I reinstall/upgrade openSUSE every 8 months. That’s fine by me, like spring cleaning really. But there are many (if not most) users out there who do not find that process trivial.
I think it would be nice if there was a “stable” version that ran parallel with the current 8-monthly development version. The stable version could be replaced maybe every 2 or 3 years and be supported for maybe 5 years (or “whatever”).
At the moment, the ppl who simply want Linux to be reliable during a phase in life e.g. to proceed through college or e.g. while building a business – those ppl don’t get the necessary stability from openSUSE.
I know there is Novell’s SLED Desktop version, but I’m thinking for the not-so-cashed-up ppl who can’t really afford to buy the subscriptions, who want to have free Open Source.
I wonder if such a “stable” version is feasible. Is it even desirable?
Hi
From what I have heard, it appearsUb and Debian 6.0 (also SLE11 SP1
and RHEL 6) will be the only one that will do that because of using the
2.6.32 kernel, alignment of the planets so to speak…
Yes, something like that, but not necessarily following Ub* as a model, just any model that allows for an LTS openSUSE.
It seems to me that two groups benefit ATM:
Novell via the manufacture of SLE* from openSUSE
Enthusiasts and geeks like us
But a very large audience misses out; namely the audience I mentioned in my opening post. Would it be so hard to satisfy them I wonder? Maybe it’s not good a commercially sound idea for Novell to divert resources to making an openLTSuse.
OTOH Canonical=Shuttleworth are brilliant marketers and economic strategists and they see merit in doing that sort of thing for Ub*
I wasn’t aware of that discussion, but it’s interesting. Perhaps it didn’t run very far from that point, haven’t seen anything along those lines developing.
Also, I don’t think it needs the serendipity of coincidence with 2.6.32. It probably needs only (as always) a perceived economic advantage to happen.
Trouble is, if Novell/SUSE isn’t going to do it, then it would be down to some cooked up arrangement. (For example, the Swerdna/Lewis partnership. You could call the distro ‘Swill’)rotfl!
As good as ‘Swill’ might be, I’m not sure I would throw my eggs in that basket.
Currently, if I were to be looking for LTS it would be Ub* or one of it’s derivatives like ‘Mint’. I’m testing that now in a partition.
If the resources are left anyway (though I assume they are not)… why not?
But honestly, I do not see much of a problem in upgrading openSUSE, definitely that is not something only “enthusiasts and geeks” can do. Preserving /home is pretty simple, the major work is reinstalling all the programs and other bits which are not on the install medium. Maybe it would be better to work on hot upgrades to be more reliable¹, that would save some time and hassle.
¹I have never tried a hot upgrade, so I can’t really describe them as “unreliable”, but they seem pretty uncommon.
OT: Isn’t it still allowed to write “Ubuntu” here or what’s going on?
OT: Isn’t it still allowed to write “Ubuntu” here or what’s going on?
We are both lazy and followers of tradition. No idea who, why, when, but Ub* has been used for Ubuntu for some time.
Ubuntu is not a banned work but some consider even mentioning it a cardinal sin.
I sometimes use it (Ub*), I visit the Ub* forum and participate there. I know others do;) Because they looked at my profile.
LMAO!!!
And I’m sure we could call the desktop SWINE, as it would be a pig to
maintain…
I think the bigger issue with any LTS Desktop version is that lack of
newer features that users are always wanting, for example I can’t see
you using KDE4.1 feature set for the next few years (did you ever try
the SLED11 version of KDE?)
A LTS server version might be possible depending on the required
feature set.
I think the bigger issue with any LTS Desktop version is that lack of
newer features that users are always wanting, for example I can’t see
you using KDE4.1 feature set for the next few years (did you ever try
the SLED11 version of KDE?)
I wholeheartedly agree. 18 months is a lifetime, I move with every release anyway.
I sometimes think I want my Box LTS, but then I come to my senses and realise I would sooner spend a few hours re-install etc, than suffer the pain and frustration of the older tech.
As it stands now, if one wishes to get the latest security updates, and also to get packages packaged by Packman, one is forced to update at least every OTHER openSUSE version or earlier.
I have 2 PCs in our family running openSUSE-11.1 and support for 11.1 is ending soon.
In one case on a laptop, I know from testing (a Fujtisu-Siemens Amilo 7400M) that 11.2 does not run well on this laptop, not due to any fault of Novell/SuSE-GmbH, but something tied in more with the kernel (since 2.6.29 or so) and Xorg. For 11.2 and 11.3 milestone-6, the laptop needs acpi=off to boot, and even with that, the behaviour of the Intel graphics is poor. In 11.1 the behaviour is VERY good. Bug reports have been raised, but progress is slow. Here is the latest bug I raised: https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=593463 … if one goes to the bugs.freedesktop.org site one will see many others on this same issue. There “may” be a fix , but from what I have seen it has not been picked up for 11.3 (likely because it has come too late in the 11.3 cycle).
