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Slashdot Asks: Do You Install Preview Version Of An OS On Your Primary Device?
On Monday, Google released a new -- and also the final -- version of the Android N Developer Preview. Android Nougat, which is the latest version of Google's mobile operating system comes with a range of new features and improvements, including a notification panel redesign and additions to Doze power saving. The fifth preview, which is releasing today offers a "near-final" look at Android 7. Interestingly, Apple also released the public beta versions of iOS 10, and macOS Sierra to users earlier this month. Microsoft continues to offer preview builds of Windows 10 OS to enthusiasts.
We were wondering how many of you choose to live on beta version of an operating system on your primary devices. Does anyone here wait for the final version of an operating system to release before making the switch? Also, what does the setup of your office/work computer look like? Anyone who is still on an older version of an operating system because of reliability and compatibility concerns?
We were wondering how many of you choose to live on beta version of an operating system on your primary devices. Does anyone here wait for the final version of an operating system to release before making the switch? Also, what does the setup of your office/work computer look like? Anyone who is still on an older version of an operating system because of reliability and compatibility concerns?
A not yet finalized version of an OS on my primary device? My primary device only does security upgrades- I can't afford for my primary device to go down for days while I try to get it to work. Now my secondary device like a phone I'd consider it- but still I'd probably wait for 2 or 3 releases later before doing so seriously.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
I run lots of beta software (Firefox Nightly, Chrome Dev, Thunderbird Early), but I avoid doing it for the OS. Why? If my email client or browser's too buggy, I can uninstall them and roll back to the stable channel. On the other hand, fixing a computer that won't boot or having some other highly annoying problem takes just way too much of my time on my primary device.
I need to have confidence that I can continue my normal workflows on my primary machine.
Hire actual QA. Showstopping bugs prevent me from getting shit done. Looking at you, Windows Insider program.
This is what VMs or test devices are for
I'm not an "OS dilettante dabbler", harking back to the BSD trolls of the past.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
on my work hackintosh - i won't risk updating mid-project and haven't had the time either since ML was still new. but this year will be the year :-)
Wrote in to say same. "Articles" that end with crappy open ended questions like this should be binned - stay on topic gold leader.
I make the money to feed my family on my macbook pro... so no I will never install the beta OSX on the laptop.
Even when the OS is released as GA, I still wait until the first patch to install it.
Beta versions of Linux Mint and Neon are really not a problem. Risky, yes. Especially if you don't know what you're doing. But, with proper backups, disk partitioning, etc., neither Mint nor Neon has bit back. I've never been able to say the same thing about Windows, even years after the release was "final".
Depends on your definition of "Primary". Primary at work? Heck no. I just moved from Windows 7 a few weeks ago. I'm long past "ooh shiny" at work and as long as something works I'm happy to apply security patches only.
At home? Yeah I don't care. The stuff I do on a home computer is all run of the mill crap: internet/social networking, video games, and other stuff that's either not too critical or can be done from a browser.
I've got 2 desktops (one of which I'd consider my "primary" device at home), a laptop, 4 internet capable game consoles, my phone, and two tablets laying around at home. If any one of them is down I can make it by with the other devices for as long as I need until I get it fixed. Heck if I got really desperate I've also got a pair of Raspberry Pi's setting around too that will technically run a Linux desktop - just painfully slow.
Really with $50 tablets and $200 laptops these days computing has gotten so cheap that fully functional computers have gotten as cheap as child's toys.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
On FreeBSD I have already tried the 11.0 development preview (aka CURRENT) using a boot environment (beadm). It's very easy and intuitive.
I used to get the fast track insider builds on my work machine, but I got tired of constantly having to troubleshoot stuff that got broken along the way. It became really annoying to constantly have to reinstall visual studio problems, troubleshoot vbox issues, etc.
Ultimately I just formatted the machine and went back to the standard production build.
Seems like a tremendous waste of time and effort. Why would I want to test something for some company for free?
I don't respond to AC's.
Nope, as I have gotten older I find I prefer my devices and computers to work instead of having the bragging rights to the new shiny,
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
I would say that if you do, your primary work is not important enough.
Pretty much the people I know at "the cutting edge" are people who don't really actually ever "use" their machines. Like the people who spend thousands on overclocking and so on, as soon as they've done it, they 3DMark it and on to the next build. Actually PLAYING GAMES with such a machine is secondary to their usage.
