Ask Slashdot: How Often Do You Update Your OS? 319
An anonymous reader writes: A couple friends of mine have been having a debate recently. One is constantly updating all of his operating systems (desktop, phone, and otherwise), often as soon as a new patch is available. He tries betas and nightlies. He has a different ROM on his phone every other week. The other friend is much more conservative with his updates. Once his systems are running smoothly, he wants to leave them alone for as long as possible. He'll do some serious security updates, but he's extremely wary of anything involving major UI changes or functionality differences. What's your preference? Are you constantly tweaking? Waiting for the early adopters to work out the kinks? How does your preference change between work machines and personal machines?
Every month or two. (Score:3)
Conservative. (Score:4, Interesting)
Still running OSX 10.6.8 -- an OS version ca. July 2011
Isn't broken in the sense that anything about it significantly impedes what I use the computer for; anything that was really crappy -- like Safari -- has been replaced with something that worked better.
Ergo, no need to "fix" it.
I have more interesting things to do with my time than adopt change for the sake of change.
There's a great deal positive that can be said for a stable OS environment, not the least of which is that software which I develop for it will work for more people than software that utilizes functionality only available from a later version of the OS. Speaking for myself, I view a statement about any application of the general form "requires late version of/latest OS" as an abject failure of the developer to think of the users.
That's not to say that others aren't, or shouldn't be interested in the latest OS version-- it's just that I am not, and that addresses the question that was asked.
Re: (Score:3)
I used to have a great deal of interest in my computers, but after Windows 8, OSX, Gnome 3 and Unity, I really don't like computers any more, so I just do what's necessary to pay the bills.
Re:Conservative. (Score:4, Insightful)
Just sounds like you are getting old and seeing that is is fatiguing to learn the same thing over and over again... I mean it is, but that is computing in general. I grew up with DOS and norton commander, then we hit windows 3.1 to learn things, then windows 95x and upwards. Even between windows versions everything shuffled around and I had to relearn where it all was.
Back in college I finally got some unix/linux command line experience, had to learn some stuff there but nothing too deep. In the working world I was back to windows for a while, but a new job got me stuck on OSX and once again had to relearn everything, then back to ubuntu again (What asshole greenlit those scroll bars and 1px target to resize a window?!) and learning more and more.
Oh yeah, there is also the ipad, ipod, iphone, and android devices with their own OS's and quirks to learn too. Not to mention console dashboards and navigating around their social networking features.
I mean, it all keeps changing, and some new stuff sucks, but overall, I think its getting better. I find myself just as lost as I've always been, but the answer is usually auto completed for me when I start typing it into google, I don't even have to search through 30 pages of altavista to find a good webring to browse for good information.
I mean taking the editor, yeah some suck, but some are great, sublime text for example, it is pretty hipster like, but damn, it was really built for people like me. I like keyboard shortcuts but I like GUI's a lot as well and sublime seems to marry the two really well.
So yeah, software changes, more and more TYPES of people are building software for more types of people, there is a lot of crap out there, but filtered out, the gems are really great gems.
Re:Conservative. (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah... no. They broke cron, they inflicted that insane "app nap" nonsense on us (broke damned near every real-time application out there... I spend a *lot* of time explaining to OS X users that it needs to be turned off or OS X will summarily stop giving the required amount of CPU time to the app) there's sand-boxing, the changes in spaces functionality, they utterly broke UTF-8 console printing (and didn't fix it... just left it broken unless you upgraded -- and yes, they knew about it in time, I talked to "Mr. CUPS himself about it), dropped PPC emulation, moved image support from apps to OS (which broke the dickens out of Aperture upgrades, among other things), they broke getting to local websites on your LAN, and they quit giving us actual media, which I simply find annoying and short-sighted. And they still haven't fixed many of the OS bugs, for instance, you still can't have more than one app listening to a UDP broadcast reception port as far as I know. I don't have any idea whose brilliant think it was to decide that "broadcast" meant only one app can listen, but there you go.
Definitely quite a few reasons to be reticent about moving to a new version of OSX. These things matter.
Sure -- if you don't mind a good deal of your stuff breaking. Inconveniently enough, I do mind. Hence, 10.6.8, and staying there as long as possible, too.
Re: (Score:2)
Users still using outdated OSes have no right to complain when they're left behind.
