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On the future of free long term support for Linux distributions
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this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2023
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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The rationale for using LTS distros is being eroded by widespread adoption of containers and approaches like flatpak and nix. Applications and services are becoming less dependent on any single distro and instead just require a skeleton core system that is easier to keep up to date. Coupled with the increased cost needed to maintain security backports we are getting to a point where it's less risky for companies to use bleeding edge over stable.
And that skeleton of a system becomes easier to test.
I don't need to test ~80 - 100 different in-house applications on whatever many different versions of java, python, .net and so on.
I rather end up with 12 different classes of systems. My integration tests on a buildserver can check these thoroughly every night against multiple versions of the OS. And if the integration tests are green, I can be 95 - 99% sure things will work right. The dev and testing environments will figure out the rest if something wonky is going on with docker and new kernels.