Ubuntu as Rolling-Release

Ubuntu could become a rolling-release distribution.

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Please edit your post to explain why you think it is a good idea. Your initial post provides no context.

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In the past few years at least, the development version has been pretty stable for day-to-day use. I haven’t used it full-time, but I’ve had it installed on machines I use occasionally, starting pretty early in the cycle, without encountering any major bugs. This gets you pretty close to a rolling version.

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I know, but no one downloads the development version…

Built an ISO, will post once tested. Looking for testers.

Please provide data for this assertion.

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@popey For the reasons you stated before. :slight_smile:

Posting the ISO now…

What reasons? There are many thousands of people running 20.04 already. In fact there are more people running 20.04 right now than most smaller Linux distributions added together.

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People absolutely should be downloading 19.10 (or indeed 18.04) and not 20.04, given 20.04 isn’t finished yet. We don’t expect all users to download the pre-release Focal Fossa, only a small number of enthusiasts typically download the development versions, this is normal.

Yes, we absolutely don’t expect normal users to use a development version of Ubuntu. It’s unstable, unsupported, no security updates are provided. We expect normal users to use our stable releases. That doesn’t mean we should start spinning out rolling (and thus unstable) ISOs.

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@popey Yup, but you see, Arch Linux for example, keeps the rolling release system in all their releases

Each Linux distro differs. That doesn’t mean anyone is doing things wrong. Ubuntu has a huge user base who rely on stable timely releases. While it might be interesting to consider a rolling release of Ubuntu in the future, an official rolling release isn’t something we’re working on at the moment. The focus is on 20.04, an LTS which people will be using for 10 years, so we should focus on that.

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Their could be a separate edition for this, then. We want to grow Ubuntu, not weaken it, and to do this we need to add more features and options for users.

You call the users of the testing version thousands, but you say that Ubuntu Testing has only few users through saying that Ubuntu Testing is not used by normal users.

Uploading the ISO :slight_smile:

What is your contribution exactly? You’re publishing a focal daily ISO rebranded as a “rolling-release”?

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This is not Focal, but another release. Also, it has been customised in many ways.

since 2012 you can use a rolling ubuntu when switching all your sources.list entries from $release to devel …
i.e. from:

deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ bionic main restricted

to:

deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ devel main restricted

this will keep you completely rolling on the currently available development release (with all advantages/disadvantages)…

along with that there is also a stable ubuntu completely designed around rolling releases, it is called UbuntuCore (not a desktop distro (yet) though )

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@ogra Are you referring to Ubuntu Core, which is meant for IOT? There are no plans for it to become a Desktop Distribution.

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