OS X has gotten so lean with it's requirements, all you need is a Mac with a 64bit CPU
It's all about the Pentiums (Score:4, Funny)
In the immortal words of Weird Al:
"I've beta tested every operating system; gave props to some but others, I dissed 'em "
Yeah I tend to update and change my OS frequently on my personal systems. Work systems tend to be kept in known stable configurations.
Future Shock (Score:3)
Alvin Toffler thought human personalities could be split between those who welcome change and those who avoid it. First published in mid-20th century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
http://www.amazon.com/Future-S... [amazon.com]
https://www.goodreads.com/book... [goodreads.com]
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I want facts and figures to back up change. Show me that the new car is t
Re: (Score:2)
I welcome change and advance, I think it does us all good in the long run. That doesn't mean I will choose to partake in same.
Re: Future Shock (Score:2)
The fashion industry would like to respectfully disagree with you.
In all seriousness, apparently some change does matter. I read about a study (on phone and too lazy to find link) where heterosexual women were asked to decide which of a group of photographs of men were more "striking" or somesuch. When the group was almost all people with beards, those without we're deemed more striking. And vice versa.
So, if everyone does something one way, being different stands out. Not everyone is creative enough to
Re: (Score:2)
Justify the change.
When talking about GUIs, it often is justified. Sometimes with metrics like number of clicks, or click targets. Another is something like: "we tested A B and C and in general people using B did thing better/faster/easier". Unfortunately that leaves people who preferred A and C, or people with baby duck syndrome, to act like change is always done for the sake of change and no one ever listens to them.
Re: (Score:2)
For me, it isn't enough to lower the number of clicks. Moving something I use all the time to behind three additional clicks, because the average user never sees it, is just stupid. Changing the name of the computer from "Computer" to "My Computer" to "The Computer" is change, for what reason? Changing things just to be different hurts everyone.
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For me, it isn't enough to lower the number of clicks. Moving something I use all the time to behind three additional clicks, because the average user never sees it, is just stupid. Changing the name of the computer from "Computer" to "My Computer" to "The Computer" is change, for what reason? Changing things just to be different hurts everyone.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it was done "just to be different".
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Another is something like: "we tested A B and C and in general people using B did thing better/faster/easier".
Welcome to modern design. Save new users 1 click, betray existing userbase by creating a cumulative thousand misclicks per user.
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Another is something like: "we tested A B and C and in general people using B did thing better/faster/easier".
Welcome to modern design. Save new users 1 click, betray existing userbase by creating a cumulative thousand misclicks per user.
Who said anything about new users vs existing users?
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You know, this has nothing to do with personality ... it has to do with change management and how risk averse your organization is, as well as how important the system is.
Many of us will have worked in IT environments with very low threshold for risk and breakage. Which means we don't apply a change unless it has been verified elsewhere ... most regulated industries are (or should be) sufficiently risk averse that they have no choice but to be extra cautious.
I've worked in enough industries with a low enou
Re: (Score:2)
A thoughtful response. Organizations many times have a culture which embraces change and in other ones or times a "not invented here" psychology dominates. But I have no argument with your experience. I have no dog in this fight; I simply wanted to point out that this has been investigated in individuals before.
when time is available (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
This is pretty much the case for me now. I used to upgrade frequently, but decided that as a hobby, OS upgrades weren't really as exciting as everything else I wanted to do.
Now I upgrade when either (a) there's a compelling feature worth adding (b) the current OS breaks or (c) I get new hardware and installation of a new/current release OS is no more time consuming than the old OS.
I don't trust major revision upgrades to install over existing OS, even when they're supposed to work, so I normally do bare me
Ubuntu (Score:5, Insightful)
This is an issue that I think is handled beautifully by Ubuntu's release system. LTS releases come out on a relatively steady schedule, with bleeding-edge releases in between. I personally stick with LTS releases, which come out often enough to keep me up to date with features, etc., but without lots of things breaking all the time.
And, yes, I like Unity very much.
Update slow ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Let the suckers and adventurers be the beta testers.
Don't run the crap which is most likely to be causing you security problems in the first place -- I've never been impacted by a Flash zero day exploit because I don't run it.
Many years of being around computers has taught me that I have no intention of putting up with the drama of beta testing for companies who do a lousy job of QA.
