  But only six
months, so stuff doesn't get stale... but if it's Just Working and you Don't
Wanna, you can choose to miss one or even two releases before you've got to
mess with things again.  

And, yes, the Ubuntu crew make their stability changes available to the
Debian folk, so it's not like they're just mooching.  And they've also got
the new source-code thingy, Bazaar... which has the potential to be a Major
Contribution.  Which may even save Linus from having to to Git for very
long.  Not that having two would be a Bad Thing; KDE and Gnome are just
fine.  (Personally I like my GTK apps under KDE. :)

I've already got a workstation and a laptop running this; I'm seriously
considering migrating all my machines in that direction.  

(Oh, and you're going to ask, what about support?  That's part of
Canonical's business model, is providing support for it.)

-- Glenn