A few days ago I received a call from a client, who I have known for several years, sold her a couple of linux boxes and solved several of her problems. At one stage she needed a new computer and I had nothing suitable in stock so she switched back to windows buying a new computer, but first virus problems 6 months in windows went and she was back on linux.
Her new problem, the system says your version of linux mint expires in xx days, you must do something.
My reaction was bring it round or update it yourself, so gave her the system how to do it herself.
But then refreshed my ideas.
What happens if you dont upgrade or update ……
I had one client ran linux mint 12 for several years well past its best before date, continued to work and still does I think as lost touch with him
With windows you must update or upgrade to keep security issues at Bay.
But not the same on linux, I have several clients still on mint 19, 32 bit running fine no issues, hardware not capable of running 64bit and no money to buy new machines. Just messages on an infrequent basis.
Windows is mandatory do the default and suggested update… it due security (Windows Defender) among other things … the drawback part is do a reboot
macOS it can be problematic for some specific Apps .. but for developers about HomeBrew (repository) is a “serious” problem because normally it offers support for the 2 latest releases. So if you had a very old release of the OS you are doom because you can’t upgrade a specific software. For example a Database. I had this situation years ago. If that policy changed I don’t have idea.
BTW https://www.macports.org/ is an option. I almost used but I changed the decision so was changed the HDD to SSD to install Ubuntu. It prior of a deep research to upgrade hardware (official docs of Apple indicates max ram is 8GB -it is not correct because was upgraded to 16GB) and know if is possible install and use Linux in a in peace. MacBook Pro (2012 in my case)
Linux it depends of the app itself, if the user requires a specific feature and it is not available for old releases then that is a problem. For example for Fedora it can be a serious problem. For example about Databases (MySQL and Postgresql). I am not sure how problematic can be a Web Browser. … BTW a PGP can be an issue?
The point is, all depends of each tool/software used by the final user.
My dad had a laptop with a win7 sticker on it. Those with HDD and iirc 2/4gb RAM. I installed Ubuntu to it when Win7 was too slow to even boot properly. Ubuntu was running fine (can’t remember version but kernel was 5 series so maybe 17-19?). I asked him years later does he use that laptop and he said no. So powered it on, Ubuntu running fine but I just cp the /home to an USB stick and removed the hdd and said him to recycle the laptop.
When we still had CD/DVD drive laptops I once tried an old Ubuntu.iso cd (maybe 12 / 13) and it booted and asked if I want to install it. Didn’t bother.
Maybe the question is why they work because they’re not safe and nobody should use old stuff at home. Servers maybe
slowly old browsers become incapable of reading new internet sites
I used to let Debian go for 2 releases before doing an fresh install. That is 4 years.
Then I realised that with rolling release distros you never do a drastic update … just a minor fiddle every week.
My TVHeadend server - a Pi3 running Stretch (Debian 9) hasn’t been updated for years now … it’s EOL anyway…
â•â”€x@telesto ~
╰─➤ sudo apt update
Get:1 https://linux-packages.resilio.com/resilio-sync/deb resilio-sync InRelease [2,272 B]
Get:2 http://archive.raspberrypi.org/debian stretch InRelease [41.9 kB]
Hit:3 http://legacy.raspbian.org/raspbian stretch InRelease
Fetched 44.2 kB in 3s (14.3 kB/s)
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
All packages are up to date.
N: Skipping acquire of configured file 'non-free/binary-armhf/Packages' as repository 'http://linux-packages.resilio.com/resilio-sync/deb resilio-sync InRelease' doesn't support architecture 'armhf'
I’ve got systems around the place (i.e. customers) that NEVER EVER get updated because the application vendor won’t support regular patching…
I will say - these are headless “server” systems - but I don’t really see the difference between headless server and graphical desktop…
And - I’m very lax on my own desktops about updates… and I NEVER let the GUI NAG screen run an update… GO AWAY I’M TRYING TO WORK!
With my desktop Linux machines - I only ever update through terminal and apt commands anyway… and probably rather infrequently…
I’m an old believer in “if it aint broken don’t fix it” and I miss the days where you only patched something if it actually fixed something that was BROKEN!
Most of the udpates for Linux are security updates as well.
As for Debian
So I let my systems regularly do the update.
Actually this is done automatically for me, however I take a snapshot of the system before every update, just in case…