I've seen WAY too many things which are broken on day 1, or even worse, which introduce new broken on day 1 that it takes some time to identify.
There isn't an OS vendor on the planet I'd accept a fresh release from and install on the first day.
If you do this stuff as a hobby, have fun with it. The rest of us don't have the time or the inclination to consider upgrading the OS to be a hobby.
Re:Update slow ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly. I was going to say the frequency of updates of your OS probably is inversely proportional depending on the seriousness of the work you're doing on it.
Updating from daily builds? Hobby OS.
Upgrading to new OS immediately after release? Thanks for finding all those zero-day exploits and rare bugs for the rest of us when we eventually upgrade.
Applying ONLY critical patches, and even then only when thoroughly vetted? You're using your computer to do actual work, and can't afford downtime.
Re: (Score:2)
> If you do this stuff as a hobby, have fun with it. The rest of us don't have the time or the inclination to consider upgrading the OS to be a hobby.
Let me translate that for you: Some of us are hackers. The rest of us are not.
You're welcome.
Re: (Score:2)
Wow, you're an AC, so I assume you're an asshole, a moron, or both.
Real companies with real business needs and real aversion to risk need to manage their risk by not continuously doing regression testing on someone else's shit, and have better things to do than that.
You don't grab random pieces and throw it into your production en
Neither is Right for Everyone (Score:3)
Your friends show two distant points on the patching spectrum we have to make all the time.
Neither is right, nor wholly wrong. The first friend doesn't worry so much about stability, and for himself that's fine. He knows the choices he's making and he's really into that. Good for him. The second friend is more conservative and more in line with what the mainstream hopes for and expects. I'd like to know what they consider "serious security" updates, because it could be anywhere from reasonable security to complete insecurity. This is why most environments have tiers of patching and testing. We know we need to get security updates out as much as possible. Some people get more value out of being on the bleeding edge than having a stable install, others can't/won't have their work interrupted for any cost. This is also why this argument is silly to have between two people on which way is "better."
As for what I do? My home system gets updates as soon as I see they're available. I occasionally play with nightlies or betas, on a VM, to see if there are major interface tweaks, a new feature I want, or whatever else I'm interested in. I'd never suggest that for most of my friends or relatives.
Incidentally, that's pretty much how it goes at work. Most of the people I work with in IT, and a few select users are in the first group. Most people get security updates quickly, and well vetted other updates when they're more thoroughly tested.
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed, comes down to what you want out of your system. Also update frequency isn't as important as the software you choose to run. I happen to mostly use stable stuff that doesn't change much: openbox+xfce for wm, mplayer, and palemoon specifically because I got tired of firefox adding shit I didn't want and taking away stuff I did. I use gentoo and generally do an update every few weeks, but it's been awhile since I did an update and anything radically changed.
With my servers it's much the same story. Mos
Depends upon the computer/device ... (Score:2)
I have one computer that just receives updates, but it is running a Linux distribution that mostly delivers bug and security patches rather than upgrading the software or changing the user interface. While it isn't my production computer per se, it is the machine that I expect to be reliable.
The rest of my computers and devices receive updates and upgrades as often as I feel like, which is frequently these days. Nightlies and betas are usually stable enough if you avoid the first few rounds. It is also f
Upgrade to a new OS after 5 updates. (Score:2)
Much easier to sleep at night.
I generally keep current (Score:3)
with the production releases and patches. I won't use betas or nightlies unless I'm trying to fix a specific bug.
I don't understand the question. (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
P-II with 640k RAM? That is one hard to find configuration. During the Pentium 2 age the normal ram is 32-128megs of ram.
For 640k you probably would be using an 8088-286.
Re: (Score:2)
No. They meant a Pentium II with 640 kB of RAM: they never figured out how to used memory managers to access the other 31 MB of RAM that's actually installed.
Bleeding edge... not so much anymore (Score:2)
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Arch (Score:3)
BAH! (Score:5, Funny)
Still running Windows for Workgroups 3.11....
MS word 2.0 works just fine!
Re: (Score:2)
Didn't you hear me?! I said I wasn't on your lawn!
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Must be hard finding an HTTP/1.1 compliant web browser that supports the Host header.
Re: (Score:2)
Shouldn't you be running Lotus 1-2-3, and Netscape Navigator Gold 3.0?
