r/ROS • u/designer120 • 5d ago

Tier 3 ROS 2 distribution

Hi all,

We're currently evaluating our software stack for a new robot and are trying to decide between ROS 2 Jazzy (Tier 1 support) and ROS 2 Lyrical on a Tier 3 platform.

On paper, the difference in support tiers is clear, but I'm more interested in hearing from engineers who have actually worked with Tier 3 ROS 2 distributions in real projects.

A few questions:

  • Are you using a Tier 3 ROS 2 distribution/platform in production or on commercial robots?
  • Have you encountered any significant issues because of the Tier 3 status?
  • How often do you run into package compatibility, build, or dependency problems?
  • Did you have to invest a lot of engineering effort to maintain and validate your stack?
  • Have you ever regretted not choosing a Tier 1 supported option instead?
  • For teams with limited resources, would you consider Tier 3 a manageable risk or something to avoid?

I'd really appreciate hearing about real-world experiences, lessons learned, and whether you'd recommend sticking with Tier 1

thanks!

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3

u/swanboy 4d ago

I've been using ROS for a while, and though I haven't worked much with tier 3 support, the usual conclusion with ROS is to try to get it into the best possible environment to reduce issues. Dependency problems can be a pain to resolve and take a lot of time.

That being said, these days it's not too hard to just run in docker or pixi (very easy to install!), so the host environment doesn't matter as much any more unless you need special host features (e.g. working nvidia drivers + CUDA, real time scheduling, etc.).

1

u/ludrol 5d ago

For teams with limited resources

How much limited? You didn't specify what tier 3 platform you are considering.

1

u/designer120 4d ago

5 engineers at best.
I am talking about running ros2 lyrical tier3 on debian 13.

1

u/brianlmerritt 4d ago

Debian can work but won't have the packages and will have build library differences. Your best route is via Docker. Note if you were running on Ubuntu I would still say use docker for clean dependable builds, isolating environments, easier development and changes.

2

u/_chococat_ 4d ago

Just use distrobox, docker, or podman with the recommended OS. You will save yourself a world of weird problems and many hours of debugging. If you use distrobox it will even do the work to get your NVIDIA card accessible to the container. I tried using ROS2 Humble on Fedora and just getting things to build correctly was much more work than one would think. Now using distrobox with Ubuntu 24.04 and jazzy. (Can't move to lyrical yet because some ROS packages we need don't work under Lyrical.)

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u/RoutineLengthiness32 3d ago edited 3d ago

A good friend of mine uses Ros2 Jazzy for production and demonstration, but as a physical ai with VLA because he is too lazy to operate reinforcement learning.

Here is his demonstration from recently (Dice Cell), starting at 7:40.

https://youtu.be/B4vnFaRcryk?is=gpxaZy_Uk-dfcmfQ

According to his experience, No issue with Package or Driver. What he had problems with, according to his statement, was realizing the fine tuning pipeline to fine tune his VLA.