Comments on: Ideas to Copy from Red Hat

By: Andre Felipe Machado

Andre Felipe Machado — Mon, 19 May 2008 13:21:43 +0000

Hello,
the brazilian CDD effort http://brdesktop.org is an interesting approach, similar to what you are proposing, focused on desktop.
Their packages are already in SID.
The cdd will track Testing each 6 months, synchronizing with Stable at release.
Regards.
Andre Felipe

By: Co by se mohl Debian naučit od Red Hatu? (Debian-linux.cz)

Co by se mohl Debian naučit od Red Hatu? (Debian-linux.cz) — Mon, 19 May 2008 11:01:37 +0000

[...] na svém blogu článek, ve kterém vyzdvihuje pozitivní vlastnosti Red Hatu a navrhuje, aby některé z nich Debian převzal. Russellovi se především líbí myšlenka dvou větví, kdy jedna (RHEL) nabízí stabilitu a [...]

By: Laika

Laika — Sat, 17 May 2008 00:26:43 +0000

Synchronizing stable Debian releases with Red Hat sounds like a good idea.

Also, please see Joey Hess’s idea about “Constantly Usable Testing”. Almost all the goals he sets have already been achieved. You just need to decide that Debian wants to release snapshots of Testing and then, well, just do it. :)

http://kitenet.net/~joey/code/debian/cut/

By: etbe

etbe — Fri, 16 May 2008 23:00:12 +0000

Ani: You are correct, I was mostly thinking about the period around FC3 to FC5 (when I was last at Red Hat).

James and Jeff: It’s interesting to know that Ubuntu is doing what I advocate. I have never really looked into what Ubuntu are doing. I’ve got some clients who want me to do Ubuntu stuff so that will change in the near future.

Ubuntu would not cease to exist unless Mark wanted it to. I get the impression that Mark’s plans are much grander than merely running a distribution, so he would continue on his current course regardless. Maybe if Debian had done things differently before Mark decided to found Ubuntu then he would have done something different with his time and money, but only he could comment on that possibility.

This is a difference between Ubuntu and other distributions. Some distributions disappear due to lack of interest. But as long as Mark is interested he can make it happen.

Claire: Yes, I use RPMForge and have used ATrpms in the past. The current practice of having a single RPM for a repository that updates the list of YUM sources as well as providing the GPG key is really neat. But my experience is that they haven’t provided timely updates of programs such as Amavis/Clamav and that such programs are packaged in a way that makes them a little more difficult to use than the equivalent Debian packages, and generally more difficult to manage than the native Fedora/RHEL packages.

Andrew: There is a lot of debate about what changes should go into an update of a stable release. For my use the RHEL model is a better fit than the Debian model. There is of course nothing preventing the creation of a model which would have 4.0.1 and 4.1.0 being released at the same time where 4.0.1 has the most important bug fixes and support for new hardware and 4.1.0 has some new features.

What is the real difference between an Ubuntu 6 monthly release and a Sid snapshot with some testing and tweaks?

By: Andrew M.A. Cater

Andrew M.A. Cater — Fri, 16 May 2008 18:35:34 +0000

Red Hat has no concept of a “stable” release - they do long term support in version 4.x - but in fact 4.0 is significantly different from 4 update 4, 4.5 and 4.6 with changes throughout. So much so, that they’ve gone to 4.5 and 4.6 not as updates but as full point releases. 5.0 is now different from 5.1.
Debian is, actually, the only distro that does long term support and _doesn’t_ change e.g. versions of GCC in the middle “Etch and a half” with kernel updates to accommodate newer hardware is a good compromise. If you assume that you get a new Debian once every two years, with oldstable supported for about a year, a release of ” and a half” every 18 months is about right. ISTR Joey Hess doing “Potato and a half” or similar for a book. Ubuntu releasing every six months doesn’t actually help sustained development: snapshot Sid, add some “Testing” and do the user tweaks then it’s time to roll out with no sustained testing. This all IMHO

By: Claire

Claire — Fri, 16 May 2008 17:20:24 +0000

On community support for RHEL/CentOS/Scientific Linux — there are actually a few third-party repositories with a great deal of additional software compiled for these systems. RPMForge seems to be the largest, but there’s also ATrpms, and the Fedora folk put together EPEL (which is a bit more conservative both about what packages it makes and how they’re updated). Some of these folks are working on a consolidated repository called rpmrepo; although it seems to be taking a long time for the infrastructure to come together, I’m expecting that it will take away a lot of my packaging work for $WORK.

By: Ani

Ani — Fri, 16 May 2008 16:50:53 +0000

if you look at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/HistoricalSchedules you will see that Fedora sticks to 6 month schedule pretty well and it is not “9 months in practice”. Fedora is not Debian.

By: Jeff Schroeder

Jeff Schroeder — Fri, 16 May 2008 14:32:58 +0000

“”"
I think that if we had half-way releases of Debian (essentially taking a snap-shot of Testing and then fixing the worst of the bugs) then we could accommodate user demand for newer versions (making available a release which is on average half as old).
“”"

As a longtime reader and someone who deeply respects your opinion, you are describing Ubuntu pretty much to a tee. If Debian had been able to solve their social problems and do this a few years ago, Ubuntu would cease to exist.

By: James

James — Fri, 16 May 2008 14:12:52 +0000

Isn’t this exactly what Ubuntu’s 6-monthly releases are? Take unstable, fix the worst bugs (but by no means all, hence my comment on your previous post) and ship it on a regular schedule. There’s certainly a market for it, and plenty of community support.