Following in the footsteps of distributions like Ubuntu and Fedora, the openSUSE project has announced it will move to a fixed release schedule. However, contrary to the two aforementioned distributions, openSUSE will have an eight month release schedule. The new schedule was announced in an email by release manager Stephan Kulow.
Having a fixed release schedule has many benefits, such as the fact that both third party developers as well as end-users can more effectively plan for upcoming releases. It also prevents postponed releases. However, it also has its downsides, such as the dangers of rushing out a release to meet the schedule’s deadline, even though it’s not ready yet.
The openSUSE team decided against the six month schedule employed by Ubuntu and Fedora because they believe they cannot ensure quality with such a short period between releases. “A six-month release schedule is not something we consider
feasible to maintain high-quality standards,” Kulow wrote in his announcement. Originally, openSUSE 11.2 was scheduled for September 2009, but the team decided to implement the new schedule right away, meaning 11.2 gets pushed back to November. The releases that follow look like this (with the names and changes being subject to change):
- November 2009: “Fichte” 11.2
- July 2010: “Rousseau” 11.3
- March 2011: “Voltaire” 12.0
- November 2011: “Lessing” 12.1
openSUSE 11.2 will include GNOME 2.28, KDE 4.3, Linux kernel 2.6.30 or higher, ext4 (maybe even as the default), a web interface to YaST, beter support for netbooks, and much more.
Took them long enough!
As long as they don’t prioritize the schedule over quality releases. I’d rather they hold a release back by a month to get some nasty bugs out than have it be released on time with serious problems.
6 is too little.
12 is too much.
Average is 9, which just happens to be what mother nature takes to create a child.
So i always thought 9 months would be the perfect timing.
Edited 2009-03-08 01:48 UTC
I thought the reason for a 6 month release schedule (in the case of ubuntu) was because Gnome was on a 6 month schedule. KDE as I understand is also on a 6 month, so why wou;dn’t SuSE do 6 months as well… by doing 8, some time down the track they will miss out of a new version of KDE… by a couple of months.
I don’t want to sound mean but what on gods green earth are you going on about? how can the ‘miss’ a new version of KDE by a couple of months? you first state that both GNOME and KDE are on 6 month cycles and how you’re claiming that some how they’ll miss their release? the two months leway will give GNOME and KDE to atleast put out a x.x.y release, so that one isn’t stuck with a .0 release of GNOME and KDE and instead have a relatively stable desktop experience.
Edited 2009-03-07 00:55 UTC
If they were on a 6 month release cycle, they could stay consistenly two months behind Gnome & KDE and use the newest versions.
By going with 8 months, at times they will be 2 months behind, or 4 months behind, and at times they will release at the same time at the new KDE & Gnome release. In the last case, they would not have the time to test and use the newest version, and so would be stuck with a 6 month old version.
I don’t think that that is such a big deal, just explaining how that could happen.
I think he was referring to KDE 4.4 (due in january 2010), not KDE 4.3 (which will be out in july 2009)
“openSUSE 11.2 will include GNOME 2.28, KDE 4.3, Linux kernel 2.6.30 or higher, ext4 (maybe even as the default), a web interface to YaST, beter support for netbooks, and much more.”
Alas we have to wait 8 months before we can enjoy so many goodies.
Using factory (as debian testing) you would enjoy much features earlier. Last year factory openSUSE 11.1 was mostly stable for use.
And openSUSE should think of also having an experimental repository (like debian not only has stable and testing but also unstable and experimental – in that order) to make factory even more stable!
Edited 2009-03-07 00:54 UTC
I like Debian’s “release it when it’s ready” model. Works well for PCLinuxOS, too. It’s all about the quality…
Exactly, keep it under wraps until it is rock solid.
Look what happened with Vista for example. Sorry, bad example, that one took years and in the end was still rushed out.
Another example : Duke Nukem Forever
oh wait…
The trouble with the Debian way is that it is outdated frequently and doesn’t get updated for years unless you use the sid branch. Stable is one thing, but being several years out of date can be a problem especially in the foss world where things change so rapidly. Debian 5 isn’t outdated now, at least not too badly, but in a year it will be and we won’t see a release for years after. I think something in between is a better idea, have a target release timeframe, but don’t set it in stone so that you can still concentrate on quality rather than holding precisely to a schedule.
Contrary to what you may have heard, Debian is not a “one size fits all” kind of distro. Instead, Debian offers its users several options, and using a stable release is only one of these options.
http://www.debian.org/releases/
A stable Debian release has the advantage that it is well-tested and should work for most users without major problems. The disadvantage is that the software in a stable release becomes increasingly outdated as time marches on. Using Debian’s stable release can be an excellent choice in the areas of computing where you really need some extra stability, like in servers and on the enterprise and production desktops. But a stable Debian release might not be an ideal choice for home desktop users and geeks who always want the latest and greatest and don’t care too much about stability and reliability.
