10-18-2016, 01:51 AM
Pander,
Ubuntu supports an LTS for 5 years, but it puts out a new LTS every 2 years. Longsleep does not supply or support anything but his kernel and scripts, with no desktop. One of his scripts installs the Mate desktop if you want. He has adapted his kernel to Ubuntu xenial.
I think a lot of people are under a wrong impression, as I was. The person who is doing the work (Longsleep) to create this image is not part of the Pine64 company and is doing this for his own reasons. It is by his generosity that there are any working versions of Linux for Pine64 (although he is using work from sunxi and others), but he is getting nothing for it. Pine64 is not funding any version of Linux, other than donating hardware, AFAIK. There are a few people, but very few, who are contributing any work or knowledge, and I am not one of them.
Some people who know all this seem to think that Raspberry PI is different, because of Raspbian (Debian for Raspberry PI). To the best of my knowledge Raspbian is done by a group not funded by Raspberry PI Foundation (a not-for-profit company) although PI does call Raspbian officially supported. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspbian) The user base for Raspberry PI has become huge over the many years since its first PI (2011), and so has the number of contributors, and therefore so has the amount of time and knowledge which is contributed. There is no reason to think the Pine64 can do without the same thing.
Open-source software has a cost, and it's cost is participation.
I think there is a fair chance that yakkety might work smoother than xenial on a Pine64. I know it does on my x86. For the heck of it, I might try the update I mentioned sometime in the next few years, or I might not, but if it doesn't work I would be totally lost trying to figure out why. If somebody tries it, I would appreciate hearing about it.
Ubuntu supports an LTS for 5 years, but it puts out a new LTS every 2 years. Longsleep does not supply or support anything but his kernel and scripts, with no desktop. One of his scripts installs the Mate desktop if you want. He has adapted his kernel to Ubuntu xenial.
I think a lot of people are under a wrong impression, as I was. The person who is doing the work (Longsleep) to create this image is not part of the Pine64 company and is doing this for his own reasons. It is by his generosity that there are any working versions of Linux for Pine64 (although he is using work from sunxi and others), but he is getting nothing for it. Pine64 is not funding any version of Linux, other than donating hardware, AFAIK. There are a few people, but very few, who are contributing any work or knowledge, and I am not one of them.
Some people who know all this seem to think that Raspberry PI is different, because of Raspbian (Debian for Raspberry PI). To the best of my knowledge Raspbian is done by a group not funded by Raspberry PI Foundation (a not-for-profit company) although PI does call Raspbian officially supported. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspbian) The user base for Raspberry PI has become huge over the many years since its first PI (2011), and so has the number of contributors, and therefore so has the amount of time and knowledge which is contributed. There is no reason to think the Pine64 can do without the same thing.
Open-source software has a cost, and it's cost is participation.
I think there is a fair chance that yakkety might work smoother than xenial on a Pine64. I know it does on my x86. For the heck of it, I might try the update I mentioned sometime in the next few years, or I might not, but if it doesn't work I would be totally lost trying to figure out why. If somebody tries it, I would appreciate hearing about it.