In the same way, if you can afford to install untested software "to see what it's like" on your PRIMARY machine, then you obviously weren't doing anything that might be disturbed. In a VM? On a secondary machine? For testing and development? Sure. But on the main machine that you use all the time? No.
It reminds me of the dual-boot days, when people would tell you how many OS they could boot into. All cool, I'm sure, but it just means that your primary machine isn't even decided on an OS and spends half its life rebooting into other OS.
Sure, some people might only be able to afford the one machine. But then, surely, that's the one machine that you don't want to fuck up, isn't it?
I'm happy to test the cutting edge, trial it, and have to do so as part of my job (some part of which often gets "Why aren't we on already?", so only testing can say "Because it breaks X, Y and Z"). But my machine always gets comments as to being behind everyone else's. That's because I don't upgrade unless there's a need.
If you're sacrificing time on your primary machine to test "non-working" software of any kind, then your work obviously isn't important enough, or you busy enough, to actually care about putting it at risk.
The preview versions just install themselves.
Have gnu, will travel.
No. This is what virtual machines are for. Or an older box you might have laying around.
If there's some specific feature I need for something or other, then yes.
That almost never happens.
Debian "testing" is technically a preview but is going to be more stable than most OSes.
I have a Win (various), Mac, Linux and Chromebook devices which I install OS (as well as browser) previews on to test my software on and hopefully give me a bit of runway to report a problem in an upcoming release. As a few others have noted, my primary (development) systems have stable versions of the OSes in which I review all updates and only install security patches.
If somebody is so irresponsible and so chained to the idea of being on the bleeding edge that you put previews on your primary machines, then I wouldn't trust you with my company's software.
Who is this "We" that were wondering in the question? Why would you think that serious professionals (or even semi-serious hackers) would do such a, frankly stupid, thing?
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
I've been on the Insider fast ring for a long time. Never had any real issues. My thinking is that if I just download the preview and spin a VM up from it, I won't use it very much. In that case, I may as well just wait until GA.
Office device (laptop): Fedora OS Stable (which like to think of bleeding edge) Mobile device (Nexus phone): Android N (eeeeeeeasy does it, but first-to-market)
So turning off networking completely (or giving it a disconnected IP) and rebooting my macbook pro 11 times will make it so I cannot log into the laptop? That I had not heard about, and it sounds like pure gibberish. Since you aren't willing to test your hypothesis you deserve the accuracy that your query yields.
I do it from time to time. I'm running MacOS Sierra at the moment on my notebook. I'm not the average user but I'm nicely set up to be able to clone off my systems quickly (Win and Mac) to try out betas. If the beta experience turns out to be a disaster I simply restore an image and put my profile back. With SSDs it's a 15-20 minute process. If you're going to beta test something, you're not going to get a good test in unless it's your primary system. You'll know pretty fast if you need to switch back or not. It's all about having a backup plan and a fast one at that. It's really not a big deal for a good tech head but if backup and restore.
I installed the version before this. Why? Because A, I wouldn't use a touch device to do anything of real importance anyway (so the danger of not being able to browse 9gag on the toilet is quite survivable if worse should come to worst) and B, the last version pissed me off anyway and lo and behold, this version actually did bring soothing to my life.
The final version IS a beta.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
How would you know? How do you know he didn't purchase his copy of Mac OS?
How, exactly, would one purchase a free OS? (Not that I have problems with Hackintoshes, by the way, but I'm curious by what you mean)
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
I switched from Snow Leopard to Maveriks roughly 2 years ago, and only because a piece of software - I think it was Kaleidoscope - didn't work with Snow Leopard anymore. Maveriks is staying. Don't see me moving to El Capitan with my 2011 MB Air anytime soon.
As for my Linux Workstation Laptop: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS it still is. I might upgrade within the next 10 months or so.
I stick with tried, true and mature Software for all mission critical stuff. It's annoying enough as it is upgrading from one version to the next. Might aswell be one that is known to work. That and skipiing every odd version at least works for me aswell.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
It's not free, it comes included with the Mac.
The EULA says you can't run it on non-Mac hardware. That remains to be seen if this is legally binding or not. I believe it isn't in my country, and it shouldn't be anyways. If I bought the product, I am free to do what I want with it, including taking some parts and reusing them in another PC. They are free not to give me any support, however.
Sometimes the shit doesn’t hit the fan until after the update is released into the wild. Every time a new Ubuntu or Mac OS X comes out, I read all about it and keep googling for problems that people report. After I see that most of the problems have died then, then I make off-schedule backups and then install the update.