These home desktop users and geeks are likely to prefer tracking Debian’s Testing or Unstable development branches instead of using a stable release. Users tracking Debian’s Unstable branch get the latest software that has been packaged for Debian, but they may also get bitten by occasional bugs. After Debian packages have spent a couple of weeks in Unstable and no serious bugs have been found in them, the packages migrate to Testing.
So tracking Debian Testing may look like an ideal way to use Debian on the home desktops (especially since Debian Testing now receives security updates) — Debian Testing offers you relatively up-to-date software and you can still avoid serious bugs that sometimes bite users who track Debian Unstable.
Unfortunately there’s one snag left: most packages migrate from Unstable to Testing automatically and newer packages may have different dependencies than the older versions of the same packages. These changed dependencies can occasionally cause dependency breakages when you track Debian Testing. The solution is to enable both Testing and Unstable in sources.list and to make Testing the default “release” in apt.conf, like explained in this HowTo:
http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?t=15612
Now that I’ve shown you how geeks and home desktop users can get more up-to-date versions of software in Debian, you will soon realize that the long release cycles are not really a problem in Debian. On the contrary, some people are frequently complaining that the three years that Debian usually supports its stable releases is not long enough time, because they don’t like to upgrade their servers every other year.
I’ve never tried this openSUSE distro, but the rather short release cycle suggests that it is not a good choice for servers. I’d expect it is only meant to be used on the desktop.
I don’t use Debian personally, but I noticed that enterprise distributions from Red Hat and Novell are outdated, as well. Maybe, not as much as Debian.
Some things make no sense. For example, Debian insisted on PHP4 as default PHP for long time. Maybe still does, I don’t know.
In 2006, 3D Realms clearly articulated their scheduling strategy regarding the game, first announced in April 1997:
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/14/164250
We’ll see nuclear fusion electric plants first. Possibly, fusion powered cars. And almost certainly several releases of Debian.
Edited 2009-03-07 17:29 UTC
I have yet to understand the fascination with these fixed release schedules. Any long time Ubuntu user will tell you that it has become more and more unstable with each release, as if the overall quality has been decreasing to the point that some people started questioning their QA process.
And anyone on their right mind cannot justify the inclusion of things like PulseAudio, which is clearly not ready yet, into a production release. Fedora is OK, because not only RedHat drives the development of lots of things on GNOME but they also never claimed that Fedora is stable. Fedora is as bleeding edge as it gets and never claimed otherwise (although it generally works out well for them).
These distributions should either define a feature-based release with a tentative release date so that people can still plan their migrations and won’t bitch too much if they let the release date slip by a month or two to make sure that it will be a rock solid release while also having a rolling release, “unstable” branch like Debian Sid, Fedora Rawhide and Mandriva Cooker with the latest and greatest for those that like to live in the edge.
Personally I think that Debian gets it right: Stable for servers, Testing for desktops (with Sid repositories for a somewhat fresher desktop) and Sid for the reckless people. ^_^
There’s nothing absolutely “wrong” with fixed releases in general. They can work just as well as non-fixed released if planned well. On the other hand, Ubuntu tries to add too much that they obviously can’t do successfully in only six months. In that case, they should either:
1. Delay the release.
2. Re-think their schedule.
Unfortunately, it seems they’d rather do neither, which means release on time (bugs and all) and keep their current, probably too-fast, 6-month schedule. Hell, I recall only a single Ubuntu delay in all the time I’ve been following it, and that was a long time ago. I’ve thought in the past that 6 months is possibly too short, and that 8 would likely be better. Over time, it’s just becoming more apparent.
Fedora is another distro with a 6-month schedule that I’ve noticed has the same problem with Ubuntu, or at least it seems. Congrats to openSUSE for deciding upon a schedule based a little more on reality than just giving them the right to say, “hey we release twice a year!” Hopefully if they end up starting to have similar problems as the other guys though, they do the right thing and actually do something about it.
I doubt that Ubuntu’s “marketing” team will allow them to switch their schedule any time soon, because the ability to say they release every half-a-year is probably quite valuable to their image. However, Fedora appears to be aiming to be largely a place to implement new bleeding-edge stuff for the further progress of Linux distros in general (and especially RHEL), so for them it’s somewhat tolerable under those circumstances (IMO).
Edited 2009-03-07 18:09 UTC
I’m not sure about that. Read this:
“He also pledged to deliver the next Long Term Support (LTS) release of Ubuntu, version 10.4, in April 2010 – unless, of course, Red Hat, Novell and Debian decide to co-operate on a synchronized release at a different time.” (source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/13/ubuntu_linux_synchronizatio… )
I’m in both the Debian and Ubuntu land, and with Ubuntu, you can also use a LTS-version, if you are concerned with breakage. That has turned out to be a pretty good way to avoid it.
OpenBSD has long been the poster boy for a reliable and successful fixed release schedule.
Edited 2009-03-07 17:39 UTC