The first UDS (Ubuntu Developer Summit) of the year has just started. It’s now an online event, held every three months, where Ubuntu developers and contributors meet and discuss future development goals.
Moving Towards Rolling Release?
One of the major topics for this UDS is the discussion on whether or not Ubuntu should start using the rolling release model. The LTS (Long Term Release) will still continue, as Canonicals clients value that, while the interim release is proposed to be dropped. That might mean there will be no 13.04 release in April.
Many ideas are floating around how to make this work. So far, northing’s conclusive, but it seems to me, reading mail lists and such, that many people want it to happen, even if this does cause quite a bit of disturbance among flavor developers, who have been planning for a release in April for the last six months.
X Window to be replaced by MIR
Many things were announced at the same time, and while the rolling release is still up for discussion, it seems that the move towards replacing the X window system with MIR is already decided. Of course, at this point nothing is for sure, since MIR still needs to be developed, and the change will not come instantly. The goal is for a full change by the release of 14.04 LTS.
This will be a huge change for the community, as it means either all of the desktop systems on Ubuntu will need to support MIR, or the current X window system will need to be fully supported by the community developerst, since Unity – the Ubuntu desktop system will not be using X, and thus, they will not be supporting it.
What will this mean for Ubuntu Studio?
Right now, we don’t really know. In many ways, Ubuntu Studio itself is quite flexible, as we do not actually depend on any specific windowing or desktop system (as long as our applications are able to run on it, though we prefer to stay with XFCE), and our main concern about the rolling release is really just will it be stable enough for users? Some of our users don’t need anything but a LTS, but that is a minority of our users. A potential rolling release will be our main release, and it needs to be good and usable.
