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

[Marc Paré]

>
> 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