Ubuntu 14.10 the "Stealth" Release

No, I did not upgrade to Ubuntu 14.10. I do periodically check for reviews. Seems that this release of Ubuntu has gone virtually unnoticed. I wonder if that could actually be considered "good" news? I'm not after having having the most radical cutting edge operating system.

What caught my attention were two reviews, both of which stated that Canonical's policy of making two releases of Ubuntu annually was excessive. I have also believed that two releases per year is excessive. Consequently, it is great that this topic is being presented in print. Maybe Canonical will listen.

Ubuntu 14.10 review

If I were Mark Shuttleworth, I’d scrap this LTS release thing and reduce the number of releases per year to just one. That development model is being used by Zentyal, a server distribution that’s actually based on Ubuntu. But I don’t see Mark listening to any thing like that, so I’ll let it go.

Performance Based Ubuntu 14.10 (vs 14.04 LTS) Review: Less Responsive (can be fixed) & Boring

I firmly believe that it is a fundamental mistake to release a new version of any operating system every six months (there should at least be a 10-12 months time-frame). It is such a short period for making an OS that contains major new features but is also stable. Otherwise, new releases will have a tendency of drifting towards extremes (being buggy, or stable but boring…).

Ubuntu is not about to change the release schedule. Perhaps they should but they will not.

The kernel has a new version every 2-3 months. This is the policy of release early and often. This gives time for people to test between releases and look for bugs. The then release LTS kernels less often but these are the ones you see used in most GNU/Linux releases as they are more stable.

Ubuntu has pushed upstream projects for years to adopt release schedules that fit the Ubuntu release cycle. They have not been real sucessful at this but some have caved in to it.

What should be of concern to folks is the extended LTS for desktop versions to the 5 years that has always been the server edition EOL. This means the maintenance of many more versions for their devs and repo maintainers.

Server editions are pretty easy to manage in that time frame. It is things in the gui that are hard to maintain. Ubuntu has always been a little unstable in that department anyway.

I prefer to stick with the LTS releases, which are supported for five years.

If you upgrade to 14.10, which is only supported for nine months, you'll need to upgrade again before it reaches EOL in July.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases