A variant of UbuntuForcedDeathMarch™ originally proposed by Dr. Loser that was modified in lieu of the fact that all of the Linux distributions are slowly aligning to Shuttledude’s absurd notion of Cadence.
It is common for the FOSS community to criticize Microsoft for being a perpetual upgrade treadmill. Never mind the fact that Office 2007 was released with full support for Windows XP, an operating system likely 5 years old before work even began on Office 2007, or that IE 8 was back ported all the way to XP which is a full 2 major versions before Windows 7 which is ships with.
The real upgrade treadmill is actually Ubuntu, the flagship consumer grade Linux distribution. Not only does Ubuntu run through releases at a breakneck pace, they don’t believe in fixing the broken junk that they do release or allowing their users to run modern software. This is due to the fact that ItsUpstreamsFault, YouDontNeedTheLastVersion, and Ubuntu lacks the engineering manpower to actually engineer a release. This is the primary drive behind cadence. Canonical is too cheap to actually engineer its own product, so it wants everyone else to align their own schedules to Ubuntu’s maximum benefit. Furthermore, since Linux has no stable API/ABI, good luck getting an old binary to run on a modern distribution. You should count yourself lucky if you can even get the source to compile.
The result is that anyone who wants to fix their bugs or run newer software is forced to upgrade to the latest version. The price to pay is simply an entirely new set of bugs that has absolutely nothing to do with what was broken in the previous release because the Ubunteros have no concept of proper QA whatsoever.
Comments
Don’t worry, “early adopters know what they’re getting into”.
Originally “Ubuntu’s semi-annual automatic forced death march.”
AKA:
UbuntuForcedDeathMarch™
SixMonthForcedDeathMarch™
Some might claim that “Biannual” makes it sound too much like a celebration … but, then again, who’s to say that Ubuntu don’t see it that way?
I thought Biannual sound more high brow, which is in keeping with how the FOSS community looks down on the rest of us.
Also, the Ubuntu folk do go crazy with their LUG release parties. Watch Planet Ubuntu in the few days leading up to a release and see a bajillion of them advertised.
Incidentally, thanks for the Shuttleworth cadence link. ROFLMAYO.
Used to be, there was a saying in Chicago: “If you’re so smart, why aren’tcha rich?” We now need to modify that, I think.
“If you’re so rich, why aren’tcha smarter?”
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