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Never update anything

blog.kronis.dev

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Re: Never update anything

#31

Post by dtoznayxvf »

endymi0n wrote: post #26
mwaitjmp wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having two of everything is actually a pretty decent idea. Part of the fear of updating though is the time sink. Even if I attempt to update one mac laptop to the new version (of which I believe there is a new one just released, doesn’t seem long since I last updated…) knowing that I have a safe backup, I dread the thought of spending hours knowing something _should_ be working but is now broken. It can be infuriatin…

Having two servers with an unpatched CVE 10/10 vuln will get both pwned in short to no time. Or just one, exposing your data in a ransom attack. Dependency and update management is hard. Welcome to IT. From my experience, extreme viewpoints and religions are convenient in the way they have answers to all hard questions in life that are simple, clear and wrong. If you like simple and correct answers, you're usually be…

dear raul, did you read the article? 'Here's a fair warning: this article is reductio ad absurdum, therefore you shouldn't take it as gospel. '

Re: Never update anything

#32

Post by forgotmypw17 »

I literally never update anything unless it is not working. Quite happy here with Firefox 66.x on Ubuntu LXDE 14.x, which is what happened to come with this particular device.

I have an iPad running iOS 8.x, which I'm also happy with, especially when I do testing on the clusterfucks that are later iOS and Firefox releases.

Browsing a handful of reputable text-based websites from behind a NAT, I don't see the problem. (And I feel the same way about HTTP, which is faster, more compatible, and more accessible.)

Re: Never update anything

#33

Post by travisd »

benburton wrote: post #17

> Docker Desktop doesn't let you decide whether you want updates or not, unless you pay them This made me uninstall Docker Desktop.

They actually just reverted this change within the last week (of course with accompanying “we love listening to your feedback!!!1!” eyeroll inducing messaging).

Re: Never update anything

#35

Post by m4rtink »

theptip wrote: post #23

There’s something to be said for being on the oldest minor version that still receives patch releases (usually the LTS if there is such a thing). Unfortunately most FOSS libraries don’t have the luxury/resources to support parallel releases. So to get security fixes you need to keep somewhat up to date with other changes. The worst place to be is having to fix a CVE in a hurry, but first having to upgrade your framew…

I guess enterprise Linux subscriptions are such a tax, right ?

It pays for Red Hat/SUSE/Canonical to maintain and old stable version CVE free for you, so you don't have to update so often.

Re: Never update anything

#36

Post by titzer »

dtoznayxvf wrote: post #9

If the software you are using auto-updates and you lose business or esteem of peers -- it's YOUR fault. Allowing most software companies to update anything on an running functioning work-related machine that you use to make $$, is ASKING FOR IT. WHEN it breaks something that is your fault for being so stupid. I update software in most cases by installing it on another machine/device and then once it is confirmed to w…

> WHEN it breaks something that is your fault for being so stupid.

Sorry, this one raises my hackles. It's exactly such a user-hostile worldview that makes everything suck. It's just more victim-blaming and elitist tongue clicking that helps absolutely no one.

Everyone is stupid when it comes to software. There are hundreds of millions, if not billions, of lines of code, written by tens of thousands of different people, with myriad internal and external complexity, all breaking and falling apart at the same time. It is literally beyond human comprehension all the niggling details that could go wrong.

I whole-fist pushback against this "oh you should know what you are doing with metric asstons of other people's code". Uh, no. That's the attitude of unserious people who want to ship garbage and make it users' problem.

Re: Never update anything

#37

Post by CTmystery »

paxys wrote: post #5

Semantic versioning is a curse. It makes perfect logical sense until you are a few iterations in and quickly run into dependency hell as shown in the diagrams in the article. My solution to this isn't "never update anything", but rather "never version anything". People can choose to stick to the bits they originally got, which is perfectly fine, or they can switch to the current "live" one. As a developer I'm only ev…

I'm trying to understand this comment. Do you never use package managers?

Re: Never update anything

#38

Post by throwaway984393 »

I use a 5 year old Linux distribution and I never update it except for important security patches. Works great. Nothing changes so nothing breaks. I ran into a problem once with trying to run some Go binary that wasn't actually static (pretty common apparently) but got it working in a Docker container.

Re: Never update anything

#39

Post by shimonabi »

I upgraded my Ubuntu distribution last week and my old Xerox Phaser laser printer stopped working over the network.

Something like this should never happen. I hate spending my weekends troubleshooting the Samba configuration. Maybe I will connect the printer to a Windows VM.

Re: Never update anything

#40

Post by kenniskrag »

mwaitjmp wrote: post #18
dtoznayxvf wrote: post #9

If the software you are using auto-updates and you lose business or esteem of peers -- it's YOUR fault. Allowing most software companies to update anything on an running functioning work-related machine that you use to make $$, is ASKING FOR IT. WHEN it breaks something that is your fault for being so stupid. I update software in most cases by installing it on another machine/device and then once it is confirmed to w…

Having two of everything is actually a pretty decent idea. Part of the fear of updating though is the time sink. Even if I attempt to update one mac laptop to the new version (of which I believe there is a new one just released, doesn’t seem long since I last updated…) knowing that I have a safe backup, I dread the thought of spending hours knowing something _should_ be working but is now broken. It can be infuriatin…

On "cloud" servers I usually do a snapshot before the upgrade. That way I can revert to it in a few minutes.
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