Debian, Sidux, Ubuntu, reference distributions for Rev

[Peter Alcibiades]

Agreed with most of this - in the sense that, you have to test against and
support the most commonly used platforms(s) when you ship product.  Also,
Andre's experience is familiar.  For me it was Suse and then what used to be
Mandrake, that made Linux into something I was willing to consider
installing for other people.

But that's surely not quite what's at issue with the reference distribution. 
The problem is, every six months we have a new Ubuntu.  Rather less often we
have a new Fedora.  The old release is not being updated in the meantime
(understandably), you are only getting security updates.  It is not a
rolling release distro.

So, if you say you have certified, which means tested, against your
reference distro, and its Ubuntu, and you have tweaked it so everything
works, OK, which Ubuntu?  Here are some dates:

8.04.................. .2008-04-24  (we are now on 8.04.4 I think)
8.10 ...................2008-10-30 (we now seem to be on 8.10.3)
9.10....................2009-10-29 (seems not to have had later versions)

10.04 is now in Beta so will be out shortly

You cannot 'standardize on Ubuntu' or use it as a reference distro.  Its
meaningless.  You have to specify a release.  The Ubuntus out there in the
market are not one release, they are a mixed lot of generations and updates,
and they are changing all the time.

If you really, really want to use Ubuntu, OK, pick one, but say which one it
is.  I think its silly, but at least if you specify that your standard is
9.10, or 8.0.2 or .3, you are saying something definite and verifiable and
people can install what you have standardized against.

When Jacque says, maybe bite the bullet and install Ubuntu, well maybe.  Any
one in particular?  All of them one after the other?

I'm not in charge.  They can do whatever they can make work.  This is what
we need:

A defined set of functionality
A defined installation that it works on
A commitment to get that functionality working on that installation if there
are failures.

And, if it does not work, and work right, on Debian Stable, you do not have
a product you can sell in the Linux developer world.  That has to be
accepted as a starting point.

Well, its a fine if cool day, and I'm off to fix my boat which has suffered,
like its owner, from a long cold wet winter.

Peter

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