The Debian treadmill [LWN.net]

The Debian treadmill

Posted Jun 1, 2006 17:56 UTC (Thu) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523)
In reply to: The Debian treadmill by corbet
Parent article: Ubuntu Dapper and the distribution business

As far as fact goes:

Debian 2.2 was released on August 14th, 2000 and supported until June 30th, 2003. This is close to 3 years of support.

Debian 3.0 was released on 19th of July, 2002 and will be supported until June 30th, 2006. This is close to 4 years of support.

The support cover the whole Debian distribution.

In contrast Ubuntu 6.06 offer 5 years on 'server systems' and 3 years on 'desktop systems'.

So Debian 3.0 so has provided a longer support on 'desktop systems' than what Ubuntu 6.06 is promising.

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The Debian treadmill

Posted Jun 2, 2006 0:21 UTC (Fri) by dlang (subscriber, #313) [Link]

the better thing to look at is how long a given release is supported after the next release is out.

the debian team is trying very hard to get etch released this year, so debian 3.1 would loose support by the end of 2007. This increased release rate in is recognition that very few people want to make new installs with old software (which is very different from the long support option where an old install doesn't have to be reworked for a long time)

the fact that Ubuntu is planning to continue to support this release for 6 releases (desktop) or 10 releases (server) is a huge difference from other free distros. debian by comparison is supporting a release through 1.25-1.5 releases, depending on schedule, redhat is supporting a release through 2 releases.

The Debian treadmill

Posted Jun 3, 2006 19:16 UTC (Sat) by pimlott (subscriber, #1535) [Link]

So Debian 3.0 so has provided a longer support on 'desktop systems' than what Ubuntu 6.06 is promising.

And how well is mozilla 1.0 supported in woody? In fact, supporting mozilla 1.0 in 2006 is a major effort, one Debian does not make.