Funny thing.. I was helping empty a lab today and we found install disk #6 for WFW 3.11. No joke :-D
Depends upon the OS... (Score:5, Interesting)
.
Version updates:
.
Security and other interim updates:
Re: (Score:2)
Desktop versus server, big difference (Score:2)
There's a big difference between how you treat your desktops and your servers.
I wanted a change of pace and moved from embedded stuff on Linux to iOS development. So my desktop is basically always the latest OS X version.
I still have Linux servers running for OwnCloud and my personal website, and that's all Debian Stable. But given that it's Stable, I always update to the latest.
Never - rural location and data caps forever (Score:3, Interesting)
Wish this got more time on slashdot.
The 60% of the geography of the United States that does not have high-speed internet, or has low-speed data with data caps and no other options, NEVER get to update operating systems.
While no one should think they are entitled to high-speed internet, the fact is that outside large cities u.s. connectivity is just about the worst on the planet.
Many in rural areas can't even update an OS to a new version since everyone changed updates to be online-based.
Back in the days of physical media, we would just order a new version of the OS on disk. This is why I left Windows after Win2000 and went to Macs - OS on DVD's for less than $20 shipped to your home. For a while, Mac was the only way if you could not download. Well, you know what happened after Snow Leopard - no more Mac media.
In our small town of 530, there are 5 people with WIndows 7, because it came on the cheap pc/laptop they bought. A few still use Vista, 3 of us also have Mac Snow Leopard, and the rest of us have WinXP.
None of us have the 'internet' to update anything, so we don't. Our pc's still work as good as they did when we got them though.
We all run Ad blockers to minimize the misuse of our connections.
When you have little internet connection and use little of the internet, you don't seem to ever get viruses and malware though. A great trade-off.
Roughly every 5 years (Score:2)
As the title says....
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, damn, please delete the above... too late. :-/ Obviously I've meant upgrade to a new version.
Anyway update... well, whenever it tells me to -- except for Windows, of course, where I check the KBs first and usually there is a problem.
How often? Depends on device. (Score:2)
On my phone? Whenever my provider pushes an update.
On my computer? Only when my current OS isn't doing something I need it to do.
As soon as new version comes out (Score:2)
I update Ubuntu on my laptop as soon as s new version comes out, my desktop a week later (just in case). My phones and tablets I update as soon as a new version of Android becomes available for it. As rooted phones don't always ota very well, I update them manually.
As for the microwave and the refrigerator, I update them immediately, but fortunately, that never happens. I sincerely wish I could update my cats. They're 17 years old, they still run on their first OS version, which is getting a bit worn out. W
Break it down by System Type (Score:2)
Laptop/Desktop: Latest Windows with the above caveat. Apple update to the latest, no need to wait, apple patches so rarely. No Linux desktop/laptop (Who does that anymore?)
Phone/Mobile: Latest, always. Chances are if it breaks it's because of some rare use case some idiot did doing something equally stupid.
Gaming Consoles: Latest, do it, patch everything ASAP, go beta here for nifty new features!
bling unbound (Score:2)
I let my Linux Mint desktop slide way out of the support envelop while I waited for PC-BSD to become a viable replacement. I had a single FreeBSD machine running ZFS as my server, which had been rock solid, but I'd never run a BSD desktop before. Then in a single week it was "BSD everywhere" on my home network.
I embrace change on my own terms (which is not change caused by the Gnome developers becoming bored of their own architecture, or Canonical deciding that tablets are the new shit). PC-BSD features
Gentoo FTW! (Score:2)
I run Gentoo on my primary machines. Any guesses?
Daily, rolling release FTW (Score:2)
That depends... (Score:2)
That depends entirely on what's on the device I'm updating.
My phone has basically no important information and the entire thing is backed up in 3 different locations. I only update it when I absolutely have to because being without it if it bricks during the update is a nightmare, and most updates change the way the phone works and just end up irritating me. I don't know anyone personally that's ever had their phone remotely hacked, and even if they did... so what?
My work computer? It gets updated every nig
What do you want from your OS? (Score:2)
The beta/nightly guys are doing it because it's their hobby. This is entertainment for them. Like the guys who just analyze the hell out of game graphics instead of actually playing the games. These guys are always complaining about how their stuff isn't working right, but they love it.
