long term support release

[Les Mikesell]

Jeremy Katz wrote:

>> I don't think a kernel or libc should be "interesting" and the only 
>> reason to change them should be to get one that works with new hardware. 
>>    Server apps also tend to be mostly feature-complete even in old 
>> versions.  However desktop apps are evolving rapidly and there really is 
>> a missing spot in fedora/rhel style distributions since nothing provides 
>> both kernel/core library stability and current application versions.
> 
> Unfortunately as the desktop grows increasingly full-featured, the
> amount of the stack which needs to change for supporting newer desktop
> apps is increasing.

Are you saying these desktops can't ever run on *bsd/solaris, etc. 
kernels and libc's because they need features unique to this month's linux?

> Once upon a time (... in a galaxy far, far away) I used to build updated
> GNOME versions for older Red Hat Linux releases.  It wasn't easy, but it
> was pretty constrained to a small set of packages.  These days, I'd end
> up needing new hal which brings in ConsoleKit which ...[1]
> 
> Jeremy
> 
> [1] Note: this is an example.  I am not saying this is bad.  Hi
> davidz! :)

I'd say anything at the application level that isn't portable across 
platforms is bad, let alone across kernel versions.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
     lesmikesell at gmail.com