I made that mistake with iOS 7 -- never again. It's cool to play with, but I only do it on a development device now.
- Vincit qui patitur.
Do you test your moonshine by drinking it? Hell no. You give a jar to a friend and watch for symptoms of methanol poisoning.
I see my shadow changing, stretching up and over me...
I work on Android, so my primary device has been running Android N since December, and I run internal development builds which are more like nightly tip-of-tree builds than the much more heavily-tested previews.
Is running such bleeding edge software on my primary device sometimes painful? Sometimes. All in all it's not really that bad, though. I do keep a backup device around that has Marshmallow on it, just in case, but I've never had to use it.
I wouldn't worry about running one of the preview releases at all, myself. YMMV, of course :)
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
I'm retired, so my primary device is my home desktop. I run Fedora Linux on both my desktop and my laptop, and it's a bleeding edge testbed for RedHat, so in that sense, even the final version of each release is a "preview version." Of course, I never upgrade both of them at the same time, so that if and when something goes wrong, I'm not completely hosed.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
My Coworker did this on Windows 8. This was done mostly so that he could get used to the OS long before others started using it so he could field questions if need be. However, this was done after a full system backup, image, which allowed him to back out of it a few days later after he had enough of the Iron Maiden. If you don't do this to your primary device you've defeated the purpose of a Preview Edition. If you don't use the preview regularly then you're not actually Previewing it, and the only device you're going to use regularly is your Primary Device. In the past I've used duel booting for this myself, but Windows has made that difficult over the years.
I've run OSX so, yes...
My primary machine runs dos.
Windows 10 was purposely released feature incomplete. Which technically makes it Alpha software.
Windows 10 cannot be Beta software, because Beta is supposed to be feature complete, just fixing bugs, and boy is it buggy!
I had a problem the other day on my Surface Pro 3 where the Start Menu would not open up. Also the notification centre and WiFi would not open either. Turns out this is form a common bug where Windows 10 will corrupt the core OS files. They have a fix for it that is really easy to do. You just have to open up the command line and run this tool that will download an ISO matching your version and fix the core OS files using Windows Update. Except Windows Update is usually one of the core files corrupted. That's okay, you can figure out your exact version of Windows, download the ISO, mount it, then you can run the command specifying exactly where the files are. I ended up running a refresh instead.
This is one of the many "small" bugs in Windows 10. You know just things like some CD/DVD/Blu-ray drives aren't detected. WiFi sometimes doesn't work, or just plain breaks for no reason.
When Windows 7 was in development, I ran the preview and then beta on my main computer, because they were 1 million times better than Windows Vista. To use all my memory I couldn't use Windows XP, unless it was Windows XP 64bit, but that was a bit of a crap shoot on if things would work or not.
Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon what's the difference? All steal money from devs and control with walled gardens.
It DOES happen - but only for the netboot-enabled clients.
EG the AC is telling a half-truth to scare people.
It doesn't work on a regular desktop install.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
That's fine, as most hackers are too young to know how to handle a Windows XP machine in the first place.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I have dual-booted my home desktop before. Worst case scenario, I have to manually tinker with the boot loader to get back to my original OS.
On a work or mobile device? No way.
My cell phone is my only phone, so I'm not risking the hassle. I could slap my SIM into a $10 special in an emergency, but I'd rather not.
And at work, I'm not getting paid to play with new shiny things---or if I am, there is a virtual lab for it.
---
According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
Stay away from Windows 10 insider builds.
I was using an insider build that worked okay, then tried upgrading to the next build in the "slow" track, and it completely broke my wifi, then I reverted back to the earlier insider build. So far, no real problems.
Then Microsoft decided that insider builds should expire, and become non-functional. You get a BSOD every 4 hours as a way of reminding you to not use old insider builds.
The built-in Windows Update for insider builds was also broken since I had been messing with registry settings for telemetry, and it refused to check for insider build updates.
So yeah, stay away unless you like broken wifi or BSODs every 4 hours.
What is a primary device? It's 2016
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Frankly stable software isn't that "stable". For instance, I have an iPad running iOS 9 that crashes multiple times a day. I often install beta software because either way at the end of the day I'm still going to be dealing with lots of bugs. Might as well as be on the bleeding edge then.
I did and my computer (utility server) literally freezes every two hours until I rebuild it.. Yeah my bad :/ (2K10IP)
He who gets the last laugh, laughs last.
