14 DAY TRIAL // Everyone is talking about rolling releases for the next generations of Ubuntu OS, but the founder of Canonical, Mark Shuttleworth, has a different opinion on this matter.
Mark Shuttleworth took some time to further explain why he is not a big supporter of the rolling release model, and he even said that they had taken a lot of feedback from the community into consideration.
“Change is warranted. If we want to deliver on our mission, we have to be willing to stare controversy in the face and do the right thing anyway, recognising that we won’t know if it’s the right thing until much later, and for most of the intervening time, friends and enemies alike will go various degrees of apoplectic. Our best defense against getting it wrong is to have a strong meritocracy, which I think we do,” stated Shuttleworth.
Before adopting such a release model, there are some issues that need to be addressed, especially because the strategy used so far in Ubuntu releases has worked and helped this Linux distribution become the most widespread open source OS.
Things like cadence (six-month releases followed by LTS versions every two years) and time dedicated to developing products and not launching them, are important factors that contributed to the success of Ubuntu.
Mark Shuttleworth also explained that the current development version followed a similar model to a rolling release, mostly because updates were being released on a daily basis.
“You can use Raring (without that bleeding edge pocket) and get daily updates that are almost certain not to bork you. There is a real community that WANTS a rolling release, and the daily development release of Ubuntu satisfies this need already,” the Canonical founder also said in his blog post.
The future of Ubuntu is being decided these days and very soon we will have a new schedule, one that will better illustrate the wishes of the community.