[PureOS] Let's stablize PureoS Green

[Jonas Smedegaard]

Quoting Jeremiah C. Foster (2019-03-14 21:29:01)
> On Thu, 2019-03-14 at 15:10 -0500, Omar wrote:
> > 
> > On 3/14/19 1:52 PM, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> > 
> > > Quoting Jeremiah C. Foster (2019-03-14 18:57:44)
> > > > What do those folks on this mailing list think? Should we keep 
> > > > PureOS Green on Debian (Buster) Stable?
> > > 
> > > Above is strongly tied the related question of what to do about 
> > > cravings for exciting new $stuff as Buster (non-)evolves to become 
> > > steadily more boring over its multi-year lifespan.
> > 
> > I might give you another perspective from an intermediate user. What 
> > some of you 'OS nerds' ;) consider boring, I'm guessing the majority 
> > of our customers see it as a very functional, cool as-is tool to get 
> > things done. As long as privacy and security improvements don't get 
> > stagnant... And any customer that may be as advanced as you guys, 
> > will know the ways to make it un-boring :)
> 
> +1
> 
> I think the majority of our enterprise user base will feel the exact 
> same way.

Ok, so the majority of users would be happy today with...

  * Linux 4.9
  * GNOME 3.22
  * LibreOffice 5.2

Great!

I am not grumpy about that at all.  I thought I heard others in Purism - 
people _not_ in PureOS team - be grumpy about especially GNOME not being 
new and shiny - but possibly I misunderstood or our real users are far 
different and easier to satisfy.  Just great :-)


> > > Do we...
> > > 
> > >  a) Tell users to wait for it to become boring enough?
> 
> Yes.

Great!  I am happy to be mistaken.


> > >  b) Maintain a local fork as .deb in PureOS for each wish?
> > >  c) Maintain a local flatpak for each wish?
> 
> flatpak is going to be installed on the system so those who want
> cutting edge can turn to that. 

Do you confirm that we _will_ hire enough people to handle locally 
maintained flatpaks?


> > >  d) Tell users to include .deb/flatpack maintained elsewhere?

...or did you mean that we rely on externally maintained flatpaks?


> > > With a) I say yes let's do it.  But I expect others in the company 
> > > to not really want that option for several years, not even for 
> > > enterprise users.
> 
> What evidence supports this?

Evidence?!?

I have absolutely zero evidence about _any_ of the 4 scenarios: PureOS 
never explored any of them, so this is all pure speculation.


> I've generally received positive feedback when talking about stability 
> with the move to Debian Stable from other parts of PureOS. I have 
> received some anecdotal evidence along the lines you've stated, that 5 
> years is too long, but two years may be reasonable. H

So we bet on Bullseye being stable in two years, or we switch PureOS to 
being a rolling release in two years, or why mention that timespan?

I cannot promise a certain timeframe, but have evidence of historical 
pace of Debian releases: https://timeline.debian.net/


> What about providing a dist-upgrade to Bullseye when it is stable?

What about it?

As with everything else, there are the same 4 scenarios.

For scenario a) Debian supports dist-upgrade from one stable to next 
stable, so as long as PureOS tracks stable releases of Debian then 
PureOS is equally dist-upgradeable.

Any parts deviating from Debian is our headache to ensure upgradeability 
for, however. Currently we have practically zero testing - manual or 
automated - because we are currently a rolling release where upgrading 
is eternal: Anyone had problems last week?  Just try again this week, 
perhaps the problem fixed itself...

But if I understand correctly, we eliminate maintenance issues, 
including upgradablitity, by using flatpak for anything where Debian has 
evidence of maintenance being required.


 - Jonas

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

 [x] quote me freely  [ ] ask before reusing  [ ] keep private
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