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Ask Slashdot: How Often Do You Update Your OS?

Posted by Soulskill on from the whenever-i-accidentally-reboot dept.

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?

2 of 319 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Coke or Pepsi by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 5, Interesting

    the Emacs vs VI war is over (Emacs won)

    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?

  2. Depends upon the OS... by QuietLagoon · · Score: 5, Interesting
    It depends a lot on the OS

    .
    Version updates:

    • Windows - stick with Windows 7 until it is no longer supported
    • FreeBSD - update to new versions a month or so after they are released
    • OS-X - stopped updating because Apple stopped supporting my Macmini
    • OpenBSD - update to new versions a month or so after they are released

    .
    Security and other interim updates:

    • Windows - security updates only (I used to update other items, but then Microsoft started pushing Windows 10 garbage onto my PCs)
    • FreeBSD - stay current with the release version updates
    • OS-X - stopped updating because Apple stopped supporting my Macmini
    • OpenBSD - stay current with the release version updates