The question of rolling release?

[Kevin Kofler]

mike cloaked wrote:
> Arch has an extensive wiki and a lot of very helpful forums including
> a valuable announce forum
> 
> https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Main_Page
> https://bbs.archlinux.org/
> https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewforum.php?id=24

If you like what Arch is doing so much, why don't you just go and use Arch? 
Why should we become another Arch?

> When there are disruptive changes they try to announce any manual
> intervention required once a new package set of this kind is updated -
> for example a recent announcement was for the (unstable) KDE 4.8 which
> has an extensive discussion about what might be needed to watch out
> for as well as the opportunity for users to test it - when it is
> considered stable enough it will go out to stable with any suitable
> notes for what users will have to change manually after upgrading that
> package set.

It's not acceptable for an update, as opposed to a distribution upgrade, to 
require ANY kind of manual intervention, and this is exactly where rolling 
release models automatically fail.

FWIW, an upgrade to KDE SC 4.8 (from 4.7) should just work with no manual 
intervention at all. We know about 2 issues with configuration migration, 
but we consider them bugs and we're working on getting them fixed.

> Another example is the announcement and ensuing discussion when
> Gnome3 went to stable:
> https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=117876

Ouch! I'm not a GNOME user, but if I were, I most definitely wouldn't want 
GNOME 3 forced onto me overnight! That's a great way to lose users. There 
are already enough complaints about how Fedora 15 is not carrying GNOME 2 
anymore, imagine if you installed Fedora 14 (or a hypothetical Fedora 
Rolling Release Installer of some date close to the actual F14 release) and 
one day, your routine security and bugfix updates include GNOME 3! WTF?! 
That is just totally unacceptable. Fedora gave you 7 months to either make 
the switch (on YOUR schedule, not Fedora's) or look for alternatives.

> There appears to be quite extensive and helpful information available
> for users when there are major package updates - of course there may
> be wrinkles and problems occasionally

Indeed. That's exactly why I would NEVER use Arch on a production machine 
(and yes, I consider both my desktop and my notebook to be production 
machines; not only servers are production).

> but as has been said before in this thread dealing with the issues when
> updating a single major package upgrade is much easier to deal with than
> upgrading the entire system with potentially several major upgrades as
> part of a major overhaul.

Nonsense. That claim has already been debunked. See my other mails in this 
thread.

        Kevin Kofler