Ubuntu: No more alphas, just one beta (The H)

[Posted October 31, 2012 by ris]

The H reports on a change in the Ubuntu 13.04 release process. There will not be any 13.04 alpha releases. "With there only being one beta and one final release of an Ubuntu version, the archive of code will now only be frozen late in the development cycle. This change could also allow for the introduction of Mark Shuttleworth's "Ta-da" features quite late in the development cycle, though currently it is unclear how they will be integrated into the tree; there could be a parallel testing effort for a version with those features included or if the features could be added earlier in the cycle to allow their testing to begin sooner."

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Posted Oct 31, 2012 19:34 UTC (Wed) by davidstrauss (subscriber, #85867) [Link]

This post crystallizes the fundamental tension between what Shuttleworth argues Canonical is doing versus what seems to be happening: lack of clarify around how the private work gets integrated into the final product.

Yes, many people and companies design, build, and polish work in private. Shuttleworth emphasized this in his posts. This is perfectly fine in a community context as long as the result faces the same rigor in review as work done in the open.

The issue with Canonical's approach is a combination of doing the work privately and having it skip the usual public process. Its inclusion seems to be automatic.

Canonical's approach is not inherently wrong; it's just disingenuous to frame the result as a community process.

Ubuntu: No more alphas, just one beta (The H)

Posted Oct 31, 2012 20:58 UTC (Wed) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]

umm, you do realize that even without the formal alpha/beta releases, they still have everything available for you to download and run throughout the process.

the fact that they want to add a 'ta da' moment at the end and as such will be developing a small number of things separately and adding them at the end really shouldn't be that big a deal, you can just ignore these new things if you want.

Ubuntu: No more alphas, just one beta (The H)

Posted Oct 31, 2012 21:05 UTC (Wed) by davidstrauss (subscriber, #85867) [Link]

> umm, you do realize that even without the formal alpha/beta releases, they still have everything available for you to download and run throughout the process.

Everything except what Canonical develops in private. The significance of fewer test releases seems to be that Canonical will probably drop in their "ta-da" components around the first pre-release, which will now be the *only* pre-release.

> the fact that they want to add a 'ta da' moment at the end and as such will be developing a small number of things separately and adding them at the end really shouldn't be that big a deal, you can just ignore these new things if you want.

I don't believe that. This decision to develop some things in private is clearly motivated by the long, lukewarm reception of Unity through its early iterations -- and I don't blame them for not wanting a repeat. But, when a distro changes something at that level, it's not just an issue of ignoring it.

Ubuntu: No more alphas, just one beta (The H)

Posted Oct 31, 2012 21:13 UTC (Wed) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]

I doubt the 'new feature' will be as big as unity. remember that it was optional a full release before it became the default.

In any case, I run Ubuntu and ignore Unity quite nicely. I just install a different desktop. :-)

Ubuntu: No more alphas, just one beta (The H)

Posted Oct 31, 2012 21:55 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]

That's probably how its going to play out.

I'm expecting "tada" "bombshells" to be confined nearly exclusively towards features that enhance the Unity desktop on initial reveal. I can imagine some feature reveals of this nature causing headaches for the Ubuntu community trying to field a GNOME remix, if Canonical needs to further modify the GNOME stack to deliver something new like a tweak of the gnome control center (if Unity hasn't reimplemented their own CC yet), but I wouldn't expect that sort of thing to show up late as big reveal. I fully expect these things to be very tailored to Unity initially and positioned as desirable unique features that differentiate Unity from other options.

Users of KDE as implemented in Kubuntu should probably be pretty safe from any blowback from a late breaking Unity desktop feature.

-jef

Ubuntu: No more alphas, just one beta (The H)

Posted Nov 1, 2012 1:34 UTC (Thu) by aryonoco (guest, #55563) [Link]

Indeed I'm finding Ubuntu 12.10 to be a very solid basis for running Gnome 3.6.

Just needed to add the Gnome 3 PPA, with which I got Nautilus 3.6 and Totem 3.6 and a few other things not in Ubuntu's respositories. Then all I had to do was change the theme/icons to Adwaita, and set gdm as the default login manager, and ta-da! I'm getting the 'full' gnome 3 experience right here on Ubuntu.

