Ubuntu 24.04 and Bigbluebutton

[Dr. M. Levent Tekci]

I would like to understand and know why the bigbluebutton community and developers are not willing to make system improvements and cumulative updates based on the latest version of ubuntu server. Given the need for server maintenance and other support for large and small businesses, we as system administrators always attempt to manage, install and interact with up-to-date information. Can Mr Dixon or other administrators respond on this matter? For example; I have an HPE server and I would like to get bigbluebutton experience on the recently released Ubuntu server 24.04 TLS? But I realise that this is not possible. I have installed, managed and made some changes to the server system with almost all bigbluebutton versions starting from Ubuntu 18 to Ubuntu 20. I think there must be a shorter, practical and intelligent solution to this situation. Good work

Yours sincerely.

M. Levent Tekci, M.D., R.Ac., M.Ac.

[Marcel Hellkamp]

Hi there,

Am 23.05.24 um 12:16 schrieb Dr. M. Levent Tekci:

> I would like to understand and know why the bigbluebutton community
> and developers are not willing to make system improvements and
> cumulative updates based on the latest version of ubuntu server.

Ubuntu 24.04 was released less than a month ago. BBB 3.0 is in
development for way longer than that. Targeting an operating system
release that do not exist yet is pretty ambitious ;)

> Given the need for server maintenance and other support for large and
> small businesses, we as system administrators always attempt to
> manage, install and interact with up-to-date information.

Both BBB-2.7 and 3.0 are currently based on LTS releases that still have
1 resp. 3 support years left, which is likely more than the
corresponding BBB releases. Since upgrading BBB across major versions is
not recommended and you should deploy on fresh servers anyway, it does
not really matter on which OS-Release a BBB release is based on, as long
as the OS does not reach EOL while the BBB release is still relevant.
The maintenance cost is: One fresh OS and BBB install per Major update.

> Can Mr Dixon or other administrators respond on this matter?

I'm not a representative of the core team. These are just my 2 cents.

> For example; I have an HPE server and I would like to get
> bigbluebutton experience on the recently released Ubuntu server 24.04 TLS?

But why? Ubuntu 24.04 is less than a month old. Nice to have, but there
is no reason why 20.04 or 22.04 would not run on that hardware.

> I think there must be a shorter, practical and intelligent solution to
> this situation.

BBB is a complicated mess and supporting more than one OS release, or
switching OS releases during the maintenance/support phase of a BBB
release (e.g. 2.7), is really not worth it and would be a waste of
energy. Moving to Ubuntu 24.04 during the alpha phase of BBB 3.0 is also
a bit late. 3.1 would be a better candidate. I think the current release
strategy is justified.

VG, Marcel