Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

OpenSUSE Factory Turns Into Rolling Release Distribution

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • OpenSUSE Factory Turns Into Rolling Release Distribution

    Phoronix: OpenSUSE Factory Turns Into Rolling Release Distribution

    OpenSUSE "Factory" up to now has referred to the development version of the openSUSE Linux distribution while being announced by SUSE today is that it's also going to serve as an independent distribution under a rolling-release development model...

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite

  • #2
    Where does Tumbleweed factor in all of this?

    Comment


    • #3
      Originally posted by BSDude View Post
      Where does Tumbleweed factor in all of this?
      AFAIK, Tumbleweed is what you will use if you want a semi rolling distro (application updates over a stable core). Factory is a fully rolling distro, and has the potential to be very unstable sometimes.

      Comment


      • #4
        Originally posted by Alejandro Nova View Post
        AFAIK, Tumbleweed is what you will use if you want a semi rolling distro (application updates over a stable core). Factory is a fully rolling distro, and has the potential to be very unstable sometimes.
        This is a bit confusing. Factory was a playground to throw all new things into, and now it's announced as rolling distro environment - which suggests it might be somewhat safe to use. Odd.

        Makes me feel like they just want to encourage more users to test it.

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by yoshi314 View Post
          Factory was a playground to throw all new things into
          That was the case, but a while ago openSUSE switched its policies to making Factory much more stable. Seems like this is just taking those changes a step further.

          Comment


          • #6
            Originally posted by yoshi314 View Post
            This is a bit confusing. Factory was a playground to throw all new things into, and now it's announced as rolling distro environment - which suggests it might be somewhat safe to use. Odd.

            Makes me feel like they just want to encourage more users to test it.
            "Boring?

            Factory is too boring for you because of the automated QA? Feel free to use factory-totest instead which is the truly untested pre-test repo. In the above urls just use http://download.opensuse.org/factory-totest instead of http://download.opensuse.org/factory and zypper dup to that.

            Not for the fainthearted though!" - from http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Factory_installation

            Comment


            • #7
              Originally posted by BSDude View Post
              Where does Tumbleweed factor in all of this?
              Tumbleweed was never meant to be a rolling release, it is BASED on the last stable release(which is why you have to change your repos from 13.1 syntax to the symling "current", so a major release would pull in the whole system).

              To explain tumbleweed it helps to understand its roots, its basicly a playground from Gre Kroah Hartman(the kernel developer who maintains the stable linux kernels), and thusly contains the latest stable kernels, dependencies, useful stuff for kernel development and easily to include packages others have requested(which amazingly includes things like gnome or kde). Including new Gnome versions sounds like a big deal, but we already got that from the Gnome:Stable OBS and kernel changes and stuff are unlikely to be problematic to that. So basicly it bundles preexisting packages with a newer kernel.

              So it differs from a rolling release in implementation aswell as intention. For example it lacks the entire release part, its not a "release" of opensuse. It doesn't contain any of the magic glue that differentiates lets say opensuse from fedora or mageia. For lack of a better word its not a distribution, its a bunch of rpm packages that happen to integrate themselves into the current opensuse release as drop in replacements of same packages with lower version.



              Factory on the other hand is a Distribution, it has its own repositories, .iso images, and runs independent from the normal opensuse releases insofar that they are based on factory, not the other way around. Basicly Factory is the stuff the next opensuse version is based upon, while tumbleweed is the current opensuse version with newer packages. The latter will always be more stable by its very nature, otherwise there would be no point in releasecycles at all, but the former will be able to derivate from the current base and introduce truly new things. I.e. design decisions. For example Factory could throw out KDE 4 and replace it with the new KDE 5(which we are supposed to call something else, silly devs) and facilitate any base system changes that needs. Tumbleweed however needs to keep in mind that it has to stay compatible with the upcoming 13.2(which pretty certainly means staying compatible to an unknown entity at this time, i.e. being conservative) since its repos will be part of it. Any changes to factory however will BECOME the new 13.2 so they don't have to worry about "accidentially" creating a fork.

              To further illustrate think about some of the debian derivates that switched to systemd before debian decided on it. Now imagine debian would have gone with upstart only and removing systemd support(systemd was supported in wheezy, just not default)... that would have been awkward. They would have gone from "different base packages preinstalled but otherwise 100% compatible" to "whoopsie we have created a fork and arn't really compatible with debian anymore ..." in pretty short timeframe.
              Last edited by SebastianB; 29 July 2014, 12:33 PM.

              Comment


              • #8
                I have strong desire to eat my own foot...

                I just switched to OpenSUSE yesterday. (To test comming Wayland on KDE5 see if any Steam games works with it, and if r600g is good enough for it, etc. Fedora focus on GNOME right now...)

                I was torn between Factory and 13.1. But decided that I can live with pontostroy repos for time being and went 13.1...

                :| How to get Factory enabled?

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by mar04 View Post
                  Originally posted by yoshi314 View Post
                  This is a bit confusing. Factory was a playground to throw all new things into, and now it's announced as rolling distro environment - which suggests it might be somewhat safe to use. Odd.

                  Makes me feel like they just want to encourage more users to test it.
                  "Boring?

                  Factory is too boring for you because of the automated QA? Feel free to use factory-totest instead which is the truly untested pre-test repo. In the above urls just use http://download.opensuse.org/factory-totest instead of http://download.opensuse.org/factory and zypper dup to that.

                  Not for the fainthearted though!" - from http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Factory_installation
                  I don't see where he said boring. Can you?

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Originally posted by przemoli View Post
                    I have strong desire to eat my own foot...

                    I just switched to OpenSUSE yesterday. (To test comming Wayland on KDE5 see if any Steam games works with it, and if r600g is good enough for it, etc. Fedora focus on GNOME right now...)

                    I was torn between Factory and 13.1. But decided that I can live with pontostroy repos for time being and went 13.1...

                    :| How to get Factory enabled?
                    Wiki! http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Factory_installation

                    I'm actually in a similar boat as you are. The difference is one day: I am just about to do a clean install, but haven't done it yet. And I'm just as torn! Thing is, I don't really like rolling releases, regular releases is a good opportunity to do clean installs... But then I end up with a makeshift semi-rolling distribution because I want to try out shiny things. Hmm.

                    Comment

                    Working...
                    X