Recently in WorksWithU Category

Notice how I'm doing quick entries on WorksWithU just about every day? That's because WorksWithU is one of the very best sites out there on Ubuntu and the enterprise, with a lot applicable to the average user as well.

In its latest entry WorksWithU reports on Dell's plans for the next Ubuntu LTS, 10.04, due as its numerical designator hints in the fourth month of 2010 (aka April).

What interests me more than the entry itself are the comments that follow.

The commenters on the post are talking about the idea of a Ubuntu LTS "rolling release" in which the base of the system maintains some consistency over the life of the release but the applications on top of it are updated/backported as they develop over time.

This is more akin to the Windows/Mac (and RHEL) style of system in which a full OS upgrade isn't required to get a newer version of an application such as Firefox or OpenOffice.

For instance, to get Firefox 3.5 in Ubuntu without using a backport or PPA (the newish "personal package archive," which I'm eager to learn more about and start using on my own systems), you need to be running the current six-month release, Karmic (9.10).

Jaunty (9.04) released in April of this year, still runs FF 3.0.x, as does the current Ubuntu LTS (8.04), which is now a year and seven months into its three years of desktop support.

Whether automatically, or by user choice, major apps such as Firefox could be backported into the LTS, either by Canonical/Ubuntu, or through a special Dell repository, I think many users would be interested in running them in the LTS and not risk basic compatibility on their "established" systems.

I think the idea has more merit than one might think. Saying that Windows and Mac OS do this and therefore Ubuntu (or any Linux) should as well doesn't carry much water. But the fact that Red Hat decided to update major apps such as Firefox and OpenOffice, along with adding new hardware drivers to the kernel, between point releases of RHEL 5.x shows that desktop users want the combination of a stable base along with up-to-date versions of the major apps they rely on for desktop productivity.

In short, I definitely think the Ubuntu LTS should move in this direction. As it stands now, the Ubuntu LTS is recommended to the casual/non-technical user as the stable choice, but I don't see all that much attention paid to the LTS for desktop users once the Ubuntu community moves on to the next six-month release.

It would be great for Canonical and the Ubuntu community to devote more development and testing time to the LTS over its life, and by making it easier for users of the release to stay a bit more current in terms of apps (while keeping the same base) seems to me to be a great way to make the LTS much more attractive to the desktop user.

That way if things blow up, as they have for me anyway, between six-month releases, then the LTS would be a more viable alternative. In moving away from the 8.04 LTS, I didn't need new hardware compatibility or new bells/whistles. What I needed was Firefox 3.5 and OpenOffice 3.1. I could've and probably should've looked into backports or PPAs, but it just seems so much easier to upgrade the whole distribution.

But it's not easier. Stuff breaks. I think a "rolling" LTS, would not only help users but would also encourage OEMs to install and support Ubuntu on the desktop. Seems like the proverbial win/win/win to me.