[PHILOSOPHY] Stability and Release Schedules

[Ralf Corsepius]

On Fri, 2006-04-28 at 11:19 +0900, Jens Petersen wrote:
> John Wendel wrote:
> > Why not have a continuously evolving 
> > distribution? One would start by downloading an "installer system" that 
> > would then use the existing mechanisms (yum, whatever) to update itself. 
> > From this point on, why would one need "releases"? Just keep releasing 
> > updates and new packages exactly as things are done now.
> > 
> > I know there must be something wrong with this scenario; would someone 
> > like to hit me with a clue stick.
> 
> For a start not everyone in the world has enough bandwidth for that: 
> so they need iso images to be able to upgrade for example.
What you say applies to those with _very_ limited bandwidth. They'd
obtain the ISO's from some off-line source.

For those with limited bandwidth, who'd download the ISOs first, then
burn them and then use their limited bandwidth for updates, the
situation is different. Not downloading the ISOs, but installing
directly from the net would spare them a lot of bandwidth and time,
because it would avoid them having to download packages (as part of the
ISOs) they have no use for, or have been updated/replace since the
release of the ISOs.

The same also applies to "late adopters" (E.g. people now installing
Fedora 4). Instead of wasting bandwidth on downloading ISOs, and then
replacing a large amount of the packages with updates on-line, they
could directly install the updated packages.

AFAICT, this is how many "lean" Debian derived distros (Knoppix?) work.

Ralf