[conspire] Ubuntu 6.06 LTS "Dapper Drake" has been released

[Rick Moen]

My friend Karsten Self maintains a "Linux" page, pitched at the general
public, that has many virtues, especially in its section that explains
the landscape of Linux distributions.  (It's also ended up, predictably,
too long and too verbose.  <sigh>  But don't they always?)

The mail forwarded below was my effort to help Karsten improve his page,
by filling in its gaps -- and I figured it might be of public interest,
too.

----- Forwarded message from Rick Moen <rick> -----

Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2006 09:20:17 -0700
From: Rick Moen <rick>
To: Karsten Self <karsten>, Karsten Self <kmself at ix.netcom.com>
Subject: Re: Your distros page's Ubuntu FIXMEs

I wrote:

> http://linuxmafia.com/~karsten/Linux/linux-new.html#distros 
> has some FIXMES.
> 
>   Ubuntu
>   Platforms: FIXME
> 
> Platforms are i386, x86-64, and PPC.  All "products" (and editions
> thereof) listed below are available and first-class citizens on each 
> CPU platform.
> 
>   Ubuntu
>   Products: FIXME
> 
> Products are:
>   o  Stable release, at approx. 6 month intervals.  
>   o  Rolling development platform.  In the past, this has been based
>      on periodic snapshots of Debian-unstable.  Unverified talk 
>      suggests the latter practice may cease as no longer needed.
>   o  Ubuntu-server:  Separate, 5-year support scale.  Appears to include 
>      a minimal GNOME destkop by default.
> 
> The "products" picture is complicated by the fact that the ISOs of the
> stable release are put out in multiple "edition" flavours (with
> different metapackages atop the shared Ubuntu core OS, _plus_ the fact
> that each such edition is published both as an installable ISO and as a
> live-CD ISO:
> 
>   o  "Ubuntu" image:  This is the shared core plus metapackage 
>      "ubuntu-desktop", which is basically GNOME.
>   o  "Kubuntu" image:  This is the shared core plus metapackage
>      "kubuntu-desktop", which is basically KDE.
>   o  "Xubuntu" image:  This is the shared core plus metapackage
>      "xubuntu-desktop", which is xfce4 plus a few things, stressing
>      gtk2 applications.  NOTE:  This is not yet a full sibling of
>      the other flavours, being still a bit beta-ish but is intended 
>      to be thus as of Dapper Drake, the release recently rescheduled
>      to June 2006 (which would make it release 6.06, if it is released
>      as scheduled).
>   o  "Edubuntu" image:  This is the shared core plus metapackage
>      "edubuntu-desktop", which is assorted software for sub-18-year
>      users.  It's vaguely GNOME-ish.
> 
> 
> It should be noted that these "editions" are strictly a CD-packaging 
> artifact.  You could start with an installable image of any of the four
> above, install it, then do "sudo apt-get install" of the other three
> metapackages:  The resulting system would be identical, regardless of
> which "edition" image you started with.  
> 
> In short:  Single, unified distribution.  Available as slightly
> different-looking slices of a single cake, differing only in icing --
> and with additional slices readily available (one apt-get command away,
> each).


So, you'll probably have noticed that Dapper Drake shipped today (on
schedule).  All five of the "editions" cited above (Ubuntu, Kubuntu,
Xubuntu, Edubuntu, Ubuntu Server) were included.  The release version
string is "v. 6.06 LTS":  The "LTS" part stands for "Long Term Support"
-- five years of free security updates and (optional, a la carte)
commercial techincal support on the server, and three years for the
desktop.  

As always, the numerical part of the version string wasn't official
until release day, because it's an encoded form of the release
year/month:

   6 . 06
   |   |
   |   -- June (6th month)
   ------ 6th year of 21st century CE

(They admit that this scheme will break in 2100, but figure they'll burn
that bridge when they come to it.)


Also worth noting:  My explanation of "editions" (above) and my attempt 
to correlate it to your page's concept of "product" is strictly
heuristic, a bit dubious, and reflects no knowledge whatsoever of
Ubuntu's official structure.  However, this Colin Watson wiki page (just
now found via LWN, not yet grokked by yr. humble and caffeine-deficient
correspondent) talks about Ubuntu "seeds" (key metapackages) and will
probably improve my understanding and yours:

https://wiki.edubuntu.org/SeedManagement

Hope that helps.


----- End forwarded message -----