-----Original Message-----
From: Tim Larkins (EUKSHEL1PO) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Friday, May 08, 1998 10:19 AM
Subject: Updates!!!
>Is this REALLY to much to ask?
Yes, actually.
This isn't a monolithic operating system where one company, with billions of
dollars in resources, controls every aspect of every program, and issues
patches only after weeks of regression testing.
This is a community effort where thousands of people on different continents
contribute components in their spare time, and the companies that make the
individual distributions do their resource-limited best to make them
available to those that need them.
Don't apply a patch if you don't know what it does. You can't close every
security hole anyway, so close the ones that affect YOU.
Just because Redhat puts it on their web site doesn't mean they expect you
to download it right away and use it.
If they test something and think it's a necessary patch, it'll wind up in
the next distribution, where they *HAVE* tested it more fully, although not
nearly as intensely as, say, Microsoft would regression-test a Windows NT
Service Pack.
To do it the way you want it done, it'd have to stop being what it is.
If you really don't have the time available to keep up with updates, and you
*HAVE* to have every update that comes down the pike, you might need to
rethink whether Linux is the solution you need.
BSDi or Solaris might be more along the lines of your needs, to name two
among many.
They're nice operating systems that real people use in the real world to get
real work done. They have their own advantages over Linux, just as Linux
has it's advantages over them.
It sounds like some of Linux's advantages are actually disadvantages for
you, and that's completely reasonable. So don't use it.
If you need a screwdriver, the best hammer in the world is a bad tool for
your job.
Alternately, you could stop applying patches willy-nilly, and just apply
them to fix specific problems as they arise. There are folks out there
running 1.x Linux kernals from old distributions, and getting real work
done. Just because a patch exists doesn't mean you need it.
Watch the list and the newsgroups, and see if people have horror-stories
about a patch before you apply it.
If it patches something that you think might impact other programs, go ahead
and ask about it. "Hey, if I apply the GNU gadget-widgit-thingy-lib version
9.24b, is it going to break anything in Redhat 5.0?" That's a question for
which you're quite likely to get an informed answer.
If it means you don't apply the patch for 2 weeks after it comes out, well,
if your system was running and getting your work done for those 2 weeks,
what's the problem?
I know an ISP that's running their whole shebang on an old Slackware
distribution. I know another that's using BSDi 2.0.1, which is a couple of
years behind the current version of that Unix-like OS.
They're both serving their customers and getting work done, and that's what
the whole thing is about, isn't it?
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