New XO-1.5 10.2.0 build 119

[Peter Robinson]

>> Believe me I'll be one of the first poeple adding the sugar packages
>> to EL-6 branches and testing them but its not necessarily the golden
>> path that some people think. In the short term of the first 12 months
>> it will be fine, 18 months to 2.5 years it won't seem as good.
>
> I am not seeing where the 18 months to 2.5 years breakdown happens.
> You have a base OS that is being supported for security updates by the
> largest Linux vendor for the next 6 years.  For the small subset of
> packages that you need a more recent version of, i.e. the kernel and
> telepathy, you would just release in an OLPC yum repository.  This is
> already being done for the kernel and other OLPC specific packages, so
> really there is little overhead to this path.

The 18 months to 2.5 years was a rough guesstimate of the time from
where RHEL 6 is released to when the libraries it runs are out of date
and not what the latest sugar release wants at the time. Then RHEL-7
is released and we repeat the process all over again.

> We are getting to a point where the core components of linux on the
> desktop are matured such that a core refresh really isn't needed every
> 6 months.  NetworkManager, PackageKit, PolicyKit provide a lot of what
> the desktop needs from an administration point (Yes I didn't mention
> Pulseaudio, maybe soon :-)).  For the first time in a long time I
> really don't see any major changes in the near future that will really
> be a roadblock to a stable distribution rolled out in the next year.

Things change, 2, 3, or 6 years is a long time in IT, a life time in
open source. gstreamer 1 will come along in a year or so and there'll
be something we want for some smart new hardware. Sugar will be ported
to python3. The new ARM based XO 1.75 or XO-3 or what ever the XO-x
version is that's not supported in CentOS.

I personally don't see the point discussing it because from where I
sit I believe it will be supported well in both and continue to be so.
That way people have the choice. It might well get to a stage where
the newer versions of sugar won't run in RHEL/CentOS due to whatever
deps at which point we get to a situation where that release becomes
like 0.84 is currently and is a long term support release. I don't see
why its hard to support both because its not. The package maintenance
is simple and is done easily by a couple of people. There will be
Fedora and it will continue to be supported in Fedora for the
developers and the like that want the bleeding edge and then there
will be the EL branch for those that don't like so much blood. Its
called choice. There's no reason to limit it. There's not much point
discussing it at the moment as RHEL-6 isn't out yet, yes its in beta
but its not out.

Peter