If using the OS as a tool to get things done is your main concern then you back off to what gets you the new features you need/want.
If you're a luddite and afraid of being kicked out of your habits then you never update until
Mostly weekly. (Score:3)
I re-image mine from an image I made, stored on a server in the middle of the house. Every time the machine boots, it re-images the OS image on the local hard drive, thoroughly destroying anything else that might have been on the disk. When an update to the main image is necessary, I make a new one.
I create those once about every six months, unless there's an emergency patch like Heartbleed. This works on all of the computers in my home. Wife and daughter go through the same process on their machines.
Boot to Ghost, install os, play, run, do whatever. In the event of a virus, it's short lived. When I attended Berkeley, this was the way they had set up their computer lab. I remember, at the time, being intrigued by the setup.
Now that I have myself, my wife, and a five year old all using machines around the house (nine distinct pc's), I have a practical use application for this.
Since I implemented this about five years ago, we have had virtually no problems with it. The drawback of course is that it's a lot easier to do if your machines, desktops, laptops, etc, all match. Learned that one the hard way, but good now.
My machine gets shut down about once a week. My daughter is always letting the battery burn down on her laptop, so she images more frequently than anyone else in the house. My wife is also at about once a week.
Only once (Score:3)
Depends. (Score:3)
It depends on whether a machine is one on which I do work for which I get paid, or not. My main workstation, which is the source of my income, warrants a very conservative update approach. I was very slow in leaving XP, and with a mature, stable Windows 7 environment, I'm in no hurry at all to adopt another version of Windows. Yeah, like everyone else I've seen the popups inviting me to upgrade to Windows 10. You first. I can't afford to be down while I figure out why things aren't working or figuring out where Microsoft hid certain buttons this time.
I will sometimes install a new version on a spare machine just to see where technology is heading, and acquaint myself with what I will eventually have to deal with, but that's a lower priority. I'm not really interested in spending half my life doing upgrades and figuring out what broke.
pretty much daily (Score:2)
alias ds="sudo aptitude update; sudo aptitude install debsecan \`secan-update\` dpkg aptitude debian-archive-keyring"
function secan-update() /etc/default/debsecan
{
.
debsecan --only-fixed --format packages --suite $SUITE
}
Depends on your age & experience (Score:2)
When I was younger, it was fun and novel to update my OS everytime something "new" came out, so I would. I spent a lot of my weekends and weeknights doing this. Hell, sometimes I would completely wipe my machine just to try a new OS or two for fun.
However, once I actually got into the workforce, I found I valued a stable platform a whole lot more than exploring "new" OS features (which are really never that "new" anyways). It got a lot less fun to spend all weekend trying to get something to work right, onl
Does the update improve my LIFE? (Score:5, Insightful)
I also have a friend who upgrades everything all the time. "the new phone's amazing" either means that the "old phone sucks" -- which makes no sense since the old phone was "amazing" when it was new too -- or that the new marketing is amazing -- which makes sense because the old marketing was also amazing.
There are countly amazing things that can be added to anything. Some new features are just really impressive. But being impressive doesn't mean that it improves my life at all.
A frisbee that can be thrown over a half-mile is really cool (and called an aerobe, by the way, and I love them) but I don't have a park that large, nor would I enjoy playing catch with a friend that far away.
Similarly, most new OS features might be neat, but they don't actually change my life at all. Perhaps the best example I can give is with regard to office/productivity suites.
Between word, excel, wordperfect, lotus 123, and-if-you-thought-wordperfect-was-dating-myself wordstar, I've been writing essays and poems and business documents for close to thirty years. Before the computer "clipboard", before 3d text-art, before pivot tables, before ribbon bars, before toolbars, before menu bars, before arrow-keys, even before the mouse. In the end, the business documents that I produce today, to earn a living, aren't any more sophistimicated than the ones that I producted 25 years ago, early in my career. Believe it or not, youngin's, business invoices and quotes and proposals existing before XML. So none of these new features actually provide any additional benefit to my life. They only change the way I create the very same invoice -- whether for dot-matrix, inkjet, laser, PDF, or e-mail.
How many new OS features actually add to my life? The answer is: none. So I upgrade my OS when I upgrade my computer. When is that? When my computer is too old to play the almost-latest games -- because games are entertainment, and entertainment is my sole purpose in life.
The OS is very definitely secondary.
