variable scheduled date

[Adrien Monteleone]

How could I forget about servers?

True, 10 year stability is a plus for that case.

As for keeping computers that long, my laptop is a 2007 model.(to be fair, it’s a Mac and not relevant to the distro choice issue)

Various family members have a smattering of desktops from the very early 2000s, most of them 32bit. They still run fine. (I’ve given them new life with various *nix flavors)

A client still has four desktops from the late 90s that we ‘upgraded’ with Pentium IIIs and *doubled* the RAM to 1GB. (they were running Lubuntu until that got too bloated and now run Debian with LXDE)

I’ve even rescued an old Compaq Laptop with a K6, and an IMB PI with 86MB! of RAM with an old Puppy flavor.

The two sticking points that are making old hardware tough to keep running don’t have anything to do with the hardware. First, the OS vendors are dropping 32bit images so change is forced and decent distro choices getting slimmer. (mind you, these aren’t hackers using these things and those users obviously aren’t keen on change) Second, most of these users need a decent, safe and secure browser. (which have also dropped 32bit support) That more than anything is going to force them to change hardware. If it weren’t for the bloat of both browsers and websites, those machines would probably continue to function just fine for several more years. (and might still as long as they aren’t connected to the internet for anything other than e-mail)

But I digress as this is all far from the original topic.

Regards,
Adrien

> On Feb 26, 2018, at 7:29 AM, Derek Atkins <warlord at MIT.EDU> wrote:
> 
> Adrien,
> 
> Adrien Monteleone <adrien.monteleone at gmail.com> writes:
> 
>> True, the version in EPEL7 is 2.6.18, one version back, soon to be two
>> versions back.
>> 
>> I too was wondering the issue, now I see that essentially, nothing
>> ever gets back-ported for RHEL, so newer RPMs can’t pull in
>> dependencies because they don’t exist in the older repositories. They
>> can provide 10 years of support, because it’s essentially frozen.
>> 
>> Your experience and explanation makes me glad I never tried RHEL.
> 
> RHEL is a great server platform.
> It SUCKS as a desktop platform.
> I would question why Jean-David chose it for a desktop, because it's
> really not designed for that.  It is designed for long-term stability,
> which is exactly counter to being able to frequently upgrade to new
> software.
> 
> Besides, who keeps (desktop) computers for 10 years?  I refresh my
> laptop every 3.
> 
>> Regards,
>> Adrien
> 
> -derek
> 
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> 
> -- 
>       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
>       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
>       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
>       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available