Ubuntu developers are looking at extending their policy of not releasing stable release updates (SRUs) around the weekend as well as not phasing them up to 100% during those weekend times either.
In a move to potentially avoid less headaches over weekends especially for system/server administrators that may be off and separately for gamers/enthusiasts/home users that may be more active on their systems during weekends and wanting to avoid updating downtime, Ubuntu developers are considering the altering of their weekend update policies. Julian Andres Klode of Canonical laid out the proposal this week on the Ubuntu development mailing list:
“After some quick chat, I’d like to propose that we extend the policy to not release SRUs from Fri-Sun to the phased updates and not phase them to a 100% at those times.
Cautious users configure their systems to not install phased updates, so they will only see new updates once they reach 100% and that happening on weekends is not particularly helpful.
I propose that essentially when the phased-updater is started between
Friday 00:00 UTC and Monday 12:00 UTC
that it never increments the value to 100.
The second aspect of the weekend question is whether to increment the phased update percentage at all, that is should people using the defaults be exposed to new updates over the weekend?”
The proposal was laid out in this mailing list thread. So far other Ubuntu developers are receptive to the weekend change. There is also the possibility that this proposed change would allow community SRU team members to release packages to the updates channel over the weekend, since the phased update percentage wouldn’t be updating. Currently Ubuntu policy doesn’t allow such packages being pushed to “-updates” over the weekend hours at all while it’s a time that many Ubuntu community members may otherwise be more active if it’s a hobby/passion project to them.
We’ll see if this policy change around weekend SRU updates on Ubuntu Linux takes hold.
