Why does everyone run ancient Postgres versions?

i ll tell you why from my end. I installed Postgres14 via homebrew many years ago on my Apple M1 mac mini. I searched a lot on how to "upgrade" this installation but found nothing. I have a few databases running with data on it which I can't afford to lose if something goes down for more than 1 hour. I wish someone would guide me on how to actually install a newer postgres such as v17 without breaking an existing v14 install or losing data since I am not an expert by any means

Forget about something as major as Postgres, I have trouble updating packages (that aren't install via pip/npm/cargo) on Linux all the time as a newbie. The experience is worse than Windows for some reason.

Hell, I have a hard time to tell the version of some system build-in binaries.

A few months ago, I have trouble to unzip a file which turns out ot be AES-encrypted. Some answers on SO [1] saying I should update my `unzip` to newer version but I can't find any updates for my distro, and I have no idea (still no, so feel free to teach me) to update it manually to make my `unzip` supporting AES. And all the versions, the good and the bad, all say they're "version 6.0.0" despite they behavior obviously differently.

[1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/60674080/how-to-open-win...

> I have trouble updating packages (that aren't install via pip/npm/cargo) on Linux all the time as a newbie. The experience is worse than Windows for some reason

If you haven't installed them via your programming language's package manager, you either installed them manually or via the OS package manager. The first one you'd know how to upgrade, and for the second you can ask it what version it is and what version is available to upgrade to (for compatibility reasons it might not be the latest, or latest major, unless you use the software vendor's own package manager repositories).

It's actually much easier than in Windows, because you have a piece of software (package manager) that is your one stop shop to knowing what is installed, update it, check versions available, etc. unless you've manually installed stuff.

In Windows you... google and download random .exes? Cool. As good as the worst possible option on Linux.

Not exactly random. It's not hard to tell which website is official 7-zip website. Also choco and scoop exist on Windows.

> As good as the worst possible option on Linux.

I understand this is not a fair comparison, but in practice, they're not as easy. When using Windows, I usually use it with a proper GUI interface, so popping up a browser and download the newest installer for a software from their official website would take me less than 1 min.

Doing similar for my Linux VPS with only a terminal is much more complicated.

> Doing similar for my Linux VPS with only a terminal is much more complicated.

Debian/Ubuntu:

  sudo apt update
  sudo apt upgrade

Fedora/RHEL:

  sudo dnf update

Arch:

  sudo pacman -Syu

Alpine Linux:

  apk update
  apk add --upgrade apk-tools
  apk upgrade --available

Of course, if the package you need isn't available in the standard repos, then you'll need to look elsewhere (e.g. PPAs or third party repos). There's also options like Flatpak and AppImage if you want something that's a bit closer to how you'd choose to install new releases on Windows.

If I wanted to update all of the installed software I have on my Windows install, there'd basically be no way for me to do this, outside of shady update manager software.

At the same time, I get the appeal of being able to just download a new release and install it, both AppImage on Linux and the way you install software on macOS (just drag the file into Applications) seem similarly pleasant to me in that regard.

To expand on the latter (the response got deleted), you can very much do something like https://peazip.github.io/peazip-linux.html (I wish 7-Zip was available on Linux natively, but as far as GUI software goes, PeaZip is pretty nice) however that's not the most common approach. You should generally prefer using the package manager when you can.