[mhw]

I think that's a very well reasoned proposal and I'd be very happy to see it implemented. I might be unusual, but I find myself in both of the user groups that the proposal identifies. For my 'utility' machines (home server, XBMC host, web servers) I prefer the stability of the LTS series, but for my laptop I'm happy to trade that stability for getting new stuff sooner, particularly new usability features that are getting baked into Unity and other components.

One minor nit: in the section on benefits for Core/MOTU developers it suggests that only 2 releases would need to be supported. I think in reality that would actually be 4 releases, as with a 5 year support commitment for each LTS release there could be up to 3 LTS releases that are still being supported at any point in time. May be just a minor wording thing though - I'm sure the author knows what he's talking about.

[icebraining]

Your use case is exactly what many of us Debian users have been doing for a long time. I use Unstable on my laptop and Stable (+ backports) on my VPS for those exact reasons.

[takluyver]

Technically, Debian unstable is close to what I want, but I don't want to be using something that comes with 'at your own risk' warnings day to day.

I think the expectation is the important thing: if an update breaks something, the response I want to see is 'sorry, we'll fix that ASAP and try to avoid doing it again'. I get the impression that Debian unstable (and to a lesser extent testing) is only intended for people who're willing to put up with things breaking often.

[icebraining]

Well, yes, it comes with absolutely no guarantees. That said, many Debian developers use it, and breakages have been rare at least for the last few years, since I started using it.