If there are LTS images that last, say three to five years (hopefully), is there a geared direction beagleboard.org is taking to handle not changing the images drastically?
I am asking b/c I would like to start a project. This project entails performing written tasks and note taking on specific images, some source, and hardware.
I am not so interested in what hardware or source as of now.
I am more interested in if the images will be able to stay maintained for creating these notes on learning, e.g. I wanted to build a bot and the bot needs specific source/hardware to run. If I wanted to create an automation of this bot (physical bot), are there any ways that these boards from the .org are going to hold me back by changing midstream due to current affairs?
This is not severely important to me right now but soon is when it will be sort of mandatory on my part to finalize something in particular to boards, building, and BBB!
Seth
P.S. This is not an ultimatum or some kind of “see, I told you” scenario. I would like to take this idea of longevity in the .org seriously and promote findings in the way of books, short scripts, and articulation. Boring, I know and how things change is a thing to consider when promoting findings. This is why I would like to know a little about the LTS ideas the .org has currently and what is actually going to transpire before it happens, i.e. like Nostradamus (sort of).
At this point, only v4.19.x → mainline are “tested”… While users are still free to use anything from v3.8.x → v4.14.x… It’s safe to assume, what ever kernel is “pre-installed” is what that image was designed for…
Over time we’ve moved more mainline and removed our special drivers…
Right now my main focus is v5.10.x + Debian 11.x… (I consider Debian 10.x is done at v4.19.x)
Edit @silver2row is 8 years good enough for an LTS? Every other month (when there is stock) we have users trying to run the old 7.5 2014-05-14 (and older), main problem is the kernel needs an eMMC update patch, which we still deal with.