Ubuntu: No more alphas, just one beta (The H)

Posted Nov 6, 2012 7:43 UTC (Tue) by mgedmin (subscriber, #34497) [Link]

Interesting. When I tried gdm + gnome-shell on Ubuntu 12.10, I had two problems: one, the shell was using llvmpipe instead of a proper accelerated 3D (bad permissions on /dev/dri/card0 that I never tracked down due to issue two), and two, screen locking was badly broken and did not allow me to enter my password to unlock (and also did not let me use Ctrl+Alt+F1 or Alt+SysRq+K to recover).

I switched to lightdm and gnome-shell works now. (It didn't at first -- I would be kicked bad into lightdm as soon as I logged in, with no error information in ~/.xsession-errors. But then I logged in into Unity, logged out, and then could login into gnome-shell as well. All very mysterious.)

Ubuntu: No more alphas, just one beta (The H)

Posted Dec 2, 2012 20:03 UTC (Sun) by mgedmin (subscriber, #34497) [Link]

For the record, I switched back to gdm and could not longer reproduce either of the problems (DRI permissions nor GDM unlock issues).

I had some fun with gnome-shell crashing on unlock (https://bugs.launchpad.net/gnome-shell/+bug/1028149).

Ubuntu: No more alphas, just one beta (The H)

Posted Nov 1, 2012 8:41 UTC (Thu) by Otus (subscriber, #67685) [Link]

> The issue with Canonical's approach is a combination of doing the work
> privately and having it skip the usual public process. Its inclusion seems
> to be automatic.

They are in effect saying that they want to use the community to test and
report bugs on the implementation only, as opposed to the design as well.

If a feature is landed only in time for the beta release, there may be time
to fix some bugs, but not rethink the whole approach (until next release).

Ubuntu: No more alphas, just one beta (The H)

Posted Nov 1, 2012 10:41 UTC (Thu) by tcourbon (subscriber, #60669) [Link]

> They are in effect saying that they want to use the community to test and
> report bugs on the implementation only, as opposed to the design as well.

I think I'm gonna get beaten but this make perfectly sense for me. Using community input for design (like in "I want to make this pretty and usefull what do you tink ?") is a bad idea. We all have a sense of beauty and usefulness that's shaped by our tastes, use-cases and work-flows. "Design by comity" is an absolute evil when it comes to get to a sleek product.

Still, I fear the the line between design and implementation may be a bit blurry when it comes to desktop shell. I just hope they will seek input from the community soon enough...

Also what I understood from the "ta-da" announcement is that it was in fact the move from a process where features were designed and implemented behind the Canonical curtains to a process where well-know community member could take an active role in the development of such feature at a much more early stage, even if that means to not publicly communicate before the implementation testing step. I would summarize that as an opening, even if still not in what most people would call the open source spirit.

But I'm may be mistaken.

Ubuntu: No more alphas, just one beta (The H)

Posted Nov 3, 2012 17:24 UTC (Sat) by sahko (guest, #54088) [Link]

>I think I'm gonna get beaten but this make perfectly sense for me. Using
>community input for design (like in "I want to make this pretty and
>usefull what do you tink ?") is a bad idea. We all have a sense of beauty
>and usefulness that's shaped by our tastes, use-cases and work-flows.
>"Design by comity" is an absolute evil when it comes to get to a sleek
>product.

Couldnt't agree more. Not getting any input from the community worked exceptionally well for GNOME. :)

Ubuntu: No more alphas, just one beta (The H)

Posted Nov 1, 2012 1:25 UTC (Thu) by christian.convey (guest, #39159) [Link]

I think it's kind of crazy for them to want even LESS pre-release feedback on their ideas, considering the well-justified hatred which Unity has received.

I guess on the other hand, if they're not going to take our feedback seriously anyway, why bother with extensive alpha/beta programs?

Ubuntu: No more alphas, just one beta (The H)

Posted Nov 1, 2012 10:43 UTC (Thu) by tcourbon (subscriber, #60669) [Link]

They have decided to not release alpha anymore since people where not upgrading from alpha n to alpha n+1 soon enough to keep up with the development pace.

So they have switched to somewhat rolling release mode with bimonthly snapshot until the release of the beta version roughly a month before the final.

Ubuntu: No more alphas, just one beta (The H)

Posted Nov 1, 2012 9:30 UTC (Thu) by ancaemanuel (guest, #80012) [Link]

Read the blueprint: https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/foundations...