23
Dec
The week saw this Kubuntu announcement being posted which mixes two news, reasons the one with the other and left some users imo rather confused as shown by this user comment: "IMHO this is a nice present by the Kubuntu Community and Canonical to the KDE Community". So what was announced?
Kubuntu 8.04 will ship KDE 4.0 as option/on an alternative CD (read KDE 3.5 will exist in Kubuntu 8.04 too). I guess this "news" does not surprise anyone. Also that the Kubuntu community developers want to focus on doing cool new stuff.
The real news is that Kubuntu 8.04 will be, unlike Ubuntu 8.04, no LTS release. LTS stands for "Long Term Support", meaning 3 years support on the desktop, and is a label given to certain releases by the commercial company behind Ubuntu called Canonical.
This is real bummer! So the next Kubuntu LTS we will see, if ever at all, will not appear before 2010. This leaves users/customers who eg planned to update from previous Kubuntu LTS release with a rather big gap by surprise. Ubuntu 8.04 LTS will happen as expected, just the KDE packages on it will have only 18 months support. This means also the KDE 3.5 packages! Would Canonical have the burden to maintain KDE 3.5 alone for further 3 years? No, as eg the KDE 3.5 as contained in SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 will be supported by Novell until 2011 (extended support even until 2013).
How the decision to support KDE 4.0 shall relate to not giving support (which basically is about critical/security bug fixes) for KDE 3.5 is a mystery to me. One is done by the community, while LTS is said to be a Canonical only thing. My guess is that from the community nobody will work on support at latest starting month 7 (when the next release is out) anyway.
Am I the only one who sees a growing discrepancy between Mark Shuttleworth, Patron of KDE as individual and who promised last year at LinuxTag to not treat KDE second class to GNOME, and what his company Canonical is actually doing?
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I think so the bad quality RC2 release give false impressions in Kubuntu developers.
Kubuntu 8.04 everyone will forget this in 12 months.
I'm NOT a developer, but an KDE (Kubuntu) user. I see Kubuntu 8.04 really as an in between release. Nobody wants to use KDE 3.5 over more than 18 months. KDE 4.0 is in-mature for using in a LTS release. The situation is the most worse for a LTS release. So it is wise not to do it.
But now there is a gap for people who wants to use KDE in a LTS version. The logical thing Canonical can do to help Kubuntu users with a slightly extend support of 20-24 months for 8.10 (So giving people 2-3 months to upgrade after releasing 10.04.) So people can use that release till the next LTS release. Resynchronize KDE 4.1 into Hardy is also a complete in-logical and time consuming operation.
Not the real truth :)
Hi Beineri,
ok, you right at "there will be no Kubuntu LTS release in 8.04".
You are wrong in saying "Kubuntu 8.04 will ship KDE 4.0 as option/on an alternative CD (read KDE 3.5 will exist in Kubuntu 8.04 too)."
KDE 3.5 and KDE 4 will sit on the release as equal partners :)
They will live in the "main" component, so there is a point of not supporting this release as LTS.
This comment is not about the "wrong"ness of this decision...there are a lot of discussions about this topic, and I think 75% of the people are not agreeing with the descision of Canonical.
Sad, that Jonathan had to announce it, because he's now the fool who gets all the blame.
And yes, the promises made during LT2006 are not from the table...
Merry Christmas to you and your family,
\sh
Re: Not the real truth :)
> They will live in the "main" component, so there is a point of not supporting this release as LTS.
Obviously being in "main" is not the unalterable criteria to define if something is LTS supported or not. KDE 3.5 packages are also in "main", right? The same way all KDE packages are now excluded could have been only KDE4 packages excluded by definition.
> Sad, that Jonathan had to announce it, because he's now the fool who gets all the blame.
I noticed that he didn't sign it with his name. What seems strange for this "open project" Ubuntu seems to me that nobody is actually saying who did this decision. I read in some #kubuntu-devel IRC logs something about "technical board decision" but then there is no log or announcement and I believe that's a community institution and LTS is a Canonical only label.
> And yes, the promises made during LT2006 are not from the table.
Good, let us hope the best for next year. :-)
Re^2: Not the real truth :)
Hi,
as I said, from the announcement (which is a GAU for marketing) it looks like that it is because of KDE4.
