Rolling solutions

Part of the reason for new packaging system stems from the link between the current repository-based package managers and fixed distro releases. In a comment on his post, core KDE developer Sebastian Kügler argues that distribution developers should spend their time working on “the things that make a difference.”

Responding to his comment, another longtime KDE and OpenSUSE contributor Luca Beltrame stressed that some of the things which distributions already spend a lot of time on that make a difference include integration, which he argued is something that “neither Snaps, nor Flatpaks, nor AppImages will ever do properly.” He also highlighted several other aspects that distributions spent time on while packaging apps such as security reviews, legal reviews and Quality Assurance.

Luca went on to say that the speed of updates of the apps inside a typical distro isn’t constant. In his opinion, the solution to do timely delivery of updates lies in rolling releases. These thoughts were also echoed in a FOSDEM ‘17 talk by OpenSUSE’s chairman Richard Brown who argued that rolling releases are perhaps the better model for fixing app delivery. Using rolling distros, Richard says, enables them to “reuse the knowledge we already have, reuse the tools we already have, reuse the infrastructure we already have.”

He goes on to add that the universal package formats come from the belief that traditional distributions are too slow, which isn’t the case with rolling releases such as OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. The distro is tested thoroughly and still manages to delivers upstream updates in real time, like KDE Plasma on the same day of release, Gnome in under 48 hours, and so on, Richard points out.