Why aren't the monthly snapshots official releases?

[Gordon Cooper]

Richard said: "Recommend that all reviewers use the latest monthly for review. But that's just my opinion."

Fully agree. Recently a reviewer commented on a problem - one that had already been fixed in the next snapshot.

[asqwerth]

Aren't they already deemed official?

They are in the main Parent Directory of the MX downloads page, instead of in the Community Respins Directory.

http://mxrepo.com/snapshots/?C=M;O=D

The official MX16 release iso files are all there as well.

[Adrian]

Aren't they already deemed official?

Good point, I guess it's a matter of definition, what "official" means. If we post an official release statement and they are announce on Distrowatch and other forums. At least for this upcoming one that might be warranted because like I said is going to include Debian 8.7 changes and all the fixes from the official release (Bluetooth fix, theme fixes, etc)

[asqwerth]

...At least for this upcoming one that might be warranted because like I said is going to include Debian 8.7 changes and all the fixes from the official release (Bluetooth fix, theme fixes, etc)

That will be good, because the Bluetooth issue was raised in Dedoimedo's review and affected some members who bothered to post in the forum (leading to the discovery and fix of the issue via updates).

If the problem arose because of a package that was accidentally left out of the original iso, then this fix should come with an official announcement. For instance, I note that Peppermint had an announcement in today's Distrowatch Weekly of a bug-fix release of fresh isos to address an installer bug.

Also, regarding the standard Greybird theme and its theming glitches, will the point release include some fix to that? It's already in the MX versions of Greybird.

[Adrian]

Also, regarding the standard Greybird theme and its theming glitches, will the point release include some fix to that? It's already in the MX versions of Greybird.

The snapshot will include any change that is in the pool, so if the package was updated then the fix will be included.

[Jerry3904]

We pushed the Bluetooth package so all users have it now.

[Adrian]

We pushed the Bluetooth package so all users have it now.

Yes, I know, the snapshot is not for people who run the installed MX, it's for people who want to download MX Linux without the bugs that were fixed, also not many people run the updates on the Live environment. I think this point needs to be made clearly in our announcement, nobody who has MX installed needs this upcoming snapshot (unless they want to run as Live and don't want to bother with the update and remastering process themselves)

[jhsu802701]

The monthly snapshots aren't on the Sourceforge site. Also, they'd look more official if they were numbered minor releases. Thus, the January version about to be released would be 16.1.

[Jerry3904]

They are not point releases, or in fact *releases* at all. They are just the original release that has been updated for user convenience but otherwise identical.

[asqwerth]

I think the OP is suggesting it might be good to have an update officially announced as a point release once in a while.

Maybe they could come after a big Debian update and the developers could then also point out any key fixes or new tools that have been included in the new iso.