RANT: "slow" release cycles my @$$!!!! (Was: Gnome to be removed from debian?)
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On Fri, 12 Feb 1999 23:03:35 -0600, John Goerzen wrote:
>It was not meant to criticize Brandon. Rather, it is a criticism of our
>EXTERMELY LONG release process which I have criticized before. If it were
>not this long, there would not be the problem. Had Brandon known it would
>have been so long, 3.3.3 could be included, but nobody could have predicted
>this really.
I think some perspective needs to be gained here. On the devel list I
constantly see people bitching and whining about the "long" release cycle of
Debian. In my view, those people need to get their collective heads out of
their collective posteriors and look around.
Time from Debian 2.0 to present: ~7 months
Time from Red Hat 4.2 to 1st mention of 5.0: ~7 months
5.0 - 5.1: ~4 months
5.1 - 5.2: ~6 months
(From the headlines of their news page)
Time from Slackware...
3.2 - 3.3: ~4 months
3.3 - 3.4: ~7 months
3.4 - 3.5: ~5 months
3.5 - 3.6: ~4 months
(ls -l in /pub/linux on ftp.cdrom.com)
FreeBSD, from the sample I have, is ~6 months per stable release.
Windows 3.1 -> 95. What, 4-5 years?
95 -> 98. What, 3 years?
BeOS seems to be clipping along at about 6-7 months each release.
MacOS, years? I dunno, don't keep track.
OS/2, years? I've not kept track in a while.
Here's my point to all of those people who whine and bitch and complain
about the "long" cycle. It isn't! As far as I can see, considering Debian,
last I heard, has the largest number of packages out, is by far, IMHO, the
most stable and tested distribution of Linux out, is in no way significantly
longer in its release cycle than other distributions of Linux! It is
significantly FASTER in release cycles than the commercial offerings and is
more robust and stable than they are!
Not only that, but it is *ONLY* on the developers list do I see these
complaints. I don't see them in the users list. I don't see them in the
newsgroups. I don't hear about them when I talk to users of Debian. I
don't see the press harping on it. It is a problem that exists only in the
minds of those who are used to running the cutting edge versions. And those
people, IMHO, will never be satisified with the release cycle no matter how
short it is. They should be riding the unstable tree.
However, stable releases are what has put Debian in 2nd place in polls
across the board. Rock solid releases. People who want stable releases
like that don't care if it takes 4 months (shortest release of Slack & Red
Hat I could find) or 7 months (longest release for Slack & Red Hat as well
as where we stand currently).
I know that if I were running production servers it wouldn't make a
difference. I'd keep up with the stable tree on most of my machines and
ride the unstable tree on any machine that might (I stress that word) need
it. In fact, where I work we run FreeBSD on the servers and that is exactly
what we do. On most machines we follow stable, on machines that stable
doesn't provide the needed functionality, we ride current. And not once in
three YEARS has any administrator there complained about FreeBSD's "slow"
release cycle even though the sample that I have places it at the same
approximate pace as the Linux distributions.
So please, can we just drop the BS bitching from people about the long
release cycles? I doubt if anyone outside of developer's gives a crap, and
the devlopers shouldn't worry about shaving months off the release cycle,
they should be worried about shaving release-critical bugs off the packages
they maintain.
End rant.
- --
Steve C. Lamb | I'm your priest, I'm your shrink, I'm your
ICQ: 5107343 | main connection to the switchboard of souls.
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