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

[Olivier Méjean]

Le mardi 5 octobre 2010 15:47:20, Ahmad Samir a écrit :
> 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.

No need to update. What on earth is that feeling that a rolling distro forces 
users to update ? 

> 
> > 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?

PCLinuxOS is a rolling distro and is to inexperienced users.

Olivier