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264 points davidgomes | 8 comments | | HN request time: 0.856s | source | bottom
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bityard ◴[] No.41879424[source]
You might as well ask, why does anyone run an older version or anything? The reasons will be largely the same.

Most of the software on my machines are "old" because they are part of a Linux distribution that (aside from security issues) was frozen in time a year or two ago so that it could be tested, released, and maintained. I am quite happy to have a system that I know is not going to break (either itself, or my workflow) when I apply security updates.

People who MUST HAVE the latest version of everything I feel either have some deeper FOMO issues to work out, suffer from boredom, or look at their computers as hobbies themselves rather than tools. (Which is fine, just be honest about what it is.)

That said, much of my career has been spent working at companies who got so busy shipping features that upgrading infrastructure never makes it above the fold. You can tell the managers that working around old software adds costs that scale with the age of the infrastructure, but they don't always listen. I currently work at a company that still has loads of CentOS 7 hosts still in production, and only fairly recently began upgrading them to RHEL 8. (Not 9!)

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1. efields ◴[] No.41879708[source]
These are the companies you want to be at IMHO. Provided the compensation is adequate, slow and stable > fast and pivot-y.
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2. willsmith72 ◴[] No.41879835[source]
older versions can also mean deprecated packages everyone's too scared to touch, failure to invest in maintenance and tech debt reduction, or use of old technologies which stopped receiving security updates
3. stackskipton ◴[] No.41879872[source]
SRE here, not at all.

Not chasing shiny is important but generally when tech debt builds up this high, life is generally hell in terms of outages, unable to accomplish basic tasks and dealing with a bunch of people who have NIH syndrome.

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4. Spivak ◴[] No.41879896[source]
Which is why you build on a platform like Alma/Redhat that gives you 10 years of support. You can call it outdated I guess but I prefer "supported." Make everyone else work out the new bugs before upgrading-- it used to be the rule not to update to a .0 release but being a hip modern developer means moving the 0 to the other side and yoloing it.
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5. necheffa ◴[] No.41879989[source]
> These are the companies you want to be at IMHO. Provided the compensation is adequate, slow and stable > fast and pivot-y.

Absolutely...not.

Slow does not mean stable. Slow means the floor is rotting out from under you constantly.

Being prudent about when and where to upgrade is a very active, intentional process that the typical company simply don't have the stomach or skill for.

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6. throwaway894345 ◴[] No.41880110[source]
Yeah, eventually you will have to upgrade and deal with all of the accumulated debt. You don’t have to be on the bleeding edge but you should still be updating regularly.
7. chasil ◴[] No.41880142[source]
We are still running OS2200 EXEC-8.

That platform got SMP in 1964.

8. ziml77 ◴[] No.41880434{3}[source]
The problem is that software ends up not getting touched for all those years, but eventually needs an upgrade when it's at end of support. And at that point you end up having to make changes to a system where no one remembers how it works or how to deploy it. Keeping software up to date to me is similar to how you practice disaster recovery scenarios. You do it regularly so no one forgets the processes and so any issues can be dealt with while you're not under a short time limit.