Another factor why people don't test development distributions [LWN.net]

Another factor why people don't test development distributions

Posted Jul 7, 2009 8:34 UTC (Tue) by knweiss (subscriber, #52912)
In reply to: Another factor why people don't test development distributions by cesarb
Parent article: Why people don't test development distributions

There is another factor that reduces the amount of testing of development distributions: the stable releases work too well.

This is the optimistic view. A pessimist may say that people already face enough problems with the stable releases.

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Another factor why people don't test development distributions

Posted Jul 9, 2009 14:55 UTC (Thu) by elanthis (guest, #6227) [Link]

Seconded. I run into far, far, far more bugs in every Linux stable distro release than I did with even the Beta of Windows 7. It's ridiculous. I get why, sure -- hobbyist developers have the right to only work on what they want (they're doing it for free and most of us are just freeloading off of their hard work), and features and rearchitecturing are far more fun than bug hunting. Free Software evolves at a very rapid pace but many (not all, of course) projects tend to have very low quality assurance standards.

Fedora 11 has a lot of bugs. I have no doubt that Fedora 12 will fix all of those big Fedora 11 bugs and then replace 3-4 core system components with some "new and improved" do-over project that introduces a whole new slew of bugs.

Upgrading a Linux distro is a gamble. You want to get all the stupid bugs the current distro has fixed and hope that the new set of bugs don't impede your work/fun more than the old set.

I think a large part of this has to do with the whole release strategy of Linux distributions. Install a specific set of software. Get no updates other than critical bug/security fixes. 6 months later, install a new version of EVERYTHING all at once. Get no updates other than critical bug/security fixes. 6 months later, install a new version of EVERYTHING all at once, again. Repeat ad naseum.

You can't get updated software without updating everything, so it's impossible to test the bits you care about without being forced to test all the crap you didn't see a need to change in the first place.

Another factor why people don't test development distributions

Posted Jul 9, 2009 15:52 UTC (Thu) by kamil (subscriber, #3802) [Link]

Such selective updates are possible in, e.g., Gentoo. You can also skip on various rapidly evolving components -- my completely up to date systems do not have pulseaudio on them, and they are still running KDE 3.5.

Mind you, I'm not advocating that every newbee should switch to Gentoo; I'm just pointing out that there are alternatives to the "reinstall everything twice a year"-hell. There are costs involved, but to me at least, they are worth it.

twice a year hell, better than constant hell ?

Posted Jul 10, 2009 8:54 UTC (Fri) by langagemachine (guest, #56890) [Link]

>I'm just pointing out that there are alternatives to the "reinstall >everything twice a year"-hell. There are costs involved, but to me at >least, they are worth it.

Not 100% convinced about this. After 2 years running Gentoo, I have just decided to drop it in favor of an other 'rolling' distro (Arch Linux) on the ground that I spent more time fixing upgrade conflicts than actually using the computer (well, maybe not more time, but too much time).

I am fairly pleased with Arch Linux, although this week, a system upgrade hosed bash-completion; I could get it back thanks to a gross hack, but this has left me wondering about the whole 'rolling' distro concept: do constant upgrades not mean that you are constantly unsettling your system ?

So, update every week or upgrade twice a year, the hassle is probably the same ?

Come to think of it, perpetual unstability is character of life, as my biology teacher would teach us ...

twice a year hell, better than constant hell ?

Posted Jul 10, 2009 14:54 UTC (Fri) by kamil (subscriber, #3802) [Link]

There's some hassle with either approach, I'd just say it's a different sort of hassle.

If I update, say, the X server in Gentoo, I can expect and be prepared for some problems with, say, 3D, but I still expect the kernel to boot, sound to function, etc.

If I upgrade the whole distro, all bets are off. Will the printer still work afterwards? No idea.

I don't know which approach ultimately costs more time, I just know from experience that I personally found the distro upgrades more frustrating than individual package updates.