

How Obsolete is Your Linux Distro? - fogus
http://oswatershed.org/

======
hvs
Is "obsolete" the correct word here? Just because a software package isn't the
most recent version doesn't mean that it is _obsolete_. Depending on the
distribution, it could be that the older version is better tested than the
most recent version. In that case, you may value stability over the hottest
new feature. Let's put it this way: if half of your distribution can be
considered obsolete in 2 weeks, your metric is BS.

~~~
alexgartrell
I suspect that "How obsolete is your distro" is to be taken less than
seriously. This site provides interesting statistics regarding the uptake of
new versions in popular distributions, the meaning/worth of which is very much
left open to the reader. I certainly didn't find any implication that more
obsolete means less valuable on the site.

~~~
scott_s
The word "obsolete" has implications, so if he doesn't want to imply those
things, he should pick a different word.

~~~
derefr
Such as? I'd usually use "deprecated" to imply what you think "obsolete"
implies; "obsolete" simply means that there's something newer intended to
replace the older one.

~~~
scott_s
<http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/obsolete>

1 a: no longer in use or no longer useful <an _obsolete_ word> b: of a kind or
style no longer current : old-fashioned <an _obsolete_ technology>

Typewriters are obsolete. Quills are obsolete. A package from last February is
not obsolete.

------
frossie
I _dream_ of my major worry being how obsolete my users' Linux distributions
are. I still have users running on Solaris 7 for god's sake.

------
ars
They should include debian testing as a distribution, since a lot of people
run it as a desktop version of debian.

------
speek
And that's why I love arch :-)

~~~
SwellJoe
And it's why I love CentOS/RHEL or Debian on servers.

Stability and predictability is vastly more important than having the most
new-fangled of everything. Fedora or Ubuntu (non-LTS releases) are nice
desktop systems, and they have all the latest fancypants stuff built right in,
but I'd laugh someone out of the room if they suggested running them on a
server. Arch doesn't even appear to have an official policy on lifecycle, so
it's _definitely_ not in the running.

~~~
blasdel
Ha, you want lifecycle? Arch (and its father, Gentoo) doesn't just not have an
official policy -- the whole point of the distro is to _not even have versions
or freezes_ , much less support them.

Every Gentoo and Arch install is a special snowflake, with whatever the latest
stable versions were when a package was last updated. Rolling releases are
awesome -- the software doesn't have to ship in a goddamn box!

RHEL + Debian are constantly backporting and patching so much crap onto their
'frozen' versions of upstream software. For them 'stable' means that you get
the pain of updates without any visible features, with the added annoyance of
hacked-in patches from people who didn't write the software.

~~~
joeyo
There is a reason why Debian does backports: to get the bug fixes and nothing
else. Why on earth would you want new features on a production box? If new
features are added, something could break. If features are removed in the new
version (and this happens more often than you might think) something could
break. If even the command line arguments change, something could break.

For this reason there's pretty much zero pain to Debian Stable updates. I
cannot even think of a single instance off the top of my head where applying
buxfixes on a Debian Stable box has caused any problems at all.

~~~
dfranke
> I cannot even think of a single instance off the top of my head where
> applying buxfixes on a Debian Stable box has caused any problems at all.

Well, a certain commented-out line in OpenSSL comes to mind :-)

But seriously, I refuse to run anything other than Debian Stable, Ubuntu LTS,
or a stable BSD tree on my home systems. I rely on my desktop _more_ than I
rely on any given server, so why would I put something less stable on it?

~~~
SwellJoe
_I rely on my desktop more than I rely on any given server_

Sure, we probably all stare at our desktop machines for hours a day, and only
poke at our servers for a few minutes each day. But, an hour-long outage of my
primary server will effect hundreds or thousands of people. An hour-long
outage of my desktop will effect only one guy. I'll spit and sputter and curse
a lot, but it probably won't cost me business or customer good will.

That said, everytime something breaks on my desktop machine running Fedora, I
think "Hmmm...maybe I should be running CentOS here."

------
known
Things You Should Never Do
<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html>

