Re: Dreamhost dumps Debian
On Mon, Aug 19, 2013 at 5:12 PM, Vincent Bernat wrote:
> ❦ 19 août 2013 22:19 CEST, Clint Byrum
>
>>> Many people seem to justify a switch to Ubuntu LTS with the argument of
>>> 5-year security support. This support only applies for packages in
>>> main. A common example is nginx which is in universe. Packages in
>>> universe are just unsupported. They may or may not get any security
>>> support. If you need to advocate for Debian vs Ubuntu, I think this is a
>>> strong argument.
>>
>> Most places as large and tech-savvy as Dreamhost are happy to maintain
>> something at the core of their business like a webserver (i.e. nginx). It
>> is glibc, gcc, sshd, the kernel, bash, etc., that they don't want to
>> have to think about.
>>
>> The 2 year cadence has left users with very little time to actually
>> capitalize on their investment when upgrading. If one has 10 apps to
>> test and roll out on the new stable, and each app takes 1 month to get
>> there, and one starts immediately on release day, one now has 14 months
>> to recoup that time investment before one must start again. The only
>> real answer that makes sense is to continuously deploy on unstable,
>> but then you will suffer when a massive breaking transition begins.
>>
>> Those 5 year cycles just give users more cushion.
>
> Russ already replied and I agree with its reply. Just to say that Debian
> usually has a 3 year support. This is the kind of misguiding that I
> usually hear when people promotes Ubuntu over Debian.
I know already that this isn't a popular idea, but another option
would be to release less often. If releases were every 3 years, then
the support window would be 4 years, which almost gets to the apparent
sweet spot of 5.
Also, if freeze trends continue (10 months for wheezy), this has the
benefit of reducing the freeze/development ratio; 10/24 = 42% is a
rather large percentage :(.
Plus, Ben Hutchings is putting together a plan to add support for
newer hardware in stable releases:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2013/08/msg00090.html
Presumably, continuing to support newer hardware will improve the
useful lifetime of releases.
Best wishes,
Mike
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