Re: [LAU] Upgrading (was Re: Ardour and xrun markers)

On Tue, Jan 04, 2011 at 02:17:53PM +0100, Peder Hedlund wrote:
> Quoting lanas <lanas@email-addr-hidden>:
>
>> On Mon, 3 Jan 2011 19:46:11 -0500,
>> Paul Davis <paul@email-addr-hidden> wrote :
>>
>>>> I'm using a
>>>> rather 'old' Ardour version eg. 2.4.1. ?
>>
>>> i believe that the question was answered, but here's one for you: what
>>> is the justification for continuing to use such an ancient version of
>>> Ardour? there are probably 300-400 bugs fixed since then, some of them
>>> very serious ones.
>>
>> I'm not too keen about updating Fedora 8. Everything works OK. When I
>> want to record things it works. I have seen too numerous problems when
>> doing other updates.
>
> I have to take sides with lanas on this.
> If you have an old system that has been working well, you haven't
> experienced any show stopping bugs and you don't have any security
> issues you have to deal with; why go through the hassle of upgrading?
>
> Sure you'll get lots of new features and (hopefully) fewer bugs if you
> upgrade but if what you have works well and is all you need there's
> little gain.
>
> And a tip once you upgrade lanas: buy a new harddrive and do a fresh install.
> You can even keep the old one and set up the bootloader to dual-boot
> your old system if you feel like you need to experiment with the new
> system first.
>

I absolutely hate upgrading and I do it as infrequently as possible. I am a Debian user through and through :-)

I don't just value stability and reliability, I worship it. I demand it. I will not endanger it except under extreme circumstances or duress (usually once every few years, some series of circumstances conspires to force me to upgrade).

When I get up on stage, I want to know that what worked yesterday, or last week, or last month, or last year, will work EXACTLY the same way now as it did then. I do not want to have to worry if some "rolling release" incompatibility broke something I'm going to need in the middle of a song while people are looking at me. So distros that update often or do rolling releases are not for me.

Yes, I know about regression testing, but I don't want to have to waste time on regression testing, chasing that treadmill all the time. I do it once every few years as necessary, and that's plenty good for me thanks.

This is one of the things I love most about Linux. In the commercial world, there was always some corporation or marketing scam forcing me to upgrade something and introduce instability. I hated that. Now, I can dig my heels in and stick with what works once I get it working.

I understand there are people who actually enjoy chasing the latest version of stuff, or breaking their system so as to have fun fixing it, but I am decidedly not one of those people.

A friend once described me as "technologically Amish". It fits.

-ken
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Received on Wed Jan 5 12:15:01 2011