"Do You Install Preview Version Of An OS On Your Primary Device?"
Yes and no. From Microsoft and Apple? Hell no. Betas of my chosen Linux distro and nightly releases of my favorite Andoird ROM? Hell yeah, all the time.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
... if it was easy to un-brick a phone be resetting it to factory settings; I'd be much more eager to do so.
Ideally, in my mind, it'd work just like a PC --- where I could make a backup image of the Factory Disk Image (just in case); and then install whatever I want on it; knowing that it wouldn't be hard to boot from an external device and restore the factory image.
Anyone know of such a phone --- and that'll be the next one I'd buy.
I got bored of waiting for stable Android L roms but didn't want to go back to stock so switched to CM12 nightlies. Didn't have a single issue for all the time it was on nightlies until they got to stable releases of 12 and 13. Depending on how long N takes I might switch to CM14 nightlies when they arrive.
...'nuff said.
"The wisdom of the Patriarchs was that they *knew* they were fools." --Master Foo
"Do you think those fucking IP lists on that image are just randomly pulled out of an ass?"
According to my router traffic on a non-netboot-Yosemite system - YES. You are pulling that out of your ass.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Hell YES.
I'm a dev. I'm not afraid of some shit breaking. The day that I'm afraid of shit breaking on machines which only affect me (and have no alternative plan!), I should quit being a dev. Because chances are, that shit broke because of me (:
But honestly, though, I use the Win10 fast ring on my work machine (and 1/2 the dual-boot at home). Updates at least once a week -- and the current builds boot mofo fast and are more responsive -- so I'm getting a pay-off.
If something goes super-south, I can always find respite on a secondary machine (my laptop, unused workstation at work) because the code is not isolated to my "primary" machines. My development environments are available on all machines that I can access (or can be installed trivially).
I also use nightly CM builds on my phone -- because, if worst comes to worst, I can restore (from Titanium Backup) onto a prior build which I can download at anytime; time cost: around an hour, of which only about 15 minutes actually requires my attention. Once again, I get a pay-off: my ancient i9300 is running the latest Marshmallow builds and hasn't been faster (or more secure).
The cry to avoid bleeding-edge OS builds because of security is faulty -- where do you think the security fixes happen first? Certainly, I get to see the fix commit logs when I update my Android device. I also get to see them in Win10 build logs. I don't have to bother for Debian because stable is normally patched quite quickly for security threats.
I don't install previews on my pre-schooler's gaming laptop -- because then I'd have to maintain it. I don't install a testing Linux distro on my home machine's Linux boot because that has to (reliably) keep my tv series up to date and no-one wants to face the wrath of the wife when we don't have the current series (and I have, thanks to some creative fuxing by Poettering. I used to run Ubuntu latest (and before that, Debian testing) when there weren't people hell-bent on breaking the fundamentals of the OS).
But on my machines -- hell yes.
Disclaimer: I am a complete Update Whore.
Although I keep old/current versions of OSs (Windows 7, Ubuntu 16.04, and Fedora 24) on my desktop PC just in case something goes wrong, my prmary OS are Fedora Rawhide, Ubuntu 16.10 dev, and the latest build of Win 10 I've happened to install
Geology - it's not rocket science; it's rock science
"You have no comprehension of where those IP's came from on that chart nor where those addresses point/pointed to."
That would be incorrect. I've got data from dozens of sites where I manage networks (most of the systems connected being Apple systems) and have all the traffic stats going back seven years.
You are talking entirely out of your ass. None of those IPs have ever been touched on any of my networks, not in the ASA or MPLS logs. NONE.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Before like 3 releases of Mac OS X you could buy the DVDs.
And ofc you can still buy DVDs on eBay for Mac OS 10.6.x and older (probably also for 10.7, not sure thought, since 10.8 it is a free "upgrade", but no one prevent you to sell the DVDs included with your Mac)
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
I do run beta versions of the Chrome OS on my primary computers because it is more stable in beta than other operating systems. I do keep a couple of back-up computers on stable but have only used them once in two years. Hows' that for reliability.
Try it, if you don't like it just reflash with production ROM and restore app data from backup. Experimenting is not a big deal for modern smart phones that back up everything to the cloud. Just don't install a prerelease and head for vacation without testing battery life and camera for a few days.
Never buy a phone without an unlockable bootloader. Who do you want to decide when you stop getting bug fixes and security updates? You or the vendor/wireless career?