[ale] Ubuntu recommendations

[JD]

On 05/12/2011 12:56 PM, Chris Fowler wrote:
> One thing that confuse me is when I get this warning "Partial Upgrade
> Required".  Does this mean that updates are no longer available for
> 10.04 and I now have to go somewhere in between 10.04 and 11.04?

Figured a different point of view could be helpful.
I've been running Ubuntu systems the last 5 yrs or so.

If you have/start with an LTS, then you can stay with LTS upgrades. 
8.04 --> 10.04 --> 12.04

At any point, you can switch to 6 month releases. 8.04 --> 8.10 --> 9.04 
--> 9.10 --> 10.04 --> 10.10 --> 11.04 ...

However, you may want to switch file systems or other infrastructure 
things along the way that is best performed through a fresh install. 
Sometimes the upgrades on the non-LTS stuff can be rough.  Also, I've 
found non-LTS releases to be less stable.  For example, Natty desktop 
running Unity-3D or even Unity-2D won't stay up more than a few days 
here.  My 10.04 desktop AND servers only go down when I ask them to due 
to a kernel update.  I'm still running about (15) 8.04 LTS servers here 
too which will continue to get patches until May 1013 or later. I didn't 
look it up. Those are all rock solid and fully patched.

Support for "desktops" is shorter, perhaps 2 yrs?  Servers using LTS 
releases are supported/patched for 5 yrs.

There is a downside.  At a certain point support becomes only security 
related updates. That means you won't see FF4 on 10.04 in the Ubuntu 
default package repos. You can find a PPA or grab the .DEB file and load 
it, however. OTOH, if you're running an old server, chances are it is 
for a reason.

For servers, I like to be at least a few months behind and only use LTS 
versions.

For desktops, I'll stay a few months behind, but will try out the latest 
release inside a VM or 5.  Having a newer desktop release means that all 
those web-2 apps are probably updated and working. On 10.04, Gwibber 
stopped working for me with twitter, but still works for Identi.ca.

Before switching to Ubuntu, I used Debian, SUSE, RedHat, Slackware ... 
back to 1993-ish.