On Fri, 17 Apr 2009, Guy Letourneau wrote: > Generally I don't like patches because they feel to me like 'the > engineers turned in their homework late - after we had already > shipped the product.'
I think we all feel your discomfort, but "release early, release often" is so ingrained in development cycles these days that any campaign against it has a strong likelihood of appearing quixotic. I'm just the messenger here.... > SO: Which distros out there, in your experience, combine: a) > arguably modern functionality: good GUIs, drag-n-drop, plug-n-play > USB, decent driver availability, etc, and b) Only need adjustments > (downloads) about once every 6 - 14mo? More seldom is better... Most -- not all, but most -- updates fix bugs and vulnerabilites that are not remotely exploitable. That is, if you trust yourself (and anyone else who uses your system) to be prudent, you can safely forestall installing them. The more defensive layers between your machine and the Internet -- a firewall, packet filtering, disabling services you don't need -- the better. On the other hand, the more functionality you expect of your system, the more software that's potentially vulnerable. The thing is, there's no solid rule here. Some vulnerabilities are exploitable under fairly limited conditions -- but you're the only one who's able to assess whether your system is at risk. -- Paul Heinlein <> heinl...@madboa.com <> http://www.madboa.com/ _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list PLUG@lists.pdxlinux.org http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
