Ubuntu Rolling Release Proposal
I'm sure the decision wasn't taken lightly, and I'm sure Canonical has concluded that an 18 month LTS + rolling makes the most sense for the project. As a user, I am a bit worried about rolling releases though. Maybe someone here can alleviate my worries?<p>As I see it, software has to change. The question for distros is just <i>when?</i>  A rolling distro sees such changes continuously, and each package may in principle change at any point independently of any other package. Doesn't that mean that at any point, my workflow-critical programs may change their behavior or even stop working together? Sure, I can do upgrades more seldomly, but then I'm left without security updates. The main benefit I feel that non-rolling distros offer is <i>predefined breakage points</i>. I know that Ubuntu Quantal will work the way it works now until I upgrade to the next release. Even simply knowing in what way software <i>is</i> (and will remain) broken is useful.<p>Now of course, one can stay with LTS and get the same behavior. I guess I'm simply complaining because the 6 month cycle was perfect for me.<p>At any rate, I would guess that most users only really desire rolling behavior for a few (dozens?) of packages. Ubuntu has that nicely covered with PPAs (and also "special status" rolling packages like Firefox).