13.2: How long should I wait to install?

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1

I’m running 13.1 64-bit and all is well over the last 6 months.

  1. In my experience it’s best to wait a certain amount of time before installing a new release so many of the bugs are worked out. Any recommendations on how long I should wait to do a fresh install of 13.2?

  2. How long will I be able to use 13.1?

Thanks

2

On Wed, 03 Dec 2014 22:56:02 +0000, drhedberg wrote:

> I’m running 13.1 64-bit and all is well over the last 6 months.
>
> 1. In my experience it’s best to wait a certain amount of time before
> installing a new release so many of the bugs are worked out. Any
> recommendations on how long I should wait to do a fresh install of 13.2?

Depends on your hardware and your needs. If you need the fglrx driver,
you need to wait until AMD updates the driver to support Xorg 16.1.

> 2. How long will I be able to use 13.1?

Current lifecycle is 18 months from release, give or take - the future
release cycle stuff isn’t fully baked yet, so it may go longer than that.

13.1 also is an Evergreen release, so once the end of its life is
reached, Evergreen takes over for an extended period of time.

So, basically, you can use 13.1 for quite a while yet.

Jim

Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C

3

Hi

Here’s a quote from the wiki:

openSUSE releases have a lifetime of 2 releases + 2 months overlap. With a release cycle of 8 months this makes it 18 months.

Here’s the wiki: Lifetime - openSUSE Wiki

When should you install? Now is a good time, pretty stable already.
I’m using the cutting edge version Tumbleweed which is quite a bit ahead of 13.2 – and no troubles so far.

Cutlass between teeth, and charge!

4

Hi Jim, I see you are a bit more conservative than me LOL. Probably a good thing.

5

Thanks. It is on a basic laptop and main uses are web surfing with google chrome and firefox and some LibreOffice documents. That’s about it so probably a safe bet sooner than for most users.

Sounds like 13.1 will still have a lot of use left so no reason for me to upgrade at this point.

thanks

6

I’m notorious for not upgrading all the PCs in our apartment to the latest openSUSE and the factors that typically drive my decision are:

  • the date support runs out per the life cycle noted above
  • stories of those involved in the testing of the latest release and stories of those with similar hardware with the latest release
  • my own experience if I had time to test this release myself
  • what is going on in my own life in terms of upcoming business trips, vacations etc … and how long I can go without a specific PC working without impacting me

So to give you a flavour as to my current state:

  • My Ultrabook (2-years old) - running openSUSE-13.2
  • My ancient 32-bit PC (14-years old) - running openSUSE-13.2
  • My backup 64-bit PC (5-years old) - running openSUSE-13.2
  • My main PC (1-years old) - running openSUSE-13.1 - I may update to 13.2 during Easter next year
  • My wife’s laptop - running openSUSE-12.3 - she is mostly an MS-Window user and I may update her openSUSE to v.13.2 during Easter next year
  • My wife’s desktop - running openSUSE-12.3 - again she is mostly an MS-Window user and I may update her openSUSE to v.13.2 during Easter next year
  • My mother’s desktop - running openSUSE-13.1 - she lives a continent away from me, and I maintain her PC remotely. When I visit her next (in the autumn of 2015) I’ll likely update her PC then to the latest openSUSE

So you can see, I tend to have a mix of openSUSE variants - where useability, where compatibility/success stores of other, my own testing, the criticality of the PC’s use, and my time available drives my updates.
.

7

On Thu, 04 Dec 2014 00:06:02 +0000, swerdna wrote:

> Hi Jim, I see you are a bit more conservative than me LOL. Probably a
> good thing.

I actually usually wait a little longer, but 13.2 is pretty good, so I
went for it this last weekend. :slight_smile:

The fglrx64 driver is really the only thing that didn’t work for me,
everything else seems pretty solid so far.

Jim

–
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C

8

Actually, make a couple of good backups, verified.

Considering that you basically only do as you mentioned above, it is a good bet 13.2 will be quite fine for your needs.

And, if not, a simple restore from the backups has you right back to where you were.

Those backups are what everyone should be doing, first, anyway.:slight_smile:

9

This is all good information. Thanks for the advice!