[sldev] Linux variants to support (Re: Projects that I'm working on)

[Robin Cornelius]

Rob Lanphier wrote:

> 
> It's entirely reasonable for us to drop support for older desktop
> distros. Since desktop Linux (the platform, not just our Linux viewer)
> is in a seemingly perpetual beta, and that distros are pretty much
> designed to be upgraded free of charge, it doesn't make as much sense to
> support old versions. If there were some statistics that seem accurate
> enough to back up the case that virtually no one is still running Ubuntu
> 6.06 that expects to run Second Life, that'd pretty much seal the deal
> from a business perspective.
> 
> However, there's also a logistical hurdle that we also have to get over.
> I'm going to guess that some of this is driven by the fact that we run
> Debian Etch on our server infrastructure, and that our build farms and
> common libraries (e.g. the ones we package up and provide, as well as
> use ourselves) are tuned for supporting them. I don't know for sure if
> this is at the heart of the issue, but it's a reason I've at least heard
> before. So, I'm going to let other Lindens on this list speak up about it.


Debian etch was getting increasingly difficult to build the viewer with
its shared libraries. Before lenny came out i was having to back port
increasing numbers of packages to keep my etch buildings running. There
is also the mesa bug of etch that causes crashes with the viewers built
on that platform.

As you are using Debian for the servers, i will continue with that
Distro for my viewer discussion and because Debian has focus on security
and stability it is one of the slower turn around distros. Most others
are updating the desktop at a much more regular interval.

IMHO, its probably not worth the effort of supporting desktops older
than Debian Stable. Or at least phasing out support for old-stable at
some point during the life of stable. Which is about 2 years. By this i
mean you would still be supporting etch now but looking to phase out
this year.

This would actually bring the viewer support not that far out of line
with the server. Although the server OS upgrades do seem a little over
cautiously behind, not that i'm recommending jumping to lenny now, but I
think it would be good by say the 12 month point of stable to have a
migration strategy in place from oldstable->stable and start implmenting
this in the 2nd half of the stable life. So you are fully migrated
before stable +1 appears. This would not be a bad time frame for viewer
support as well. And in theory would give quite a long "minimum version
window"


Robin



-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 260 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.secondlife.com/pipermail/sldev/attachments/20090411/c96afb55/attachment.pgp