So I am forced to either run this laptop with inferior graphics and acpi=off or run 11.1 with no security-updates nor any packman package updates, as Packman support for 11.1 will also drop soon after SuSE-GmbH support drops.
.
My mother’s PC in North America is running 11.1. Its been over 1.5 years since I last visited her place and I have not been able to update her PC to 11.2, nor test it with 11.2/11.3. If I am lucky I will visit her in Nov/Dec this year, but that is by no means certain. Hence I may not be able to update her Linux. I will not do an update over the Internet as it is too risky as if I break it, it is “game over”. Hence with 11.1 support ending soon after 11.3, it presents me with some what of a concern.
So while I prefer to update where helpful to the latest openSUSE version, its not always practical, and sometimes its not always practical to even update every OTHER version.
The problem, of course, is there is no obvious solution. For Novell/SuSE-GmbH to extend support (say for 11.1) costs them money. The utility for them in extending 11.1 support is limited to none.
As it stands now, SLED is not an option for me, as it does not perfectly match the applications on the OBS/Packman and hence the mass of 3rd party apps that I like to use, are not available for SLED. I’ve looked at, and rejected the idea, of installing SLED and picking the openSUSE version that appears “closest” to a SLED version. That works most the time, but not all the time, and “most” is not good enough for me.
But maybe thats another approach? Set up the Build Service to also package for SLED, and then encourage Packman and others to setup repositories for SLED with 3rd party apps. That would be enough for me to pay the money to move to SLED on selected PCs.
+1.
Best of both worlds: keep up with latest and avoid reinstallation and configuration hassle. My personal solution (for now) is to keep the old installation (currently 11.1) alongside the new one (currently 11.2). When 11.3 comes along, 11.1 will be wiped and 11.2 kept.
A free ‘LTS version’ of oSUSE would be bad for Novell, 'cause the popularity of the commercial SLE would go down.
If anyone wants what’s closest to a long-term support Suse release, SLE is the ideal option.
And really, the support period of an opensuse release is not short, unlike bleeding-edge things like Fedora. But i know some people here would like to see a longer release cycle …
Linux changes; always new ideas and innovations are coming up. Windows stays the same for years and years, gathering dust.
BTW I’m using Ubuntu 10.04 and it’s not bad at all. The Gnome theme has, thank goodness, been revamped and no longer the ugly brown (some folks say the new one’s like OS X’s theme). It’s almost what you could call beautiful (:P), something that couldn’t have been said for the Ubuntu before Lucid. And the things like desktop integrated social networking , ubuntu one , are just some of the things good about it. Lucid is much better than Karmic was. Still, SUSE has its own good features, that ubuntu can never beat.
> - My mother’s PC in North America is running 11.1. Its been over 1.5
> years since I last visited her place and I have not been able to
> update her PC to 11.2, nor test it with 11.2/11.3. If I am lucky I
> will visit her in Nov/Dec this year, but that is by no means certain.
> Hence I may not be able to update her Linux. I will not do an update
> over the Internet as it is too risky as if I break it, it is “game
> over”. Hence with 11.1 support ending soon after 11.3, it presents me
> with some what of a concern.
> So while I prefer to update where helpful to the latest openSUSE
> version, its not always practical, and sometimes its not always
> practical to even update every OTHER version.
I have the same problem.
Although my “remotes” are a lot more convenient than yours (a 5-mile drive
vs. several hours in an aluminum sardine can) I still hate the thought of
getting dressed and heading out in the dead of night to do the maintenance
without the entire office staff peering over my shoulder. Besides, these
systems are in churches and I lose half my vocabulary when I work there ;-(
Our weather is flakey (snow last night, for example) so all-in-all it is a
hassle when I can do it from home.
My solution has been to equip one machine of each type with a second hard
drive. I clone /home onto that second drive - got to get rsync going for
that - then change the boot menu on the working drive to reflect the new
setup. When done and satisfied with the update, a reboot simply boots to
the new system. If that fails, I have the office staff reboot to the old
(working) system the next morning. That’s simple enough for anyone to do
and I can then log in and check the logs, etc. until everything is working
well enough to proceed with updates and such. I keep plenty of notes so
that I can then repeat the successful operation on the other machines.
There are hazards to this. The ISP has a habit of forcing a new ip on the
link every so often or the network will hiccup but this works for me. I’m
not sure I would trust it for a trans-atlantic operation but it does keep
me warm, cozy, and near the coffee pot for 99% of the work I do for these
folks. After supporting them on W2K and XP for several years getting them
onto Linux has been a real blessing - if for that reason alone!
