On Mon, Oct 27, 2025 at 09:08:41AM +0100, Cyborg wrote: > > I lost 6H on this upgrade today and I'm now down until I downgrade exim > > and pin it back to an old version I'll never upgrade again. > > You have those problems, because you never updated. This is an interesting point and discussion. I've worked around 30 years on this topic, so I know both sides. When I worked at google on their linux that ran all of google (yes, that linux), I can tell you we only upgraded it when we needed it and for security issues _only_. We skipped almost a decade of maintainers breaking tools in incompatible ways, more than once, sometimes they even broke it and reverted after the outcry, and we didn't have to pay all those intermediate costs. They are very real, trust me.
Sure, if you have a pet OSS project (like exim and mailman were for me, but let's be honest that was now 20 years ago), you get more involved and follow everything (I contributed code to both exim and mailman), but this is not reasonable to do this long term over hundreds of pieces of software that we all use. Basically what you say works if it's your full time job and you only look after a few bits. When you look after all of linux from EFI boot to every single last end point app/daemon, it's a different ballgame. > Thats the LTS problem of any system, the gap between the real world and your > old version will be bigger any day and the updateprocess will be complexer > with it. Turns out in my personal experience, sadly you do save time by not upgrading unless security or features dictate the need. This is based on my 25+ year career in the field. > Do yourself a favour and rethink your update strategy. it's not only easier, > it's also safer: it's not sustainable unless it's your full time job, which it was for me, but now I'm must maintaining my own stuff, and honestly almost no one I know with my skills is still running their own mail or web, or anything, because of how much work it is long term to just keep up, and whether it makes sense when it's just for your own little domain. Hell, I even know too many linux developers who have long stopped running linux on their laptop, because it was too much work to keep up and make it kind of work with each new laptop. I have now run linux on laptops since 1995, I guess I get a cake for 30 years, but I'm not going to lie, it's been so many days of work lost on stuff that should "just work" :-/ So what do I do? Upgrade my laptop as seldom as possible. I used to do linux conferences around the world and give talks, maybe I need to write another talk about these thoughts, and present it :) All that said, again, I very much appreciate your and other answers. Thanks, Marc -- "A mouse is a device used to point at the xterm you want to type in" - A.S.R. Home page: http://marc.merlins.org/ | PGP 7F55D5F27AAF9D08 -- ## subscription configuration (requires account): ## https://lists.exim.org/mailman3/postorius/lists/exim-users.lists.exim.org/ ## unsubscribe (doesn't require an account): ## [email protected] ## Exim details at http://www.exim.org/ ## Please use the Wiki with this list - http://wiki.exim.org/
