Better to stick to their bi-annual schedule, even if it means shipping a usable but not-quite-polished release, then polishing it in subsequent months. The previous versions, from 12.04 to 13.10, are more than adequate for anyone who can't risk upgrading to what is effectively a beta or release candidate.

From LTS I'd expect something more than not-quite-polished. Maybe polished-a-bit or slightly-polished.

Customer: "It doesn't work!"

Project manager: "But hey, we shipped on time!"

The majority of 14.04 installations will actually occur after 14.10+ comes out, from corporations currently sitting on 12.04, who will take a few months to evaluate 14.04, and then, finally, upgrade to it. It will be stable by the time they do this.

Because these corporations behave this way, it excludes them from the set of people Canonical has to worry about pleasing at release. So LTS releases, right on release, are actually allowed to be less stable than non-LTS releases. Because the majority of their useful lifetime, when anyone that matters is actually running them, will be spent stable.

That is pretty fucked up. The point of declaring a release, rather than just shipping nightlies, is to let people know when it's ready. Having a dog's breakfast of a major release (which 12.04 certainly was out of the gate) substantially decreases my trust in Canonical.

Think of it like this--if they waited to ship the release until it was stable enough for corporations to use... then corporations would still take four months to evaluate it, so they'd only start using it was it was four months more stable than necessary. It's a bit like cooking a steak: if you wait for it to look medium-done in the pan, it'll actually be well-done by the time it hits the plate, because it'll keep cooking in its own hot juices after you take it off. You need to take it off when it looks medium-rare, if you want to serve it medium.

It's absurd.

Late adopters wait because they'd like somebody else to flush out the early bugs. If this is actually Canonical's plans, that 14.04.1 is the first release expected to be stable, then if I were a late adopter, I'd just wait for 14.04.2.

The let's-trick-people-into-adopting-something bit is basically an attitude of customer contempt. It's assuming that the release knows the customer's business better than the customer does. Whether it's right or wrong, it's a dick move, and acts to decrease trust.

I'm sure that the vendor will gladly return the money paid for it.

You mean after the project manager has switched projects and management has voted itself a bonus ?

Absolutely.

The argument for rolling release in a nutshell.

I prefer the "we bottle no wine before its time" model. It's one of the many reasons I prefer EL distributions to Ubuntu.

14.04 is an LTS version of ubuntu though.

... which unfortunately means you're stuck with whatever's broken.

Sorry, i misunderstood your comment - i read "EL distributions of ubuntu" and thought you were using EL to mean LTS.

Not necessarily. It can be fixed in point releases. This has happened before.

I've only seen bug fixes in LTS releases, not changes in functionality that would address significant issues (at least under 10.04 and 12.04). Any significant change would be in a point release (e.g. 14.10) which is not LTS - so you can't have your cake and eat it too under this model.

> Better to stick to their bi-annual schedule, even if it means shipping a usable but not-quite-polished release, then polishing it in subsequent months.

Better for whom? Not for the people who take the LTS moniker seriously, I think.

Their bi-annual schedule is why Ubuntu has a reputation for releasing buggy, user-unfriendly software.