T. Valent wrote: > Folks, yes, I appreciate your attempt to help a lot. And I really am on > your side if we're talking about "normal" machines. > > However, obviously nobody believes me when I say "For us there is no > reason to update to newer versions of OpenBSD yet. On the contrary, > maintenance is a lot easier for us if we try to keep all systems on the > same versions for as long as possible."
you are correct, since you outright state a reason: hardware compatibility. Just as you will have difficulty installing Windows 2000 or XP on modern hardware, old versions of OpenBSD will have difficulty on new hardware. Yes, OpenBSD has many design decisions that force the issue a lot faster than Windows, but that's the game you have chosen to play. I won't try to tell you how much better 4.7 is than 4.3, I'll grant you that for your application, maybe it Just The Same. But the rules of the game with OpenBSD are "thou shall keep up-to-date". With Windows, Solaris or Linux, you hunt down drivers when new hardware comes out. OpenBSD makes you do some work, too -- upgrade to a new release. My experience has been that upgrading is easier than hunting down the new drivers. The great fantasy of many people in the IT world is lots of identical hardware and software. Sorry, this is completely unrealistic, or at least completely unhealthy, in the big picture. New hardware happens. New software happens. Special needs happen. Growth happens. If your business is growing, you will be needing to add new hardware and software in the future, and odds are, it won't be the same as what you have now. That needs to be in your long-term plans. If your business isn't growing, you have other problems... When you design your solutions, this is part of a good design solution: what happens in a year from now when we need to add to the system...and the old hardware is no longer available? I've also had the "privilege" of taking over support of old systems that no one quite understood and everyone is terrified of replacing or rebuilding because all the people that set it up originally are now elsewhere. The "keeping it up-to-date" is something I've become a big believer in, because the alternative is to have companies running on ten year old applications that no one really understands, meaning they can never be replaced in a relatively pain-free way. The routine, scheduled upgrade is a great re-orientation process, an opportunity to verify your knowledge diversity and documentation. Nick.