As a software developer of real time applications, it’s been a never ending problem with Linux and short cycles. Yes openSUSE is bleeding edge pumping out new releases every 8 months while retiring a previous. The problem I find is that I develop an app and test it on current versions and just about get all the kinks out so it can be made available as a stable app and an ealy tested version goes offline. Start testing for the new version just released and it’s back to drawing board cause all this bleeding edge cr** doesn’t always play nice. In the past 5 years I have personally mothballed over 25 real apps not because they wouldn’t be of use to users of Linux for certain situations, but because I could not justify the time to redesign and test for a constantly changing OS that never reaches common ground where the app can be deployed and USED by the community.
If you want long term stability, you will end up using a bit older versions of major applications, see e.g. Scientific Linux package list at DistroWatch.com: Scientific Linux. On the other hand you can install once and use these apps until the hardware is at least 5 - 7 years old. With Ubuntu LTS’s you need to upgrade at least once during hardware’s lifetime. OpenSuse has now a very short support period, so you end up installing quite often (every 16 months, supposing installation 2 months after release) if you are not ready to live without security updates.
Personally I like to have a bit longer update cycle, even if that would mean running unsupported for a while. Our laptop is still running 10.3 that replaced 9.2. It will have to last until the hardware is scrapped. Our new desktop started with 11.2. It will have to be replaced around 12.2. That would hopefully last until the hardware is obsolete. One notebook had SLED 10 and we stick to that to the end. Another notebook is on Ubuntu track 9.04 - 11.04 - scrap.
I would like to have a LTS version of OpenSuse, but I suppose most present users would not use it even if such existed. Most serious LTS users are already with RHEL and SLED or RHEL copies like SL. It could be of interest to OEM’s as an alternative to LTS Ubuntu or SLED but that makes no sense otherwise.
I agree with this assessment, but I think some of us might use it (if it was a commercial version (such as SLED)) and in such a case maybe the money paid for the commercial version might help offset the lower numbers of users to make help pay for some of the maintenance resources.
Still, for me as noted above, the absence of many 3rd party repositories for SLED is a blocking item stopping my use of SLED …
Also, from what I have observed is that as Linux evolves, it gets increasingly more difficult for packagers to package 3rd party applications for older Linux versions, hence even if there were many 3rd party repositories for SLED (such as Packman) by necessity it would have a decreasing number of applications available as the SLED version got older and older and diverged more and more from any more recent SLED versions (and diverged from openSUSE where the majority of 3rd party packaging takes place).
For me it is not so much a question about long term support (although at leas 1.5 years is desirable, 2 years would be fine I think for the average user.
It is more about usability. There is an enormous variability between the releases, some are really terrible others shine. The last really very good was 10.3, then 11.0. But 11.1 (which I am still running) is getting stable and smooth only NOW and still has a big number of things “arranged” and “wontfix”.
I will stick to it (probably over the lifecycle) not because of KDE3-4 issues (although I saw today that KDE4 only now is getting latex support, so a lot is still missing). More because of the opportunity cost. If the new system would run like 11.0 did, you install…and here we go.
But if it is like 11.1…I mean I have other things to do then to search for helpful information on the net, writing on forums and having software and system failure when I critically need my machine.
So since 11.1 I decided to run my "long term usage and read carefully between the lines of comments when a new release comes out. Because the big graphic-card problems you see them now with 11.2 more clearly, so I will never install that version that seem to suffer from several generational changes: Kernel/KMS change, KDE generational change…etc. Too much of a experimental thing for my needs.
So for me less a question of LTS (2 years however would be fine) but of usability and stability when released.
Fedora is supported for 13 months, or basically until every other release +1 month. But they are focused on “bleeding edge” and you can’t get that while maintaining an old release.
Ubuntu basic is supported for 18 months. This is handy because like I have 9.04 on my system and since 10.04 is not working out 100% for me, I’m still not rushed to upgrade to either LTS or non-LTS because I’ve got (just under) 6 months more before having to consider upgrading. By that time I hope they have ironed out 10.04 and maybe 10.04.1 will be released with fixes.
In the meantime, my server has 3 more years of support left (ver. 8.04 LTS, so 04/2008 + 5 years = 04/2013)
Releasing every 8 months isn’t too bad, and it’s supported for 2 releases + 2 months(or 18 months)! So it seems to be on par with the others, on the desktop at least. Maybe server installations need more time?
What I would love to see is a button in Yast that provides for backing up a list of installed applications and repositories into a text file so you can run an install and point to that text file to have all the applications you’ve already installed on top of the refreshed installation.
This would work whether you are installing a newer version, or refreshing a borked installation.
