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On stabilityOn stabilityPosted Sep 9, 2010 8:51 UTC (Thu) by fb (subscriber, #53265)In reply to: On stability by roelofs Parent article: Debian squeezes out Chromium
> what makes Firefox and Chromium so special that they have to pop out a major new, compatibility-busting release every few months? Internet Exploder certainly doesn't; Safari doesn't (AFAIK); and neither does Opera (also AFAIK). This seems like a classic case of cranio-rectal impaction on the part of upstream.
When it's the Linux kernel release cycle, the words "release early, release often" come to everyone's mind, and the release speed is something of a lesson to be learned. An achievement of excellence with regards to software development.
Isn't the same thing that Firefox and Chromium are doing? Releasing early, and releasing often?
[...]
Firefox and chromium development cycles are focused on desktop users.
The position of "stability" in the priorities of many Linux distributions are IMO based on a "server room mentality": stability cannot be at _any_ risk, and there is a sys-admin. If new features are needed, the admin will manually do something about it.
Desktop users, in general, live a different life: (i) there is no "professional full-time admin" for the box (it must "just work") (ii) the whole point of that computer is to browse the internet, print flight tickets, and use VoIP. They need the features, and _some_ stability risk is an acceptable trade off. It just so happens that most desktop Linux users are comfortable as sys-admins.
Off-topic: FWIW _all_ desktop Linux users I knew during my PhD who were not comfortable as sys-admins are now MAC users. Every time I asked for the reason to migrate (these were people who had Linux installed at home) the answer was (in essence) that MAC/OS didn't require them to play sys-admin in order to get things to work.
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On stability Posted Sep 9, 2010 10:37 UTC (Thu) by nicooo (guest, #69134) [Link]
> When it's the Linux kernel release cycle, the words "release early, release often" come to everyone's mind, and the release speed is something of a lesson to be learned. An achievement of excellence with regards to software development.
The kernel doesn't bundle 17 different libraries.
On stability Posted Sep 9, 2010 12:14 UTC (Thu) by fb (subscriber, #53265) [Link]
>> When it's the Linux kernel release cycle, the words "release early, release often" come to everyone's mind, and the release speed is something of a lesson to be learned. An achievement of excellence with regards to software development.
> The kernel doesn't bundle 17 different libraries.
How is that related?
As far as I had understood both "roelofs" and "ringerc" were complaining about release speed, the time a release is maintained, and new features bringing new bugs. AFAICT that has nothing to do with bundling of libraries.
On stability Posted Sep 9, 2010 13:29 UTC (Thu) by nicooo (guest, #69134) [Link]
The excuse for bundling libraries was that it helps them release faster.
On stability Posted Sep 9, 2010 15:39 UTC (Thu) by ringerc (subscriber, #3071) [Link]
In truth I really like rapid releases - for desktop software on home machines, and in development tools/libraries. Bugs in software I use myself I can work around or fix, or I can roll back to an older version until the issue is fixed in a later release.
It's only when I have my sysadmin hat on and am responsible for the reliability of a network of machines used by other people that I start to want stability and time to fix things before the next update breaks everything all over again. Even then, I still really like rapid releases ... it's only when they're accompanied by the total abandonment of any support for any older releases that they bug me.
I do think FF and Chrome may be rushing into the future a little *too* fast - not in the sense of improving too rapidly, but in being unwilling to keep a release or two around for at least security fix purposes.
On stability Posted Sep 9, 2010 21:54 UTC (Thu) by roelofs (guest, #2599) [Link] As far as I had understood both "roelofs" and "ringerc" were complaining about release speed, the time a release is maintained, and new features bringing new bugs.Yup. AFAICT that has nothing to do with bundling of libraries. To the extent the bundled libraries are modified, it certainly does. And even where they're not modified, the mere fact that they're additional copies means extra pain when security issues affect (or may affect) them--particularly when the browser version is no longer maintained by upstream. But that discussion is more relevant to an earlier article. Greg
On stability Posted Sep 16, 2010 14:57 UTC (Thu) by robbe (guest, #16131) [Link]
The kernel community (Greg KH, with much help from others) do release updates to certain kernels, essentially creating upstream-supported stable branches.
I cannot see Firefox or Chromium upstream doing that. They seem to jettison support for older version once the new one is out.
Another difference is that the big distros seem to fund quite a bit of manpower working on the kernel. How many people have their Firefox/Chromium work paid for by a Linux distro?
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