On Thu, Jul 23, 2015 at 03:13:34PM -0400, Alec Ten Harmsel wrote > New software could be: > > * more efficient > * technically better (i.e. GPT is technically better than MBR) > * have new features that you don't think you need but come in handy > > If your system works, why do you update it? Unless you actively need > the update, you're just wasting cycles.
Security fixes. Unfortunately, the security-fixed version depends on updated libraries, which depend on other updated libraries, etc, etc. > See above. Also, "teh shiney" is a valid reason. This is how software > (and everything in general) moves forward. Couple examples: > > * linux: The very definition of "teh shiney." Started by a university > student for fun. snowballed into the beautiful thingy we all use every > day. As opposed to "real unix" which cost hundreds/thousands of dollars for licencing, and was tied to exotic "workstations". I was a Canadian federal employee in the 1990's when we got hit with massive budget cuts. You're a manager in a science department on a reduced budget. You need a new "workstation". Your choices were... * a $100,000 IBM RX1000(sp?) "workstation", plus a $5,000/year AIX software licence * a loaded Compaq for $5,000 and free linux, and you can accomplish the same FORTRAN number-crunching And how many home hobbyists were running "real UNIX" before linux? > * ruby: Started because Matz could not find a language that was perfect > for him. Now it powers loads of websites. "New-and-improved" stuff like Ruby gets in via the back door... * Some Ruby fanboi, who's in the WebkitGTK upstream, makes Ruby a hard-coded dependancy of Webkit. * Lennart Poetering sends an email begging the GNOME people to make systemd a hard-coded dependancy for GNOME and it happens. * Skype now requires Pulseaudio as a hard-coded dependancy Three pieces of software that were getting nowhere until they became hard-coded dependancies of other, more-commonly-used software. -- Walter Dnes <waltd...@waltdnes.org> I don't run "desktop environments"; I run useful applications