SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the if-some-is-good-then-too-much-is-not-enough? dept.
Bruce Byfield's Blog on Linux Magazine explores the upgrade treadmill.
Byfield relates an old comic by Christiann MacAuley that depicts how Linux, Windows, and Mac users relates to a pop-up announcement saying: "An Update is Available for Your Computer".
The Linux user is enthusiastic, the Windows user groans, and the Mac user is glad it will only cost him $99.
One reason for switching to Linux used to be to get off the forced upgrades path common to proprietary software. Yet Linux users seem to have kept the urge to upgrade, even when the necessity was removed. Even when security fixes are back ported, to Long Term Support releases, we just can't seem to resist an upgrade.
Byfield explores the issue of upgrades, and why we Linux users feel compelled to perform major upgrades. Not only the minor patches to fix bugs that happen ever week. We routinely seem to rush in and put our entire systems at risk by installing complete system upgrades to new kernels, whole new desktops, sometimes new file systems, and even the dread systemd.
It's an interesting read, and set me wondering why so many Linux users chase upgrades for little or no new features.
(Score: 2) by iamjacksusername on Wednesday October 28 2015, @12:15PM
That's unlikely. Unlike Windows, you have some choices with your linux distribution. Last year switched a company over from primarily RH to SLES because the SLES support was included with their existing licensing. No reason to pay additional contracts for RH. The switch was pretty painless and, aside from some minor adjustments in puppet, went off without a hitch.
If RH went full retard with mandatory updates, every admin in world would just drop them from production entirely. In any case, updates on these platforms are not "upgrades", they mostly consists of security of stability updates. I still had RHEL 5 in production until last year and I know of companies with RHEL 3 and 4 VMs still chugging along.
The service model RH and Suse follow is centered around delivering stability (including security) to the customer, not selling upgrades. That means back-porting patches and compatibility testing. For what I want to support, I want the same kernel and same major library versions I was using 5 years ago. If I want to try out new software and "See how it went", I can use Fedora or Ubuntu.