All that said, there have been OS upgrades that have improved my life. Win 95 let me switch between games and work faster, which meant that I could play more games. Vista let me have more pixels so I could work more at a time and keep the tv playing in the corner at the same time. Win 7 added nothing. Win 8 added nothing. Win 10 would let me work cross-device better, if my work were capable of being done anywhere but a desk, but it ain't.
Re:Does the update improve my LIFE? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think you realise how things have changed. From your post I can see you're expecting only life changing killer features out of every upgrade. The reality is that the OSes and applications have changed a lot, but the improvements have been minor and incremental so you don't actually realise what you're missing.
Not everything needs to be a killer feature. Sometimes basic things like easy to use format templates in Word, intelligent cell colouring in Excel, or the new file copy dialogue in Windows 8 have all been great feature upgrades. None individually have changed my life but ultimately all of them contribute to improving it. I could make pivot tables in Excel back in Office 97 (I'm not sure how much earlier that feature was available) but it took a heck of a lot longer and was far more complicated than the single click and drag operation it is now.
What you're doing now may not be more sophisticated, but now anyone can do it, and anyone can do it quickly.
The fact that you think nothing new was added between Vista and Windows 10 other than cross-device functionality would imply that either you're using the new features blindly without realising they are an improvement, or aren't aware of their existence. I'm especially amazed since you're talking about the ability to multi-task in Vista on multiple monitors that you haven't used or raved about aero snap in Windows 7 allowing you to with a simple keypress move windows around between monitors, even side by side. That doesn't even include under the hood improvements to indexing, support for solid state drives, full disk encryption.
Basically: Just because you don't use or don't like a feature doesn't mean each OS hasn't had significant improvements.
Release versions (Score:2)
Personally, I mostly stick to release versions. I may try a beta on an unimportant computer, just to get a sense of what's coming, but OS betas make more sense if you're a developer trying to make sure your app will work on the new OS. As a user, or even an IT pro, you're mostly wasting your time.
Myself, I'll install the new version of OSX, Windows, and iOS as soon as I can get a gold master. If it's going to cause problems, then I want to experience those problems before my clients experience them. I
How often do I update my OS? (Score:3)
I don't update my OS, ever.
The overlords living at 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA 95014 are the ones updating the OS for me.
Re: (Score:2)
Raspberry Smoothie (Score:2)
Some things interest some people; other things interest other people. Sometimes there is overlap. Here on slashdot, considering the age, stability, and desirability of one OS version as related to another is quite topical in terms of the issues the site generally is understood to cover.
Perhaps you should wander off and find a story you are interested in. No need to read the ones that don't provoke an interest, you know. You do know that, right?
Re: (Score:2)
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Which is the one which comes pre-installed on most distros?
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Nope. Every distro I've seen (although I'll admit I haven't made a business of surveying them) installs vi by default but not Emacs.
I can install JOE the same way. So obviously JOE has won the editor wars.
Re:Coke or Pepsi (Score:5, Informative)
the Emacs vs VI war is over (Emacs won) ...
Yeah I'm thinking not. I've been a Unix sysadmin for over 15 years and I've never worked with a single person who uses Emacs.
Re: (Score:2)
the Emacs vs VI war is over (Emacs won) ...
Yeah I'm thinking not. I've been a Unix sysadmin for over 15 years and I've never worked with a single person who uses Emacs.
I'm a Unix systems programmer and administrator and I routinely use both Emacs and Vi depending on the task. Vi is universally available out of the box and is really good for small, quick things while I prefer Emacs for larger, longer edits and development, especially on complex things with many files.
People get too cranked up over "this vs. that" when it really boils down to using the most appropriate tool for the task - that you're competent with. Emacs is a much more capable and sophisticated tool,
Re:Coke or Pepsi (Score:5, Interesting)
Say what? I work in a shop with extensive Solaris and Linux installation, and run several personal Linux boxes as well. They all have vi. None of them, as far as I know, and I checked several, have Emacs. This was not a conscious decision for any of them: it's just the way the hosts installed (although on my personal boxes, I would've installed vi had it not installed by itself). Who won the war?
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True, if you're want to split hairs.
