Syncing Distribution Releases
I was interested to read a recent post on The Open Source Advocate suggesting that all distributions sync their release dates. The idea is that every distribution would release on certain dates, allowing schedules not only for distributions, but also for upstream projects (projects that create software that is incorporated into distributions, for example Firefox) to be in sync.
I think this idea is great, because not only would this make sure that all projects are released at convenient times for other projects, but it would also be great in terms of publicity and unification. Let me explain.
If there were two days per year when hundreds of distributions were released, news sites would look stupid ignoring those two days. It is easy to ignore the release of any one distribution, but how can you ignore the release of 100s of distributions?
Additionally, rather than take away from smaller distributions’ publicity, I think it would help them. Let’s use this site as an example. When there is a major distribution release, I always mention it, but I usually ignore smaller distributions and even medium sized ones if I don’t see much interesting about the release. If all the distributions were synced, I would write a small amount about all the interesting new distributions coming out and I suspect I am not alone.
Another advantage of syncing distribution release schedules is giving Linux more of the appearance of being one unified thing. One common criticism of Linux is that there are too many distros. Syncing all the distribution releases would make it easy for new users to see that Linux distros are not chaos, but rather different people working on different goals while working together at the same time.
I really only see two potential issues with syncing release dates. First, some distributions release every 6 months while others release every couple years while still others have no set length of time between releases. For this reason, distributions should not necessarily release on every release day. Some might skip one or two between releases and others might skip an unspecified number between releases. As long as there are enough distributions that do release every release day, it will still be fine.
The second potential problem is making Linux seem too dictator-like. I don’t want it to look like there is some ruler of all Linux distributions, so instead of having one group that specifies when all distros must release, I say it should just be all the Linux distros that want to getting together and specifying a date. Again, as long as most of the major distros do follow the schedule, if a few little distros want to go by their own schedule, that’s fine.
I am certainly interested in seeing what you think, but right now I am thinking that syncing the distros would be great!
April 29th, 2008 at 3:35 am
Yes syncing distro release may sound good, but IMHO that can be a problem for the small distro or the more conservative ones (like Debian for example). I try to explain better: relaese a new distro is a big issue you’ve to test a lot of dependencies and package to make sure that all works smooth out of the box, and while this is not a big problem for the biggest distro like RedHat, Suse, Debian or Ubuntu for a small team this could mean can’t be able to release the latest packages in time. Ok you can say that is every time possible to release them as update at any moment, but I think that is better to have a solid and up to date base to start with. The same problem can be raised if the developer prefer to test for a longer period a package before move it in the stable tree.
That’s avoid too the problem of install a distro and then have to download a big number of update (even the sloooow Debian team make ISO the various version from time to time with the last update to avoid this).
April 29th, 2008 at 5:11 am
The other problem is that many Linux distributions are “Based on” another distribution …
CentOS on RHEL
Ubuntu on Debian
PCOS on Mandrake
Heck, RHEL is even based on a Version of of Fedora Core and SLES is even based on a version of OpenSUSE.
CentOS would need to wait till the next 6 month cycle to release after a major RHEL release … RHEL (or SLES) would need to wait 6 months after the applicable Fedora release (or SLES 6 months after the applicable OpenSUSE release).
The idea is silly
April 29th, 2008 at 10:59 pm
Johnny Hughes - Perhaps extending it to a week would make it easier while still having the same advantages?
Also, how many distributions would want to put out a release based on another distribution right after that distribution was released?
ercolinux - I believe what you are saying is that small distributions may not be able to meet the deadlines. That is fine. No distribution would have to release every release date (unless they wanted to.) Instead, they would just skip some dates when other distributions would release.