Re: Dreamhost dumps Debian
On 21/08/13 19:08, Clint Byrum wrote:
> Excerpts from Kevin Chadwick's message of 2013-08-21 08:45:27 -0700:
>> My point of view is that Debian Stable should be aiming for whatever
>> they believe the sweet point between stable and so usable without having
>> problems is and maximising security. Aka maximising productivity and
>> safety with no other concerns or compromises.
>>
>> Large hosting companies not having made their scripts etc. good enough
>> to ride out upgrades well should have nothing to do with any decision.
>>
>> In fact they are best positioned man power wise to be able to set up a
>> test rig and then deploy compared to small hosting companies.
>>
>> Does anyone even know for sure what the decision to switch was actually
>> based upon?
>>
> IIRC, the blog post cites exactly that, too short releases.
There have been many comments about the 5 year security updates, but
some people (sadly) don't think about that anyway, there are plenty of
other decision making factors:
For many users, the server is under warranty for 3 years, they are
sometimes willing to risk or purchase another 1-2 years, total 5 years
useful life for the server. They pick Ubuntu LTS or RHEL because it
appears to be aligned with that.
At the beginning, they chose the server and OS together. Unless there
is a compelling reason, they don't want to risk upgrading the server
half way through its useful life, risking any changes to hardware driver
compatibility. They only want to spend time on those issues once: when
they buy the server.
Many commercial products also support legacy users and upgrades from
(current-2) or (current-3) rather than just upgrading from the last
major release. If Debian followed this model, then it would mean:
a) security updates for squeeze would continue until jessie + 1 year
b) a direct upgrade from squeeze to jessie (skipping wheezy) would be
desirable (though not essential)
Users who don't need or want bleeding edge stuff typically prefer to
progress at that pace
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