Re: testing and no release schedule
On Thu, Mar 25, 2004 at 04:47:12PM -0800, Adam McKenna wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 26, 2004 at 01:42:50AM +0100, Adrian Bunk wrote:
> > I like Debian for both technical and political reasons, but it's simply
> > impossible today to recommend to anyone to use Debian stable on
> > production systems.
>
> I don't think this is 100% true. At the company I work for, we still use
> woody on most of our servers (and we still even have potato installed on
> some).
>...
Even servers sometimes require recent software.
E.g. SpamAssassin from stable isn't that helpful on a mail server today.
> Perhaps Debian needs to change its product offering. We could have a server
> distribution (with a long release cycle) and a desktop distribution (with a
> short release cycle). Yes, just like every other major Linux vendor. No,
> this is not rocket science and I'm 100% sure I'm not the first one with this
> idea. So why aren't we doing it?
The server distributions of some other major Linux vendors (not all
offer server products) are roughly spoken the personal editions plus
additional fixes and features and equipped with five years of support.
Splitting Debian into two parts would create extra work and produce new
problems like testing all ways to switch between the server- and the
desktop-distribution.
Debian stable's quality is comparable with the quality of other major
Linux vendors' server products.
If Debian would manage to release once a year (e.g. half a year new
features and then half a year freeze) Debian stable would be suitable
for both server and desktop needs. It wouldn't be as current as e.g. the
latest SuSE but stability and easy upgrades would compensate for this
even for desktop users.
> --Adam
cu
Adrian
--
"Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
"Only a promise," Lao Er said.
Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed
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