This can't be (and imho IS) not the real truth.
Truth is, Canonical could do a LTS with KDE3.5 and telling their customers not to support KDE4 at this state.
They didn't do this now...
Fact is, there are not enough human resources for providing support for KDE (forget 3.5 or 4) and this is the only commercial point I would take for granted for this decision.
The discussions on IRC or somewhere else at some private beer "tresen" doesn't matter, the community doesn't know anything (including me) and the developers got the decision slaped in their face.
Nobody from Canonical Management made this announcement, but Jonathan did with a heavy hearted attitude.
Finally, from a company and commercial perspective this decision makes sense, and if this is the truth, Canonical (or Mark) should be wise to announce this correctly. I think everybody will understand, and then rant about the promises last year.
From a developers and user perspective this doesn't make sense at all...
\sh
LTS probably just delayed, not skipped
So the next Kubuntu LTS we will see, if ever at all, will not appear before 2010.
I don't think it will be that late.
The latest possible option is 9.04 since the old LTS runs out then, but as it is usually better to have an overlapping period, they are more likely using 8.10 as the Kubuntu LTS
Think about it: doing the next LTS in 10.04 would mean guaranteeing an upgrade path over four years, skipping tons of intermediate releases.
Am I the only one who sees a growing discrepancy between Mark Shuttleworth, Patron of KDE as individual and who promised last year at LinuxTag to not treat KDE second class to GNOME, and what his company Canonical is actually doing?
From my point of view I rather interpret this as Kubuntu being treated as first class, being allowed to decide on its own timetable for LTS, allowing it to adjust better to KDE's release cycle.
Re: LTS probably just delayed, not skipped
> they are more likely using 8.10 as the Kubuntu LTS
Stop dreaming. If there will be no Ubuntu 8.10 LTS then there will be no Kubuntu 8.10 LTS. Canonical doesn't have the resources to label something LTS more than every second year (and there will be no customers demanding that either). Doing a Kubuntu 8.10 LTS would mean that all packages below KDE in that 8.10 specific versions would have to be supported for 3 years. That's a lot more effort than supporting the "few" KDE packages of 8.10 which Canonical is now denying to do.
> From my point of view I rather interpret this as Kubuntu being treated as first class, being allowed to decide on its own timetable for LTS, allowing it to adjust better to KDE's release cycle.
You're so mistaken. :-( Kubuntu community doesn't decide about LTS but Canonical. The release timetable isn't changed at all - it's still release every 6 month at same date as Ubuntu. But go and inquire Canonical when next Ubuntu LTS will happen if you're still confident in Canonical's LTS planning.
Re: LTS probably just delayed, not skipped
If there will be no Ubuntu 8.10 LTS then there will be no Kubuntu 8.10 LTS.
Hmm, they could probably release two versions in October, one with Ubuntu LTS core and updated KDE packages and one with recent Ubuntu core and exactly the same KDE packages.
Only one set of KDE packages, the rest is maintained by the core team.
Otherwise their their only option left would be to extend the LTS period of the current Kubuntu LTS version by at least another year so it reaches the 2010 LTS release.
This would IMHO be even more challenging for the Kubuntu developers, as doing a smooth upgrade without the intermediate step doesn't sound quite easy to me.
Re: LTS probably just delayed, not skipped
Did you consider that they do likely nothing of that because they simply don't care about Kubuntu?
Re: LTS probably just delayed, not skipped
Yes, I did.
I am a software engineer, I always consider the worst case.
I also always assume that being the worst case is enough motivation to work on better solutions.
Additionally it is a very limited worst case, since it only affects people using Kubuntu as a distribution to rely on.
Doesn't affect any of the continually upgrading people, which is quite likely the majority of *buntu users, and especially doesn't affect people like you and me who use something completely different (pun intended)
Might even be a bonus for distributions built upon Kubuntu, since they can now offer added value by giving an additional LTS guarantee for their KDE on top of the Canonical guarantee for the core.
I agree that it looks weird in the light of certain statements but only time will tell if Kubuntu LTS users are really abandoned or if they'll get their update later but still in time, i.e. 2009 Q2 release.