According to a Novell confidential memo dated June 14, Novell is delaying its next release of both the server and desktop versions of SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 "to address final issues with our new package management, registration, and update system and also fix the remaining blocker defects."
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Member since:2006-02-28
"So you advocate instead that they go with older packages of all the software"
Look lets clear things up a bit. I don't disagree that some of the packages will be a bit old when SLES10 finally ships. Assuming the SLES 10 is derived from OpenSUSE 10.1 then the packages are what 2-6 months old when they froze the packages for Release Candidate testing.
Lets face it when SLES10 ships it will take most 3rd party vendors 3 months to announce certification and support for SLES10. A lot of places (who favour support and stability) will not introduce SLES10 until their middleware vendor (SLES 3rd party vendors) announces that certification......which means by the time SLES10 can be integrated/upgraded in an existing environment the packages will be quite old.
So from all that I agree with you. Right or wrong that is their preferred test and release schedule to which they attempt stability.
The point you raised which I don't agree with is that your suggested changes can not be made this close to the release date. It would invalidate a lot of testing that has taken place not only by Novell but ISV's. As stable as the latest gcc/glibc/packages may be Novell can not take the risk of releasing an unstable SLES.
Enterprises are slow moving risk averse places and they are who Novell (and Red Hat) are targeting.
The main reason the company I work for use SLES9 is because we MUST use a certified platform for support from our middleware supplier. No certified platform == no support, and that is NOT an option.
So old packages are not preferred, but stable is the name of the game with SLES.
"In Gentoo,...."
I like Gentoo, but most 3rd party software vendors don't like fast changing platform - its a support nightmare. And thats why SLES and RHEL are the preferred distro's for most businesses (suppliers and users). I/we don't have to like it but thats the way it is.
Member since:2005-07-06
So you advocate instead that they go with older packages of all the software, despite the fact that the feature sets and bug fixes of the latest packages such as KOffice tend to be considerable in comparison with previous revisions? You sound like the maintainers of Debian Stable, which make the OS obsolete before they are even stabilized.
I suppose it's a balance thing, but people always equate older with more stable. In the open source world this isn't really the case as more and more bugs get fixed in later versions and improvements are made, especially between minor versions. Debian Stable isn't actually more stable or more bug free in terms of the software it uses at all, it's just more bugs tend to be known about.
Member since:
2005-11-15
>any of those distro's you just listed being touted
>as enterprise class software and sold with a 5 year
>support promise? Errrr No.
So you advocate instead that they go with older packages of all the software, despite the fact that the feature sets and bug fixes of the latest packages such as KOffice tend to be considerable in comparison with previous revisions? You sound like the maintainers of Debian Stable, which make the OS obsolete before they are even stabilized.
I don't advocate going bleeding-edge with *.0 releases of things, mind you. Hey, isn't XGL not even a full x. release?
>And that last point is also why there will be no
>last minute changes of the magnitude you suggest,
>thirdparty software support can make or break an
>enterprise platform.
3rd-party software almost always ships with its own libraries or with statically compiled binaries. Distributions generally frown on the practice anyway.
>You should think about the business implications of
>what you suggest.
I've been using 4.x and 4.1.x compilers for some time now. I've considered what I am suggesting quite a bit. The latest GLibC and GCC are extremely valuable contributions to the future of Linux, as are the latest versions of KDE and KOffice, if that is your favoured environment. If Novell isn't planning that far ahead, I'll be concerned for them, especially given the focus on Java and the improvements in GCJ/AWT.
>Oh and while you talk about Debian UNSTABLE, as
>Debian STABLE (3.1) was released June 2005 if the
>previous release schedule is anything to go by then
>GCC, Glibc and the other packages won't go >mainstream 2008 when their stability is assured.
Debian is probably the most conservative distribution around. Yet their Testing distribution is using 4.1.x for new binaries and they have 4.1.2-pre available already in Testing. I strongly suspect that they will deprecate 4.0 in days. Talk to most Debian users and they will tell you that Testing is the distribution they use, because Stable is obsolete. Unstable is a gamble, but they have already standardized on GCC 4.1.x and the latest GLibC (Testing is at GLibC 2.3.6 still).
In Gentoo, my issues with the new (to Gentoo) compiler have been next to zero, and the benefits of memory usage, software startup, etc. have been noticable compared to the 3.4.x toolset they were using before. Give it a shot with some of your code, if you haven't.
Edited 2006-06-20 15:38