On 3/2/06, Naaman Campbell <naamanc@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
During the last few months, I have been preparing a mass migration of
our current Solaris 8 CDE desktops to an Ubuntu Breezy Badger
environment. The current ratio of Solaris to Windows desktops is
about 90% Solaris / 10% Windows with the Windows ratio falling. We
support 9 sites across Australia with all Solaris users running on
SunRay thin clients (see
http://www.sun.com/sunray/sunray1/index.xml).
Throughout the development and testing stages of the project, a number
of issues have appeared for which I am seeking answers for. At
present, we are covered by Sun Support contracts for all of our Sun
hardware and software that we run. Our support contracts are solid
fallbacks when things go wrong and this has been a frequent topic of
discussion with the System Adminstrator about the support mechanisms
available in the operating system we will be rolling out next -
Ubuntu. In short, it is hard to quantify the purchasing of support
for Ubuntu when it appears to not match the level of support offered
by other vendors, namely Sun & Microsoft.
The main reoccurring topic of discussion is the fixing of bugs in the
current Ubuntu release version. Below are the paths on how it appears
bugs get fixed in Solaris, Windows and Ubuntu.
Solaris
----------
Problem discovered -> Call Sun Support -> Sun acknowledge it is a bug
-> Sun release a patch -> Install patch on current release
Windows
-------------
Problem discovered -> Call MS Support -> MS acknowledge it is a bug ->
MS release a Windows Update -> Install Windows Update
Ubuntu (without paid support)
-----------
Problem discovered -> Log bug on Malone (and upstream) ->
Upstream/Malone acknowledge it is a bug -> Upstream/Ubuntu release fix
into development tree
In order to receive the bug fixes in Ubuntu, the method that seems to
be offered is to wait until the current development version is
released. In a production environment, waiting up to 6 months for a
bug fix and/or updating the operating system every six months is an
unacceptable practice. I do not see how this situation would change
with the purchase of paid support either. A main catalyst for the
purchasing of paid support would be the provision of product updates
when needed on the current release version.
For Ubuntu, and Canonical Support, to make a leap forward in providing
commercial-grade support for the current release version, there needs
to be an improvement to the current patching mechanism - Ubuntu
Backports. Backports currently seems like a side project being driven
by a handful of non-Canonical volunteers which is still in the early
stages of being an official part of Ubuntu. If Canonical were to put
some serious resources and staff into the Backports system, it would
greatly improve the profile of Ubuntu in the enterprise desktop
market. Patching of the current release version of an OS is key to
providing true support to end users and customers.
Yes, I have brought up the issues of bugfix patches to various developers before, but nobody I talked to seemed to think it was important.
The current trouble is, Backports is not authorized to modify source packages, so while development packages may contain a fix, often there's enough other changes mixed in that backporting the package would result in even more issues.
I believe that isolated bugfixes and non-security patches should be an area that the -updates repository is responsible, not Backports. Not just the ultra severe program-doesn't-work-at-all bugs, but the minor fixes also. Take a look at an RHEL Update pack -- it's full of bugfixes and improvements to existing packages. We need something like that. Forcing users to upgrade to a newer version of Ubuntu every 6 months to get their bugfixes is not an ideal option.
I'm not trying to shove the burden to someone else, I'm just saying that -updates sounds more correct to me for this job than Backports. If that's not possible, then sure, we can find a way for Backports to be able to provide minor bugfixes.
I am willing to illustrate further my points that I raised above with
scenarios I have come across during the development of the new user
environment.
Looking forward to your reply,
Naaman Campbell.
