Rethinking Support

I've been thinking for some time of revamping the support I offer for my three bits of software: there are simply too many distros to be testing all three on all of them! So instead, I've decided on a “tiered support” structure, allowing to focus my efforts on distros I actually use for real, on real hardware, and offering a lesser form of support for running on other distros that I only ever virtualise or have barely heard of.

Tier 1 will be comprehensively tested on real hardware, using distros I actually use for real every day.
Tier 2 will be tested for installation and basic functionality using only virtual hardware.
Tier 3 will not be tested usually, but if specific issues or bugs are raised with me via email, I'll spin up virtual machines on an ad-hoc basis and get issues sorted.
Tier 4 will not generally be tested at all. Things should work but you're basically on your own should issues ever arise.

Putting specific names to the various tiers, then, we have:

Tier 1: Full Support: AlmaLinux 9 and 10, Raspberry Pi OS, Fedora, Linux Mint
Tier 2: Partial Support: Debian, EndeavourOS, Ubuntu
Tier 3: Some Support: OpenSuse Leap & Tumbleweed, GeckoLinux, Arch, Manjaro, Garuda Linux, Devuan, Linux Mint Debian Edition, Peppermint OS, MX Linux, AntiX Linux, Pop! OS, Linux Lite, Zorin OS, Elementary OS, KDE Neon, Tuxedo OS, Nobara, Ultramarine
Tier 4: Unsupported: Windows

Two big casualties are apparent in this new plan: Arch and OpenSuse. Arch is just too fast-moving for me to keep up and is, in any case, never installed in standardised way, which makes supporting it practically impossible. OpenSuse is dropped as a tier 1 platform because it's peculiar and literally no-one I know of uses it as a desktop OS.

Ubuntu and Debian also take a bit of a hit: I loathe Ubuntu's use of snaps and several other features of its 'not invented here' approach to OS development; and Debian is probably a bit too slow-moving and out-of-date to be anyone's primary choice of desktop distro. Nevertheless, it's not that I won't test my software on them at all, but the tests won't be real-world, extensive usage tests. I'm also restricting myself from here out to testing on Long Term Support (LTS) editions of Ubuntu only. Currently, that means 22.04 and 24.04. Imminently, it will also include 26.04… but I won't support running anything on a xx.10 non-LTS release.

The numerous 'minor' distros that proliferate endlessly are all now in Tier 3. Distros like Peppermint Linux, MX Linux, Devuan, Pop! OS, Zorin, Tuxedo and Linux Mint Debian Edition and so on all get some sort of support because their parents (usually Ubuntu or Debian) are in more supported tiers above them. If I'm notified of specific bugs or irregularities in the operation of my software on such 'niche distros', I'll be more than happy to spin up a virtual machine and try to sort the issue out: but I won't generally or routinely test on these distros any more.

The move of Windows to Tier 4 status is occasioned by the end of official support for Windows 10 and the fact that I don't own any hardware that can officially run Windows 11 (and refuse to have a mandatory Microsoft account to use Windows 11 even if I had the hardware!) I know my software will run on these platforms, because if my software runs on 'real' Linux, it will run just fine on the same distros running under the Windows Subsystem for Linux… but I can't really support that platform if I can't myself run it in an officially supported manner. So Windows moves to the “it ought to work, good luck” tier! I'll certainly look at issues if they're brought to my attention, but it will be on a 'best effort' basis only.

On the plus side of the ledger, AlmaLinux gets tier 1 support: it's a free-of-cost clone of Red Hat Enterprise Server, so support for it also applies to Rocky Linux, which is another clone of the same thing. I use AlmaLinux 9 to run Niente and this website; I use AlmaLinux 10 in a virtual environment only. I'll do thorough testing on both versions, though. Raspberry Pi OS also gets tier 1 status because I now use a Pi 4 as my main music player PC and a Pi 3B+ as a secondary player in the summer house. I don't own a Pi 5 yet, so I can't claim things will definitely work on that platform, but they should do.

Fundamentally, then: I'll still offer help and support for running my stuff on any Linux distro. But there will now be just a handful of distros on which I guarantee things will work. There'll be a handful of distros where things have been tested enough to give me confidence things will work -but there might be some edge cases my testing misses. There'll then be a swathe of distros where ad hoc support will be available, but very little pre-release testing will have taken place. And then there's Windows!

Documentation updates will soon take place for Giocoso, Semplice and Niente to reflect this new approach.

Incidentally, the next version of Giocoso (version 3.32) is likely to be released around December 4th, a week earlier than anticipated: it's been in daily use here for a coupld of weeks and there have been no issues, so holding back an extra week seems a bit pointless. Watch this space, I guess…