[GNU-linux-libre] upgrade often.. or not? (was: 100% Free Software T-shirt design)

[jaromil]

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hi Ruben,

let me continue this thread then, i'd be happy to receive feedback and
good suggestions on some regards:

On Wed, Jun 09, 2010 at 05:28:21PM +0200, Rub�n Rodr�guez wrote:
>
> > one of the main focuses of dyne:bolic for instance is that of
> > supporting old computers and it doesn't helps to just upgrade any time
> > a new version of a kernel, application or library is available. also
> > the fact it can be customized into ad-hoc LiveCDs can be a reason to
> > not upgrade, to avoid breaking backward compatibility with user-built
> > software modules.
>
> Latest Puppy uses 2.6.33 and the latest xorg.

i'd love to update d:b to that, besides some other minor changes to be
done and still pending, since it basically means more hardware
supported. but there is a backward compatibility problem then:
SquashFS 3.0 (as included in Linux now) is *not* backward compatible
with SquashFS 2.0 archives, nor there is a "backport" patch to include
that support at present time.

hence, to upgrade beyond 2.6.18 for dyne:bolic ATM it would mean to
drop compatibility with all the .dyne modules that users produce and
freely exchange, while indeed one of the main features of our docked
software bundling system is to have no central repository, but free
exchange among users.

what i think so far can be done to overcome this limitation is:
- - make a squashfs 2.0 patch for Linux
- - make a conversion utility for .dyne modules to recompress in SFS-3
- - don't touch anything really :) people find it a lot useful already

considering i really value much the fact that users can rely on
something to be compatible over time (let's say, that the OS is
consistent over time) how do you think would be best to interact in
such a situation? this is one of the main reasons keeping me away from
touching d:b nowadays, after publishing an ALPHA release of
2.6.22-libre with squashfs-3 and noticing this problem.

sorry for the OT, hope such matters are of interest among more ppl

ciao

- --
jaromil, dyne.org developer, http://jaromil.dyne.org

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