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the Emacs vs VI war is over (Emacs won)
Nope. B-)
When I got my first UNIX box, back in the '80s, it had two megabytes and did NOT have demand paging, which would have allowe a larger virtual image to run. That was too small to compile emacs. (The joke at the time was that the name was really an acronym for Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping. B-) )
So I learned VI. Then I used it VERY heavily for years, on the original conferencing system whose software was later ported to The Well. After that a n
Re:Screws with users (Score:5, Informative)
Into about 1980 all American cars and trucks had, for many years, placed the headlights control on the dash at the left. Wiper blade control was usually on the lower left side of the dash near the knee bolster. They placed the turn signal on the left side of the column, placed the gearshift on the right side of the column, and placed the brights control on the floor, operated by the left foot. The radio was generally low on the right side. If a fancy car had an interior dome light with dimming capability it was usually placed on the left with the headlight control, and if there was cruise control, the function was integrated with the turn signal indicator stalk, with a slider on the side for set/coast and a button on the tip for on/off.
In the late seventies and eighties they started playing with multifunction stalks and all bets were off. Some cars integrated nearly every function into the stalk, and if the car had a floor shifter instead of a column shifter sometimes a second multifunction stalk was added to the right side. Floor controls were mostly eliminated and most low, hard to reach controls were relocated to stalks. Tilting telescoping steering columns added a third stalk on the lower-left of the column. When Mercedes Benz took over Chrysler they attempted to add a fourth stalk to the column, low on the right, for the cruise control. Steering wheels got controls on the front, then on the back. At one point early on there was a "rim blow" steering wheel where squeezing the wheel would activate the horn.
My point is that automotive controls are very much NOT standard. Even basic functions like gear selection could be pushbutton, could be a column stalk, could be a dash stalk, could be a floor stick, could be a dash-mounted knob, could be a center-console knob, and there are probably more variations yet. Drivers have to get used to each and every configuration.
Re:Screws with users (Score:5, Insightful)
Automotive control interfaces change all of the time.
But in most cases, the automobile someone drivers does not.
And when someone does change car, maybe every 5-10 years, getting up to speed with the new controls takes them a few minutes.
This is because, fair as the examples you give of evolving car controls might be, ultimately you still turn the steering wheel to change direction (and you turn it anticlockwise to turn left). When you get a different car, you still have the same gas and brake pedals you used to. If you drive a manual then you still have the same clutch pedal and probably a near-identical gear stick arrangement. The range of external lights and when you use them hasn't changed a lot in decades. The internal and external environment-related controls are still roughly the same. The changes are mostly cosmetic, more akin to changing visual themes in software than changing actual functionality to something significantly different that the user must then learn before they can use the software effectively again.
If software only changed its UI significantly every 5-10 years, and you could choose when to switch, and when you did it would still basically work the same way but you might have to spend five minutes figuring out where the main functions were found in the new version, I don't think users would be nearly as frustrated by the changes as so many are today.
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True, the pedals and steering wheel haven't moved, and the actual turn signal stalk's basic signal-left and signal-right functions are unchanged, but as I said, the gearshift selector and everything else is up for grabs.
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Fair enough, but I think it's also fair to say you're probably the exception rather than the rule here, both in the frequency with which you switch vehicles and the diversity of the controls you encounter. Maybe it's different here in the UK, but basically one rental or courtesy car probably works 99% like any other, apart from the manual vs. automatic controls. The gear stick for a manual is always in roughly the same place, and every car or van I've ever driven that had 5+ forward gears had 1-5 in the sam
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The pointer moves in the direction that your mouse moves.
If you tap the top-left side of the mouse, it's called a click.
Click on the picture that looks like a button to do what the text on the button says.
This has been true ever since the earliest of GUI's.
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Many families have multiple cars. Ours has 3, all different manufacturers, and I frequently drive all three in any given month. It is fairly maddening to go between cars and to deal with different controls that require additional attention just to remember where the turn signals are without ending up with the wipers flapping.
Our Ford and Toyota put almost everything from the column on opposite sides. Even adjusting the air conditioner settings requires a conscious mental shift to get remember how to get
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Automotive control interfaces change all of the time.
Really? The "control interface" of my '81 Ford is the same as the day it was purchased.
Well, the auto makers have "fixed" that problem in their latest models. They now have those little "onboard computers" that constantly scan many of the controls and figure out how to map them to physical actions. This means that any "upgrade" to the software can change the functioning of all the controls. You can think you're just getting an upgrade to improve the mileage, but that upgrade can flip the meaning of the turn-signal controls.
