“Customers and partners can sometimes make a difference. In accordance with their feedback and Mandriva’s analysis of the overall advantages and drawbacks of the longer development schedule, Mandriva decided to adjust the life cycle of the consumer oriented products to a shorter 6 month period.”
I am not surprised by this move. Yearly releases of a distro like Mandriva were bound to cause problems. With other distros releasing every 6 to 9 months, a distro thats released once annually tends to seem outdated when compared to those that release often and include the latest features.
you know a lot of peeple dont live for downloading gigabites of updates every six months. they just want it to work and they want it to work for a year or maybe 2 before they hafta mess with it.
I agree. Only geeks like to download new isos all the time. Windows releases new versions each 5 years or so, and this is perfect. Just update your system every now and then, and you’re good to go.
you know a lot of peeple dont live for downloading gigabites of updates every six months. they just want it to work and they want it to work for a year or maybe 2 before they hafta mess with it.
Then don’t change the entries in your repositories list and stick with the version you have. Most releases by GNU/Linux vendors have multiple years of support.
Upgrading is an option, not a mandate. If you value stability over new features, there is nothing stopping you from staying on the trailing edge.
On the other hand if it is a case of not willing to be on the bleeding edge, but still being envious of those who dare to go there, I have no sympathy for that.
It’s an either/or thing. Or you have all the new goodies, or you have stability. If you go for stability, you’ll have to live with older software that doesn’t have the latest whizzbang features.
You are right, not everybody wants to download new isos every six months. Others however will want to do that. There are several options. Pick the one you prefer:
1. keep the distro you have installed running for as long as possible. Mandriva still supports several older releases with bugfixes and security patches.
2. upgrade to the newest version if you think you need the latest and greatest.
3. install a distro that will be supported for a very long time 5 years), like centos.
4. install a rolling-release distro. It will never outdate and get its share of updates/bugfixes/patches
Ain’t choice a wonderful thing?
Am I wrong or this is the third time Mandrake/Mandriva change its release life cycle? Changed to 6 months, changed to 1 year and now back to 6 months
No, you are correct. When Mandrake became Mandriva in 2005 they announced that they would switch to a yearly release cycle at the request of their corporate customers and other users.
They have either misunderstood their customers or they are desparate to get back into the game.
They have been a second-tier supplier for many years now.
Edited 2007-01-20 15:41
no, he’s wrong – it’s the second time. we changed from 6 to 12 then back to 6. that’s two changes.
This is the stupidest thing to come from Mandriva in a good while. I had gone back to using Mandriva, precisely because they had chosen the right path, which is stability over the latest point release of a package.
This decision shows no consistency in their decision-making and no clear vision. Damn shame, because they have some really wonderful technology, but they are unable to communicate clearly where they stand and to stand by their decisions.
Urpmi is by far the best of the rpm meta-installers and mandrake’s security levels predate many of the security tools now in existence. Hopefully, Mandriva will one day grow a sense of purpose and have a management team that doesn’t change its mind every other day. They are beginning to sound like SUN used to sound.
If you look at my posting history, you will see that I have been a fan of the company for a long time, but I call them as I see them.
Bad, bad decision. In my opinion, the best would be to reserve 6 months to develop the distro (staring on 01 january), freeze the development in 01/07 and start internal testing, debug, and populate the repositories. And on 01/10 release the first beta to everybody test and report bugs.
I used LE2005 for more than 2 years and half and I loved that version. But some troubles with packages made me switch. The 2006 One is a huge disapointment. The instalation from the Live CD is a mess because X didnt start (I tryed in 3 computers, using a original CD), I have problems with init scripts that doesnt run well, packages with missed dependencies, bad performance. The 2007 had a very short period of community test. Perhaps one of the key success of Vista is that the first public beta was released more than a year ago? And MS have millions of beta testers around the world?
Today, for the average user, is much more important to have a stable release cicle than live on the bleeding edge. With the year release cicle of 2007, Mandriva made a bad work, why they think a 6 month cicle will make a better distro?
I am crossing my fingers to Ulteo become reality, because reinstalling SO is a lost of time and work.