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Thread: in Linux world, reason to upgrade?

  1. #1
    Ultimate Member AllGamer's Avatar
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    Lightbulb in Linux world, reason to upgrade?

    so, i've been testing out over a dozen of different flavours of Linux and BSD over the past 3 weeks, many of which had different version releases.

    if one already has a stable install from an older version, and everything is working fine, i can't seem to find any compelling reason to upgrade to a newer release of the same distro.

    in fact, i noticed the newer the version of the same distro the broader and more hardware requirement are required although undocumented in detail, the difference can be felt when all the installations are done in the same machine.

    I've been trying to give the old machines (Pentium / 486) a new life, but even Linux are so hardware demanding now in days, the so called floppy versions are ok for desktop use, but not for an apache server or samba server, RAID support are almost none existent in those builds.

    Then going about after a long while, figured the best way was to go for the oldest version of the RAID manufacture supported version of Linux, and that did the trick, still slow but at least everything is functional
    i7-3970X, Corsair H80, 32GB G.SKILL, ASUS RAMPAGE4 Formula, VG278H(3x27")+3D Vision2, EVGA GTX 690(x2), OCZ ZX1250W, 256GB Vertex4(x2), Seagate 3TB(x5), Antec LanBoyAir, Logitech G510, G600, Z560THX, T.Flight Hotas, PZ35, Sennheiser PC163D, TrackIR5

  2. #2
    Member delRhode's Avatar
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    Only major reason I can think of is if the distro's maintainers stop/are going to stop putting out security patches for an older version, so they can concentrate on their newer versions... apart from that, if the distro does what you need it to do, run with it!

  3. #3
    Senior Member
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    The only reason to upgrade in the first place is to upgrade to Windows.

    Sorry man, just had to say that.

    Some of my Linux distros, work fine, until I upgrade to the newest version. A few times the next version was a nightmare (RH9) for me.

    I learned to stick with what works. The last time I stuck with an older version for 3 versions, until I switched the distro.

    Chris.

  4. #4
    Senior Member rockinup1231's Avatar
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    I'm not sure if it's true for other distros, but Ubuntu locks the kernel version of their old distros when a new version is released. This means only the new distros get driver updates through the repo, leaving users of older versions to fend for themselves and often times build the drivers from source if they need them.

    It's not as big of a deal for users whose hardware stability is nominal with older releases, but if you've got a fairly unsupported wifi device or intel/ati graphics hardware, you need the constant updates.

    I personally always use the newest releases because I like keeping current. Plus the robustness and simplicity of use with each release of Ubuntu improves, for the most part, with each release.

    P.S.: If you want to use a Linux distro on an older system, Try **** Small Linux (EDIT: DSL <_<). It uses linux kernel 2.4 instead of 2.6 which is much more lightweight, and it has Debian interoperability to an extent.
    MSI 870S-G46 | AMD Phenom II X4 965 @ 3.8ghz | Gigabyte Radeon 7870 Ghz Edition | 1 x 128GB Kingston HyperX SSD | 2 x WD 500GB Blue HDD | Arch Linux x64 | BFG Tech LS SERIES LS-550 550W | 2 x 4GB DDR3 1600 RAM, 2 x 2GB DDR3 1600 RAM (12 GB)

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