Google uses a variety of operating systems internally, including Linux. Google’s early internal Linux distribution was Goobuntu, which was based on Ubuntu LTS. Ubuntu LTS needs to be updated every two years, which is increasingly inconvenient for businesses. Upgrading more than 100,000 computers before the operating system ends support is not an easy task, and reinstalling and re-customizing enterprise computers is difficult and time-consuming. So Google turned to rolling update distributions , instead of using well-known rolling update distributions like Arch Linux, it called the new distribution gLinux Rodete (Rolling Debian Testing) based on Debian. Choose Debian because it has a huge package base, a huge community, and Ubuntu is also based on Debian, which makes it easier to migrate. The Debian stable branch is also updated almost every two years, but its test branch is updated on a rolling basis. Rolling updates need to prevent new versions from breaking existing workflows as much as possible, and Google introduced a workflow system called Sieve that uses a virtualized test suite to ensure new versions of packages don’t break core components and developers’ workflows. Google said that the last version of Goobuntu was based on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Codename Trusty), the development of Rodete started in 2015, the migration from Goobuntu to Rodete began in 2017, the migration was completed at the end of 2018, and the remaining Goobuntu machines were shut down in 2019.
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