Re: New releases query

Artnut wrote:

This has flummoxed me quite a bit. Some Linux flavors like Ubuntu, Fedora and others keep releasing their new versions every six months or so, much unlike Windows.

There is quite a lot difference between Linux and what microsoft offers, microsoft offers you just the basic stuff, just the operating system with some junk attached, while Linux distributions are offering a full package with operating system, office package, graphics manipulation software, compilers with IDE, server software, administration tools, spam filters and a lot more.

It's not uncommon that they keep 5000+ different packages up to date for you, come back the day when microsoft offers as much software with their operating system.


But what really is the need for such frequent releases?

There are many reasons why they tend to release a new version every 6 months, one is that software ain't something static, they tend to evolve and get new features, to get the benefit of all the new, you release a new version of the distribution. Even if you nowadays can upgrade a version to a newer one seamlessly, there aren't much point in first install a 4 year old version and then have to upgrade it to the level of the most recent version, as that would mean you have downloaded twice as much data than you had if you had installed the most recent version at once.


Does this prod Linux users to change over to the new release or new flavor?

This works quite seamlessly, I made my current install 2003 and it is still up to date and has everything the same version as if you would make a fresh install from the latest release.


While the enormous efforts of the open source community is highly appreciated, the question is why aren't the patches or upgrades released as it happened with WinXP SP2.

Patches should be released as soon as a problem has been detected, not wait 6months and fix that nasty security problem, or even worse when microsoft tries to kill off their products, they just leave really bad security bugs on patched to force people to switch to unstable products like vista.

--

//Aho
.

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