On 4/14/24 14:20, Tim via users wrote:
On Sun, 2024-04-14 at 09:49 -0400, Fulko Hew wrote:
Then in corporate life, I needed to ensure a stable development
environment.
This is one of the big problems with computers in the work place. You
may have single-task computers which you want to work, and not mess
around with. You may have a need for particular jobs that will always
work in a certain way. Things in development can take ages to
complete, and that's just sorting out your own needs, never mind having
to deal with a system changing as well. System updates can pull the
rug out from under you.
Computer systems with long life spans are essential in such
environments, things that require replacing every 6 months or so are a
real nuisance (to put it mildly).
Let's be clear, we're not talking about annoying changes to how the
desktop looks, that can be put up with. But when you find essential
software and/or hardware doesn't work anymore, or doesn't exist
anymore, and support libraries are incompatible, that's a deal-breaker.
It's a part of the reasons Linux gets minimal support with hardware
(printers, graphics cards, scanners, whatever). Those manufacturers
don't want to be dealing with ever-changing infrastructure where
someone else is making all these changes. And there's every chance
that by the time they've developed their gadget and software for it, a
Linux distro has changed OSs twice.
After F33, it became an issue that I didn't want to migrate because
I'd typically be losing functionality or user-convenience.
During F33 to 34/35 migration I remember losing all of my KiCad
customizations for chips and connectors I had downloaded.
During this F35 to F39 migration, I've lost the convenience of a
Fedora supported FreeCAD.
Addressing an issue someone else replied with: While one can try
installing old software onto new systems, you often find it cannot be
installed or run. It's not compatible.
Even the newer idea of the big-blob appimage (and their ilk) that's
mostly self-contained without relying (much) on system libraries, and
one blob is supposed to work on various different distros can fail to
work on different versions of an OS.
So yes, change is a pain. In certain environments computers will never
get updates. Once it's working, they'll keep it in that condition.
It's not a problem with non-networked systems, but risky with networked
ones.
I have a very old Mac in that boat (changes stuffed things up). It's
used for video editing with Final Cut Pro, and that's its sole task. I
kept updating for a while, but it can't be any more. They limit the
newest OS you can put on it. And somewhere along the way, one of the
Final Cut Pro updates became very crashy, and no further updates fixed
that issue, and it wasn't possible to go back to a prior version that
was stable.
P.S. And with every upgrade, software just gets slower.
I certainly noticed that with Windows. They seemed to just cobble
patch upon patch, rather than replace borked things with working ones.
I can't say I've *directly* encountered upgrade slowdowns with Linux
software. Though I have in the sense that Gnome and KDE developers
seem to think everyone has a PC with an insanely powerful graphics card
and oodles of RAM to just run the desktop. I don't care about the damn
desktop, it's applications I want to use.
Real problem for scientific systems. Scientific Linux that was going to
provide some stability died. CERN is trying to roll their own version of
CENTOS 8,9 since its promise of more stability was moot. Seen many
instances of measurement hardware dependent on systems that passed away,
OS/2. Now we are being told that our cars will die when the software is
unavailable!
--
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