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How Obsolete is Your Linux Distro?

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Re: How Obsolete is Your Linux Distro?

#11

Post by derefr »

scott_s wrote: post #7
alexgartrell wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

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.

Re: How Obsolete is Your Linux Distro?

#12

Post by SwellJoe »

blasdel wrote: post #6
SwellJoe wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lif…

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 + De…

Arch (and its father, Gentoo)

Say no more. I didn't know Arch was the bastard child of the abomination that is Gentoo. Best of luck with that.

Re: How Obsolete is Your Linux Distro?

#13

Post by SwellJoe »

dfranke wrote: post #9
joeyo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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…

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."

Re: How Obsolete is Your Linux Distro?

#14

Post by bruenig »

SwellJoe wrote: post #12
blasdel wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 + De…

Arch (and its father, Gentoo) Say no more. I didn't know Arch was the bastard child of the abomination that is Gentoo. Best of luck with that.

Arch is not derived from Gentoo. I don't know what that guy was smoking when he said that.

Re: How Obsolete is Your Linux Distro?

#15

Post by likpok »

blasdel wrote: post #6
SwellJoe wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lif…

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 + De…

And the Debian people make sure that the backporting goes smoothly.

I used to run arch. Forget to update for a few weeks, and you could almost guarantee a broken system when you tried. It was even worse with Gentoo.

Re: How Obsolete is Your Linux Distro?

#16

Post by likpok »

bruenig wrote: post #14
SwellJoe wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arch (and its father, Gentoo) Say no more. I didn't know Arch was the bastard child of the abomination that is Gentoo. Best of luck with that.

Arch is not derived from Gentoo. I don't know what that guy was smoking when he said that.

Arch is related to Gentoo in that both offer rolling updates and try to keep you on the bleeding edge. They differ in that Gentoo is a primarily source-based system with binary packages bolted on and Arch is a primarily binary-based system with source bolted on (admittedly, Arch has better source support than Gentoo has binary).

Arch also compiles it's packages for i686, to appease the gentoo-ricers.

Their goals are similar, so you could argue that Gentoo inspired arch, but they are unrelated.

Re: How Obsolete is Your Linux Distro?

#17

Post by Avshalom »

likpok wrote: post #16
bruenig wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arch is not derived from Gentoo. I don't know what that guy was smoking when he said that.

Arch is related to Gentoo in that both offer rolling updates and try to keep you on the bleeding edge. They differ in that Gentoo is a primarily source-based system with binary packages bolted on and Arch is a primarily binary-based system with source bolted on (admittedly, Arch has better source support than Gentoo has binary). Arch also compiles it's packages for i686, to appease the gentoo-ricers. Their goals are…

It's really not even inspired by Gentoo. Judd was always quite clear that Arch started it's life as Crux with a more automated package manager. The ancestry still shows in the BSD style init, the use of tar.gz as the package format, and the almost identical package build syntax.

The only reason people keep mentioning Gentoo around Arch is because Arch is occasionally concerned with speed and they're both seen as nerd distros.

Re: How Obsolete is Your Linux Distro?

#18

Post by Nwallins »

derefr wrote: post #11
scott_s wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

It implies that the older item is comparatively useless -- i.e. completely outclassed.

Re: How Obsolete is Your Linux Distro?

#19

Post by scott_s »

derefr wrote: post #11
scott_s wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/obsolete

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

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

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