

Ubuntu 11.04 is going to be named the Natty Narwhal - mapleoin
http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/478

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dotBen
I'm a big fan of Ubuntu (server and slowly trying to ween off OSX onto Ubuntu
Desktop) and their regular release cycle is actually reassuring -- I've never
had major problems when upgrading, although I keep all my production servers
-1 LTS (all currently 8.04).

I'm not sure, however, what the big differences are between releases on the
server side (lots of improvement on desktop, sure). All I see is slowly
growing memory footprint but little performance gains or other benefits.
Anyone have a thought?

~~~
Andys
For what its worth, Server 10.04 boots dramatically faster than 8.04. I've
been able to reboot a VM in under 10 seconds (timed from typing "reboot" to
getting a login prompt again)

The main reason to upgrade Server, though, is to get access to a new
generation of packages which are considered stable. The stuff you get in 8.04,
while reliable, is getting long in the tooth features-wise.

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bryanh
Annnnnnnd Reddit just freaked out...

I'm always stoked for new releases of Ubuntu even though I don't really use
them much at all (except on servers). Is there any real reason to keep up a
release cycle like theirs when you can just update the apt repositories?

~~~
amackera
Momentum, I imagine. The best way to keep getting press is to keep making news
:)

~~~
SandB0x
It's also a lot more rewarding to work on something that's released regularly
than ploughing through a never ending queue of work.

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flatulent1
That was a refreshing piece. It's good to see Ubuntu doing so well, and it is
pleasing to hear that 11.04 will have some focus on more behind the scenes
stuff like making more use of powerful GPUs. VLC is already doing some of that
(an area where Mac users can envy their Linux brothers a bit). Hopefully many
other projects will follow with those sorts of under the hood improvements.
10.04 was slick, Good work guys

~~~
Zev
_VLC is already doing some of that (an area where Mac users can envy their
Linux brothers a bit)._

You are aware that VLC does work on Mac, right?

~~~
drv
The point was that only the Linux and Windows ports of VLC have GPU
acceleration currently.

~~~
Zev
Ah. I (mistakenly, it seems) thought that VLC used the framework that Apple
released awhile back for hardware accel as well. Whoops. Ouch, at -3 for that,
though.

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krschultz
I've always been a fan of their numbering scheme and regular release schedule,
but I'm not a fan of the 6-month interval. It seems a little quick to me. 9
months would be better (though irregular) in my opinion.

First off, if you are installing mid-way between two releases you basically
have 3 months before your distro is obsolete. I just put 10.04 on my laptop in
July and already I'm thinking about upgrading again (which has not always been
smooth, 9.04->9.10 sucked), and I haven't even gotten around to my desktop
yet, and now I just decided to wait until 10.10 because why bother doing it
now? So I'll still be on 9.10. It becomes a hassle for users after a while. I
remember when I was downloading the release on the night it came out and
updating my machine, but the releases these days are less and less noticeably
different.

I also wonder if they could accomplish more in 9 months than in 6, some
percentage of time is spent doing overhead for each release and a slower
release schedule would allow them to bite off bigger chunks. 6 months made a
lot of sense when it was a new project and there were a lot of low hanging
fruit, but these days I feel like the path forward requires bigger steps and
more time.

~~~
semanticist
I don't think a new release makes the old release obsolete - that comes when
they stop providing patches for it. If you're using an LTS release, like
10.04, you've got three years worth of support.

You don't need to update to the latest version every time - the 18 month
support window for non-LTS releases is pretty decent. It means that they can
have a quick release cycle to get support for new hardware out fast and get a
fresh round of attention for each new release while not obsoleting old
installs too quickly.

And if, like many people here, you feel the need to upgrade just because
there's something new, odds are there'd be something else shiny demanding your
attention anyway!

~~~
durin42
Honestly LTS releases are only viable for 3 years if you're OK with 3 year out
of date versions of software. They never import new major versions of
_anything_ , so you're stuck with whatever (eventually old and crufty) version
you got. Hardy was stuck on an old and crashy version of Pidgin for a long
time, whereas newer builds were actually much better.

~~~
oiuytghyuj
Isn't that rather the point of opensource? I rely version 2.xx of Blah, i want
security fixes to version 2 without being forced to update to blah 7, with all
it's new incompatibilities and bugs, just because somebody has a sales target

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wipt
FreeBSD 9 Release will be called... FreeBSD 9 Release.

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odradek
Narwhals! Narwhals!!

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykwqXuMPsoc>

