Troy Dawson wrote: > - Ubuntu creep - > How many labs are seeing this? > Do they see this as a problem? Hi guys, I've been meaning to mention something like this for a while, but the above comment was the eventual catalyst! Unfortunately I won't be at Hepix, so it'll have to be an online-only comment/discussion. I'm not speaking as any sort of lab (or even department) spokesperson, but the Ubuntu creep issue sounds very relevant to me. In Durham we are currently trialling Ubuntu on two desktops, with plans to eventually roll it out as our main desktop deployment. It's already widely used on staff laptops. We largely get away with this because it's a theory group and so compatibility with LHC experiment / LCG software (which is often non-portable because of dumbness rather than any fundamental incompatibility) isn't an issue. The reason for our planned move to Ubuntu (and here I paraphrase, since I'm not our computing manager) is that while SL is an okay stable platform for Grid and batch farm nodes, the slow release cycle and resultant outdated application/desktop software are extremely frustrating for desktop use. (I also find that ensuring that HEP software works on both SL and Debian-esque platforms is a good way to cross-check for subtle bugs.) As one of our desktop trialees, I've found Ubuntu (Gutsy, so far) a much more pleasant experience than SL4, and actually the range of packaged scientific software is larger. That's (genuinely) not meant as a criticism of Troy and Connie, who obviously work very diligently on SL, but 2 people attempting to maintain an entire distro is naturally less sustainable and dynamic than the whole Debian community + Ubuntu community + Mark Shuttleworth's semi-bottomless pockets. I'm mindful here that I don't want you to think of me as a "troll" --- the work you've done on SL is great, but for me it just can't compete with what Ubuntu has done for desktop Linux in the last few years.* With that in mind, and given that the SL team is so stretched, what happened to the suggestion (a year or so ago) of moving to a model with SL as an extra yum/apt repository on top of specified commodity Linux distributions? The current way looks to me like very hard work by comparison! > Do they see this as a problem 3 or 4 years from now when users are > still running Ubuntu 7.0.4? I know that some of our laptop users have upgraded at least once since their initial installation. Since Ubuntu's stable releases occur at predictable times, and the installer alerts suitably privileged desktop users that an upgrade is possible, I suspect that being stuck on old versions of Ubuntu is less likely than with SL. But I have no data on that! Andy [*] To be honest, I also use Ubuntu on my HEP servers now, (www.hepforge.org, and friends) by preference, so it's not just desktops and laptops where "Ubuntu creep" is happening. -- Dr Andy Buckley Institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology Durham University 0191 3343798 | 0191 3732613 | www.insectnation.org