Like Ubuntu, hate upgrading? Canonical founder has good news. And a mighty, mighty beard
Interview Mark Shuttleworth delivered an unashamed plug for Ubuntu while cheerfully throwing a little shade on the competition at the OpenStack Berlin 2018 summit last week.
If Nick Barcet of Red Hat had elicited gasps by suggesting the OpenStack Foundation (OSF) might consider releasing updates a bit more frequently, Shuttleworth sent eyebrows skywards by announcing that the latest Long Term Support (LTS) edition of Ubuntu, 18.04, would get 10 years of support.
Alas, the same does not apply to OpenStack’s wares just yet. On stage, Shuttleworth reiterated the current five-year support enjoyed by 2014’s Icehouse, which featured in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. Other releases of OpenStack shipped with LTS versions also enjoy the same longevity.
That 10-year support is important as Ubuntu continues its push into telcos and regulated industries that simply can’t hop from version to version as rapidly as some vendors would like. While desktop Ubuntu tends to generate all the excitement, it is the less glamorous world of servers, infrastructure and managed services where Canonical makes its cash.
Later that afternoon, Shuttleworth had a chat with your correspondent while perched on a table next to the Ubuntu stand at the Berlin OpenStack event. The CEO is particularly proud of the implementation of OpenStack in Ubuntu and tells The Register that the Canonical gang works in “lockstep with the OpenStack development process”, emitting a beta on the same day as OpenStack releases, and calling it a “final” a couple of weeks later. An increase in cadence would be unlikely to present a problem.
Implementing OpenStack can be a painful experience and upgrading the thing can be even worse due to the complexity. Like many other OpenStack vendors, Canonical is very happy to ease that pain, and Shuttleworth reckons Canonical’s approach does away with the “huge numbers of consultants” demanded by other, unnamed vendors.
“We’re much more agile,” Shuttleworth tells us, “and we deliver change in a managed way.
