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Ask Slashdot: How Often Do You Update Your OS?
An anonymous reader writes: A couple friends of mine have been having a debate recently. One is constantly updating all of his operating systems (desktop, phone, and otherwise), often as soon as a new patch is available. He tries betas and nightlies. He has a different ROM on his phone every other week. The other friend is much more conservative with his updates. Once his systems are running smoothly, he wants to leave them alone for as long as possible. He'll do some serious security updates, but he's extremely wary of anything involving major UI changes or functionality differences. What's your preference? Are you constantly tweaking? Waiting for the early adopters to work out the kinks? How does your preference change between work machines and personal machines?
Say what? I work in a shop with extensive Solaris and Linux installation, and run several personal Linux boxes as well. They all have vi. None of them, as far as I know, and I checked several, have Emacs. This was not a conscious decision for any of them: it's just the way the hosts installed (although on my personal boxes, I would've installed vi had it not installed by itself). Who won the war?
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Version updates:
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Security and other interim updates:
Still running OSX 10.6.8 -- an OS version ca. July 2011
Isn't broken in the sense that anything about it significantly impedes what I use the computer for; anything that was really crappy -- like Safari -- has been replaced with something that worked better.
Ergo, no need to "fix" it.
I have more interesting things to do with my time than adopt change for the sake of change.
There's a great deal positive that can be said for a stable OS environment, not the least of which is that software which I develop for it will work for more people than software that utilizes functionality only available from a later version of the OS. Speaking for myself, I view a statement about any application of the general form "requires late version of/latest OS" as an abject failure of the developer to think of the users.
That's not to say that others aren't, or shouldn't be interested in the latest OS version-- it's just that I am not, and that addresses the question that was asked.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Wish this got more time on slashdot.
The 60% of the geography of the United States that does not have high-speed internet, or has low-speed data with data caps and no other options, NEVER get to update operating systems.
While no one should think they are entitled to high-speed internet, the fact is that outside large cities u.s. connectivity is just about the worst on the planet.
Many in rural areas can't even update an OS to a new version since everyone changed updates to be online-based.
Back in the days of physical media, we would just order a new version of the OS on disk. This is why I left Windows after Win2000 and went to Macs - OS on DVD's for less than $20 shipped to your home. For a while, Mac was the only way if you could not download. Well, you know what happened after Snow Leopard - no more Mac media.
In our small town of 530, there are 5 people with WIndows 7, because it came on the cheap pc/laptop they bought. A few still use Vista, 3 of us also have Mac Snow Leopard, and the rest of us have WinXP.
None of us have the 'internet' to update anything, so we don't. Our pc's still work as good as they did when we got them though.
We all run Ad blockers to minimize the misuse of our connections.
When you have little internet connection and use little of the internet, you don't seem to ever get viruses and malware though. A great trade-off.