Some of the latest models have wifi, so they can do upgrades whi
Re: Screws with users (Score:4, Informative)
This is aggressively missing the point. The original poster was discussing the fact that you can hop in any modern car and know with certainty how to actuate the left or right hand turn indicators. His/her point is valid and true, but instead of addressing it you are now on about hazard lights.
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Hipster "designers" are the reason. (Score:3, Insightful)
The answer is simple: hipsters don't design car user interfaces, but they do "design" software user interfaces.
It may be difficult to believe these days, but for quite some time, from the mid-1980s to the mid-2000s, software UIs were quite consistent on each major platform. Almost all Windows apps looked the same on any given version of Windows. Almost all Mac apps looked the same on any given version of Mac OS. Even on X, where there was no standard toolkit, at least a Motif-like theme was offered by most
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The answer is simple: hipsters don't design car user interfaces, but they do "design" software user interfaces.
You don't know what a hipster is, if you think it's "the people designing my operating system UI." By the time it gets to Microsoft and Apple OS GUIs, it's not "hipster". It's mainstream. Quit trying to attach "hipsters" to everything you don't like. It makes you look like an idiot.
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and that''s why I use vim / vi. Features have been added but the daily commands I use haven't changed in decades.
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Why does tech insist on updated stuff that ends up frustrating and annoying users to get an overall UI improvement of %0.01? Come on, guys, go work on something useful or make the bits behind the UI better.
That's TiVo's big problem. They've been adjusting the UI lately, and with each iteration it looks like they are introducing more bugs than they remove. TiVo's quality control level has been dropping drastically.
Re:I update my OS every time MSFT kills it (Score:5, Informative)
What is the entire lab doing planning to run Win 10 Home? That's the only edition that forces mandatory updates. Pro lets you defer them; Enterprise lets you completely control the process
Re:I update my OS every time MSFT kills it (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the extortion model of OS pricing.
"Lovely little computer you have here. Shame if it got broken in an update. Just buy a little insurance and you can avoid all that."
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Heh, since the Win95 days I used to have to flatten and rebuild my Windows gaming box every 6 months or so due to driver problems and bloat. Then the last time my HDD died I just up and installed one of the pirated/cracked Russian Win7 versions (since my OEM Win7 license was spent on that dead OS disk). It runs in Test mode and doesn't get any updates, but I haven't had any problems for well over a year now of running Steam games. Whoever pwned my system does a much better job keeping it stable and runni
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Some of us run it at home, but since most of the work is done on Linux anyway, the whole auto updates was the last straw. It's kind of fun watching the distributed computing model morph back into the server based model that existed when I first got into programming.
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And now my entire lab is going Linux, because this Win 10 thing and auto updates means our systems would be at risk.
I was testing Win 10 until that news broke, now I'm advising everyone I know to stay with Win 7 or even Win8.x. I may end up doing a second Win 7 partition and allowing it to upgrade to Win 10 just so I can answer the few support questions from my friends that don't listen to my do not upgrade warning... there are always a few...
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You know what ... just say no.
Unless you enjoy doing that kind of support for free, tell them they're on their own.
My parents live quite far from me. I told them flat out I can't be support for their computer because I have no way to see it, and I don't know WTF they did to it.
But why people keep letting themselves get sucked into the black hole of supporting technology for friends and family I will never know. There's no limit to how much you can get dragged into that crap.
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I run a nightly ROM on my phone, but that's only because there's no stable release of it anymore (it's officially "unmaintained" but the nightlies work well).
My laptop runs debian testing, which I update daily. I follow "testing" not "stretch" - so when stretch is released (in 25 years or so), it'll automatically "upgrade" to the next testing.
My desktop runs arch. They use a rolling release, so I update that pretty often as well.
So I guess the whole "how often do you update" thing doesn't apply to rolling OSs.
Sure it does. Just because a release is offered doesn't mean you have to install it. I run gentoo which also does rolling releases. There are pros and cons to keeping up or rather *not* keeping up. The pro is that you don't have to deal with the breakages. The con is that eventually you will need to come up to current and that can be a holy terror. Not only do you have a large number of manual fixes for things that don't settle out on their own but sometimes you can't easily get from the version you h
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